Shaving cream is a substance that is applied to the face or wherever else hair grows, to provide lubrication and avoid razor burn during shaving. Shaving cream is often bought in a spray can, but can also be purchased in tubs or tubes.[1] Shaving cream in a can is commonly dispensed as a foam or a gel. Creams that are in tubes or tubs are commonly used with a shaving brush to produce a rich lather (most often used in wet shaving).
The cream itself commonly consists of a mixture of oil, soaps, surfactants, and water or alcohol, manufactured under carefully controlled conditions to ensure proper pH and consistency.
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A rudimentary form of shaving cream was documented in Sumer around 3000 BC. This substance combined wood alkali and animal fat and was applied to a beard as a shaving preparation.[2]
Until the early 20th century, bars or sticks of hard shaving soap were used. Later, tubes containing compounds of oils and soft soap were sold. Newer creams introduced in the 1940s neither produced lather nor required brushes, often referred to as brushless creams.[3]
Soaps are used by wetting a shaving brush, which is made out of either boar hair or badger hair, and swirling the brush on the soap, then painting the face with the brush. Brushless creams do not produce a lather, thereby removing its ability to protect the skin against cuts. Traditional soaps are still available today from such makers as the Art of Shaving, Crabtree and Evelyn and Geo. F. Trumper.
The first can of aerosol shaving cream was Rise shaving cream, which was introduced by Carter-Wallace in 1949.[4] By the following decade this format attained two-thirds of the American market for shaving preparations.[5] The gas in shaving cream canisters originally contained chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), but this substance was increasingly believed to be detrimental to the Earth's ozone layer. This led to restrictions or reductions in CFC use, such as the United States Environmental Protection Agency ban in the late 1970s.[6] Gaseous hydrocarbon propellants such as mixtures of pentane, propane, butane and isobutane could be used instead of the CFCs.[7] Because of the large proportion of water in pressurized shaving cream, the risk from the normally flammable hydrocarbons was reduced.[8] The logic behind a canned shaving cream is this: by canning the lather rather than the cream or soap the shaver can save time by not having to build the lather. While this is true, it is often argued that this method removes a lot of the original purpose behind the cream and/or soap in the process. By canning the cream, it can no longer protect the face because it doesn't lather, or so it is argued. Canned cream's sole purpose, it is argued, is to lubricate the face so that the blades can cut the hairs since they no longer provide any protection from cuts.
In the late 1980s, shaving gel was developed that is dispensed from an aerosol can.[9] In 1993 The Procter & Gamble Company patented a post-foaming gel composition, which turns the gel into a foam after application to the skin, combining properties of both foams and gels.[10]