{"id":1251,"date":"2009-01-20T04:03:29","date_gmt":"2009-01-20T12:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=1251"},"modified":"2023-08-28T01:38:03","modified_gmt":"2023-08-28T08:38:03","slug":"brush-with-destiny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=1251","title":{"rendered":"Brush with Destiny"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> This morning, I tried a Jack Black® Pure Performance Shave Brush<\/a>. Its bristles are synthetic (the badger lives to see another day<\/q><\/a>) and anti-microbial, but designed to perform like a silver tip badger brush (which is generally held to be the best sort).<\/p>

I have a Burma Shave™ boar-bristle brush<\/a> that I got before I learned that boars were killed for the bristles, and an Art of Shaving® basic badger-bristle brush<\/a> given to me as a gift before the giver learned that badgers were killed for the bristles. Jointly, these could last quite a few years. But I was quite interested to try a synthetic brush, partly so that I would know whether they were good gifts, and partly so that I could write and speak about them from experience.<\/p>

The thing that I always read about most synthetics is that that they don't hold water as well as do natural<\/q> bristle brushes. Well, I've not yet done a head-to-head comparison with anything but the boar-bristle brush<\/a>, but the Black® brush<\/a> definitely holds considerably<\/em> more water than does a Burma Shave™ boar-bristle brush<\/a>. (So much so, in fact, that I ended-up with far more dilute lather than I wanted. That's a problem that I can easily address, by just shaking out the brush before I put it in the soap.)<\/p>

The Black® brush<\/a> also feels much nicer against my skin than does the boar-bristle brush<\/a>, and certainly nicer than did the boar-bristle brush<\/a> when it was new. And the boar-bristle brush<\/a> smelled like a musky animal when it was new, whereäs the Black® brush<\/a> naturally didn't. (Jack Black<\/a> in fact gave it some sort of pleasant scent which I presume will wash away with use.)<\/p>

I will probably, at some future point, try the genuine badger brush<\/a> that I was given. The badger whence the bristles came isn't going to get any more killed; and, while I wouldn't thus have tested the Black® brush<\/a> against a high-end badger brush, I would at least have tested it against a badger brush of some<\/em> sort.



While I am on the subject of shave brushes, I would like to mention the Burt's Bees® Natural Bristle Shaving Brush, found in their Bay Rum Men's Shaving Kit<\/a> and sometimes sold separately. A little research confimed my suspicion that the bristles are boar bristles.<\/p>

Burt's Bees proclaims<\/a><\/p>

our goal is to help create a world where people have the information and tools they need to make the highest ethical choices<\/blockquote>

Now, reasonable people might argue over whether it's ethical to kill animals for shaving products, but one doesn't have the information needed to make the highest ethical choices<\/em> if one isn't being told that these natural bristles<\/em> were harvested from killed boars; plainly a significant share of Burt's Bees<\/a>' customers would have concluded that the use of such bristles were unethical. And we may safely presume that the boars were killed<\/em> (though there is a ranch in Spain that would happily sell them bristles sheared from boars who are not<\/em> killed), because Burt's Bees<\/a>, which makes a point of telling us that it doesn't engage in animal testing<\/em> hasn't made a point of telling us that these bristles were sheared from live boars.<\/p>

Possibly Burt's Bees<\/a> just didn't know any better (much as I didn't know any better). I notice that the Bay Rum Men's Shaving Kit<\/a> is presently listed as currently out of stock<\/q>, and I can't find the brush itself listed separately at their site<\/a> (though I can find it sold by Red Rain<\/a>, a company that claims to offer the concientious consumer earth friendly, cruelty free products and services<\/q><\/a>). But Burt's Bees<\/a> has grossly failed its customers<\/em>, either willfully or inadvertantly, and owes to them an explanation and an apology.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This morning, I tried a Jack Black® Pure Performance Shave Brush. Its bristles are synthetic (the badger lives to see another day) and anti-microbial, but designed to perform like a silver tip badger brush (which is generally held to be the best sort). I have a Burma Shave™ boar-bristle brush that I got before I […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,318,5,4],"tags":[309,310,311,312,313,314,549,316,317],"class_list":["post-1251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-ethics-philosophy","category-personal","category-public","tag-badgers","tag-boars","tag-bristles","tag-brushes","tag-fur","tag-hair","tag-reviews","tag-shaving","tag-shaving-brushes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1251"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12160,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1251\/revisions\/12160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}