What's Inside: Shaving Cream

What's Inside: Shaving Cream

What's Inside: Shaving Cream

Thick, rich, velvety – and chock-full of ingenious chemicals.

Palmitic acid: This long-chain lipid is found in palm oil and animal fats. A major component in soapmaking, it helps create a thick, stable lather that enfolds follicles and holds them upright.

Triethanolamine: A thickener and wetting agent, TEA allows water to flow more freely by reducing the surface tension that holds droplets together. It's also a precursor chemical for the blistering weapon nitrogen mustard gas.

Stearic acid: Commonly used in cosmetics, this waxy lipid softens the skin. Combined with TEA, it becomes a powerful thickener for luxurious lather.

Isopentane: In shaving cream, this degreaser breaks down sebum, the oil your skin produces. (It also smells like gasoline.) That helps whiskers stand up, the better to mow them down with a razor.

Sunflower oil monoglycerides: This plant oil has seemingly magical properties. Its fatty acids attach to a carbon backbone and keep the product in gel form. But rubbing the gel in your hands introduces air. Voilà: foam.

Sorbitol: In food, this sweetener causes diarrhea. (Luckily, shaving cream is not for eating.) Here it's a cheap stand-in for glycerine, a skin moisturizer.

Aloe barbadensis: You know it as aloe vera – the gooey stuff inside the plant. It's yet another skin softener and probably helps accelerate the healing of nicks.

PVP: Polyvinyl pyrrolidone sticks to the keratin in hair shafts and, like isopentane, makes the hairs stand up straight for a clean shave.

Isobutane: A compressible aerosol propellant, it helps the gel squirt out of the can. Pyromaniacs take note: It's also extremely flammable.

PEG 90M: Polyethylene glycol is a versatile polymer used in laxatives, sexual lubricants, and lots of medications as a binding agent. In nanotech, it serves as a lattice on which biological cells can grow. In shaving cream, it's a lubricant and stabilizer.

Blue #1: So that's what gives the gel its electric blue tint! When the ingredients are worked into a lather, tiny bubbles indiscriminately scatter all wavelengths of light and the blue disappears.

Patrick Di Justo




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