Get Shaved!

Difficult to unpack and probably not worth it: A “small but growing number of men” (read: three people the writer knows) who enjoy the look of three-day stubble but who hate scraggly neck hair and are unwilling or unable to sculpt three-day stubble are opting for “laser beard sculpturing”. I swear to fucking god I’m not making this up:

The two-day beard is a modern classic. Both virile and casual, it bespeaks a man who needn’t bother to shave every day.

And it’s also a lot of work.

The truth is, most men who sport sexy, two-day growths end up spending more, not less, time in front of the mirror. That’s because facial hair has a way of meandering in unruly patches down the neck or up too high on the cheeks. If the look you’re aiming for is George Clooney relaxing at his Italian villa – rather than, say, Jack Nicholson on a murderous rampage in “The Shining” – you end up needing to trim around the edges. And that means wielding a razor very, very carefully.

“I love the look of going a few days without shaving,” said Charles Christian, 26, a part-time hair stylist and fashion designer who is a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. “But my beard hair was growing into my chest hair, and I’m really not into that.”

Kevin Hillaire, 29, a case manager for the New York City Department of Correction, likes the stubbly look, too. But the scraggly patches on his neck, dotted with ingrown hairs, ruined the picture.

No longer. Mr. Christian, Mr. Hillaire and a small but growing rank of other men are sporting neatly trimmed two- and three-day growth without extra grooming. A technique called laser beard sculpturing has helped them do away with unwanted areas of facial hair for good.

(This, by the way, basically proves that the Fashion Week Hangover exists.)