Zone
Cheeks and jawline
Downward across the flat of the cheek, turning as it reaches the jaw, and often reversing altogether under the chin.
This is the widest area on the face and the one that stops being flat exactly where the work gets difficult. The upper cheek is a panel you can pull taut with one hand. The jaw is a corner. Most complaints about a shaver are complaints about the stretch nearest the jaw, and they are usually a question of geometry rather than of the appliance.
Direction and anchorage
How the hair grows
On the upper cheek the hair sits in a fairly consistent direction and lies against skin with muscle and bone directly behind it, which is why that panel can be stretched and held still. Coming down toward the jaw the direction begins to fan, and at the edge of the jawbone it commonly turns through a right angle within the width of a thumb. Under the chin it reverses again. None of this is unusual and none of it is a problem in itself; it becomes a problem when the same stroke, at the same angle, is carried from a place where the hair lies one way into a place where it lies another.
Systems that suit it
Three floating caps worked in circles meet the fanning direction near the jaw without any change of technique, because a circle approaches from every side in turn.
On the flat panel, a perforated sheet pressed against stretched skin is the most efficient arrangement here. The efficiency drops away as the surface starts to curve.
One blade holds a length across the whole panel with a comb on, and then defines where the beard stops with the comb off, without the appliance changing hands.
For the border only. The straight edge decides where the beard ends along the cheek, and it has nothing to offer the field of hair below that line.
Systems that do not
A cutting surface a few millimeters across, dragged over the largest area on the face, produces a scalloped edge and an entire evening.
Before anything is bought
Without buying anything
- Run a finger along your own jawbone and find where the bone actually ends. Most people cut their cheek line by eye and are surprised by how far it sits from the bone they thought they were following.
- Cut the whole area at one length with the comb you already own, then look at it in daylight. A cheek that looks patchy at four settings often looks even at one.
- Change the direction of your strokes near the jaw rather than the pressure. Two minutes of that tells you whether the appliance was ever the problem.
- Take a photograph of yourself straight on rather than judging in a mirror. A mirror flips the asymmetry that makes one side look wrong, and a photograph does not.
- Leave the line where it is for a fortnight before deciding it is wrong. Almost every cheek line that gets corrected twice was correct the first time.
Safety
- StopTwo things mean stopping rather than taking one more pass. Skin that is broken, raised, sore or already inflamed, which is a doctor’s call and not something to draw a blade across. And a line so far out of true that a shorter setting only chases it, which is a barber’s. Neither of them improves by carrying on.
- StopNothing here treats a skin condition. Ingrown hairs, raised bumps after shaving, flaking under a beard and inflamed follicles are medical matters, and pseudofolliculitis barbae in particular is a diagnosis rather than a shaving style. What to do about any of them is decided by a clinician.
- StopA shaver or a trimmer belongs to one person. Shaving injures skin at a scale too small to notice, and whatever sits on the blade goes into that injury.
Groups that touch it
Kit for this zone
Foil Shavers
The appliances built around a sheet, for a face that can be pulled taut with one hand.
Hold a perforated sheet flat against skin that can be pulled taut, and cut whatever comes through the holes.
Foil Shavers
Where to look next
- Rotary heads
Why circles suit a surface that changes direction, and what the floating plate is actually doing.
- Foil heads
What a flat sheet buys on the upper cheek, and what it gives back at the jaw.
- Edges and lines
Where a cheek line belongs and how far it climbs each time somebody corrects it.