I've been using this blog so much lately as a daybook, that it's hard to remember that this is really a reviews site.

Introducing "The Tinge", a wet-shaving vibrator/razor.

It's Pink

It's pink, so presumably, it's intended for women. And it costs $109.59 with ground shipping. If they want to ship me a sample to test, I'll test the real thing, but for now, I can only test the concept.

My beard has just the right thickness of hair, that it manages to get caught between the blades of a multi-blade razor. That means it takes 18-24 razors per shave using them; no matter how hot the water, or how forceful the stream of water, the razor is jammed.

The alternative is to use a single-edge razor. It's impossible to find a safety razor handle in local stores. I wrote to the Wilkinson folks, and they said nobody makes safety razor handles any more, for either single-edge or double-edge razor blades, although virtually every drugstore and supermarket sells both single-edge and double-edge blades. They also sell injector blades in those stores, but you can't find a handle for those, either.

The disposables are so light, that they're difficult to manipulate through a beard. On the other hand, Sally Beauty Supply sells straight razors. They're fairly lightweight, intended for shaping the thinner hairs of your scalp, rather than plowing through heavier chin hairs, but I can't find anything better. Shaving with one of them actually does a pretty good job, as long as you move at right angles to the edge. If you move sideways even a little, you get a nasty slice and a river of red.

The Vibrator

The vibrator I use was purchased years ago at an auction, when a barber closed his shop. It's made by Oster. The pictures here are of a different brand of vibrator, but the design is similar.

The description of Oster's current model says "Provides a refreshing, energizing massage following any cutting service. Its powerful universal motor is designed for heavy-duty use. The lightweight and ergonomic contoured design reduces hand fatigue."

As long as I'm reviewing, I might as well warn you. The vibrator motor is well-constructed, and thus is fairly heavy. If the springs wrapping around your hand didn't have a snug fit, the vibrations would shake the darned thing right off, in short order. On the other hand, the thing is so snug that it hurts a little when I put it on, and after one or two minutes of massaging scalp and shoulders, my hand is cramped up something awful, and it takes several hours to completely recover.

Those springs are nasty, too. It may be OK for a man's shorter hair, slicked with Vitalis, but with the longer hair of a woman, all blown full of air, hair gets caught in those springs. It's no wonder that scalp and shoulder massages followed a haircut by a barber, but stimulating the scalp wasn't done by stylists.

Like A Reese Cup, Which Mixes Peanut Butter And Chocolate

To test the concept of The Tinge, I strapped on the vibrator, then picked up the straight razor, and started to remove my beard.

I don't use aerosol shaving creams; they're too dry. The stuff that comes in a tube is OK, I suppose, but there's hardly anything that will beat lathering up soap in a mug with a shaving brush. It doesn't look like Cool-Whip on the chin; it's much thinner, but it's also much wetter. The drugstores carry Palmolive or Williams shaving soap, which comes in a hockeypuck shape, and they're both OK, I guess, but what I really enjoy using is Cashmere Bouquet.

It doesn't fit in a mug without a little carving, but what's the point of carrying around weapons of mass destruction, formerly known as a pocketknife, if you aren't going to whittle something, once in a while. The parts that are whittled off aren't waste; I toss them in the mug under the new soap, and the water added to the mug melts them together.

The Rubber Meets The Road

I turned on the vibrator, and started shaving. It wasn't easy to do, because of the weight of the vibrator. It tends to do where it darned well wants to go, but if you are diligent, you can herd it into the approximate direction you want to go.

On the other hand, once you get there, it vibrates madly. You know what I said earlier about never moving the blade sideways? The blade moves sideways.

The most difficult part of shaving is to remove the mustache. The hairs grow downward, so you need to get the back of the razor exactly where the nose is. The straight razor is much "deeper" from spine to cutting edge, so it makes that particular operation even more difficult.

And with the vibrator adding to the challenge, one quickly learns that harelip is not always a congenital condition.

Blondie Disapproves

Blondie was unhappy to see my face. "You remember that episode of Mythbusters, where the propeller of one small airplane sliced up the fuselage of another small airplane like a deli slicer? That's what your face looks like."

And then she went to use the bathroom. The shriek was deafening. When she came back, she said, "you know how I mentioned that pink might be a good color for the bathroom? Red polkadots on everything from ceiling to floor, including the toilet seat and the towels, doesn't begin to come close."

The Hoary Details

The Tinge operates in 32 different modes. I suppose you should consider how far the 911 people would have to come, when you select a mode.

"This is one product sure to put a smile on your face. And that is more than we can say for most men", according to Aly Walansky, of SheKnows.com. I suppose that says something about Aly, that she gets tickled pink seeing men suffer like that.

Unlike my Oster vibrator, which plugs into the wall socket, The Tinge runs on batteries, and lasts 3 hours on a charge. My gosh, you could slice up 18 faces in that amount of time. They must be targeting the hard core lesbian man-hater market. Most of the lesbians I know don't fit into that category. They mostly consider men to be irrelevant, not an enemy to be tortured by slicing him to death.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Cashmere Bouquet - Mythbusters - Oster vibrator - serial torturer - shaving cream - springs - straight razor - The Tinge - weapons of mass destruction - Wilkinson Sword