Shaving is an overlooked aspect of the history of hygiene
As a procedure in the pursuit of personal hygiene, shaving has remained more or less unchanged since primitive man used sharpened rocks to scrape away unwanted facial hair. As unpleasant as that sounds, it was nonetheless an improvement. Evidence that primitive man removed facial hair by plucking has been found, meaning that primitive man was willing to forego considerable pain in pursuit of hirsute style. Native Americans also plucked facial and body hair, as well as the scalp, in order to obtain the tuft of longer hair known to posterity as the scalp lock, a sign of adulthood, and a potential trophy for enemies. While plucking has thankfully gone out of fashion, the removal of unwanted hair by scraping with a sharpened instrument remains the basis of shaving today. Even electric shavers, no matter how advanced, rely on a blade clipping the follicle without damaging the skin.
The question is why? There are cave drawings depicting men sans facial hair, indicating the desire for a close shave over 30,000 years old. In some societies full beards became the norm, in others smooth chins predominated. Some were cyclical. Review of photographs from the Victorian age indicates full beards were fashionable, even the norm, at least among the more affluent (full stomachs too, but that is a different matter). In ancient Egypt, where razors manufactured from copper appeared around 3,000 BCE men removed their beards, and then some, usually those of noble birth, replaced them with fake ones, a symbol of their divine nature. The Ancient Romans encountered bearded enemies and responded by shaving their own faces, citing superior cleanliness as one reason. Beards harbored lice. Vermin infested enemies were obviously inferior in Roman thought.