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From: jack@rlgvax.UUCP (Jack Waugh)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Gillette
Message-ID: <92@rlgvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 10-Sep-84 11:11:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: rlgvax.92
Posted: Mon Sep 10 11:11:20 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Sep-84 05:52:19 EDT
References: <126@tekred.UUCP>
Organization: CCI Office Systems Group, Reston, VA
Lines: 38

. . . "Then
> others are worried about whether men or women should have facial/body
> hair (jeeez, why did God invent Gillette?)" . . .

Okay, here's why God invented Gillette.  I quote (without permission,
of course) from *The Shocking History of Advertising*, by E. S. Turner
(Ballentine Books, New York, 1953.  Library of Congress card catalog
number 53-10342), p. 144:

	Then came the safety razor boom [we're talking 1890 to 1914].
	A young American, ambitious for fame, whose name was King C.
	Gillette, had been advised by one of his employers to invent
	"something that can be used and thrown away."  One morning,
	so the story goes, he gazed disgustedly at the dull blade
	of his "cutthroat" razor.  It was a lump of expensive steel,
	of which only a tiny sliver did any useful work.  Why not
	manufacture just that sliver of steel, to be thrown away when
	blunted?  Experts said that wafer-thin metal could not be
	given an effective cutting edge.  Gillette's idea, which
	"changed the face of the world", was perfected only after many
	disappointments.  *From the advertising point of view it was
	not enough to persuade men to turn to safety razors; it was
	necessary to persuade them to turn to razors.* [emphasis mine]
	For years the J. B. Williams Company, manufacturers of shaving
	soap, had been trying to make the nation cleanshaven by such
	appeals as "Adam was created without a beard.  Shaggy, unkempt
	beards were common among fallen barbarous nations until the
	time of the Emperor Julian, who was the first to denounce
	them. . . ."

	Gillette joined the "back to Adam" movement.  Perhaps his
	assurance that his safety razor could be used as freely as
	a knife and fork was not the happiest inducements.  Nevertheless,
	the idea caught on. . . .

So you see, the Gillette safety razor was invented just as catchpenny,
nothing else.  And the advertising continues today, and women as well
as men hear, believe, and buy.