Image via goateesaver.com

So I was at a party this weekend and somehow the conversation on my side of the room steered toward facial hair (men's, to be more specific). It's fascinating to hear the lengths (heh) some dudes will go to in order to turn out a perfectly shaped mound of scruff. One guy spoke lovingly of the "Tom Hanks in Cast Away"-level beard he managed to cultivate last summer, and another asked him what he did with it when he chopped it off, to which the formerly hairy man claimed, "Um, nothing?" "You didn't save it?" bro number two admonished him, as if he had discarded his cherished pet in a dumpster. And as you can imagine, the convo just degraded from there.

This was still fresh on my mind when I stumbled upon the Goatee Saver. Thinking it was, indeed, some kind of receptacle designed to remove the facial hair in one fell swoop (in order to preserve its pristine dignity for time immemorial in some manly version of a hope chest), I clicked on the site only to find that it was even more ridiculous, as if that's even possible.

The Goatee Saver is essentially a beard-shaped stencil, or well, that would probably be giving it a bit too much credit. I'm sorry, make that a "shaving template" and gives "guys a pattern to shave around" in order to "protect the goatee," as if goatees rate up there on the scale of white tigers and panda bears.

Makes for a great gag gift, I guess (haha, get it?). But after watching the video, I was reminded that many derms attribute good skin on men to their daily shaving ritual, since it's a convenient way to exfoliate in addition to remove hair (who said guys don't know how to multi-task?). That and the fact that they can conveniently hide their wrinkles beneath glorious goatees.