You’ve just shaved your face. Your cheeks and chin are as smooth as a baby’s bottom, but they have that familiar post-shave sensitivity — your skin feels raw, hot and sore. So you pour a little of your favorite post-shave product in your hands and apply it to your stinging face, and everything changes. Your skin is cooled and soothed. It’s like jumping into a swimming pool on a hot summer day. It’s one of life’s tiny joys.
So why wouldn’t you want to give that same joy and protection to your balls?
Whatever part of your body you’re targeting, and whatever tool you’re using to do it, shaving is shaving — the end result is going to be the same, and that includes how sensitive your skin is going to feel afterward. “After you shave your skin is wide open in the sense that you’ve scratched off all the top layer of dead skin,” Bare Skin Studio owner and trained manscaper Melanie Mari explains. “However you do it, it irritates the skin to some level, and it dries and dehydrates it.” Post-shave products (such as Post Shave Cream and Post Shave Dew) are designed to help skin recover after you’ve voluntarily assaulted it with razor blades — all skin. There’s absolutely no reason why you should deny your undercarriage the same treatment after manscaping that you give your face, and an extremely good reason you should.
“If anything, using [a post-shave product] down below is probably more important than on your face,” says Mari. “The skin on your face is much thicker than the skin in your pelvic area, especially the ball area, so it’s much more tender. Plus, your face gets shaved pretty regularly for years after you hit puberty, so it’s used to it. But down below isn’t.” As such, a moisturizer is absolutely essential to help the sensitive skin rehydrate and prevent ingrown hair and prickle, of course.
If you’re manscaping so your basement area looks its best, then not using some kind of post-shave product down there is baffling, likely painful and self-defeating. After all, clearing out the brush from the landscape might not be worth the effort if the view isn’t going to be inviting.