Confession: I detest 99% of the shaving gels/creams marketed to women.

I see the exciting new scents and improved formulations, and I always buy them, in the hopes that they really will be exciting, new and/or improved. But nearly every time, I find the scents to be way too synthetic and sickly sweet, and the stuff winds up flying all over the place and landing on my tiles and shower curtain. The whole bathroom would smell like Apricot Mango Fantasy or Lavender Meadow Mist or whatever, and I was starting to get sick of it. I really did not want my legs to smell like Glade air freshener.

But, shaving with regular soap is still a pretty bad idea, so I resorted to using hair conditioner (Neutrogena Triple Moisture was my favorite for leg shaving, yum). This did the job, but still I longed for an actual shaving product that I could live with.

Enter Pacific Shaving Company. Their All Natural Shaving Oil was formulated for men's faces, but works wonders on women's legs, too. You need much less product to get the job done, it's not messy, and it smells faintly citrusy, not potently fruity/flowery like the others.

When my bottle arrived, I thought there'd been a mistake - "Did they send me the sample size?" Alas, the full size is a "small but mighty" o.5oz and boasts 100 shaves (for men's faces, that is. Obviously we girls have more surface area to cover). It takes up far less shower real estate, and is particularly well-suited for travel.

I took the Shaving Oil into the shower to test it out, shaving one leg with it, and the other with Gillette Satin Care in Oceania (which, by the way, is BLUE and stays blue even when it foams up, which was not very appealing). I must admit I had my doubts as I spread a few drops of the shaving oil on my leg. I thought for sure that as soon as I got to work with the razor, I would shear off a large section of skin. My fears were quickly assuaged - the Shaving Oil delivered a smooth, comfortable shave with no flying clouds of shaving goop and no air freshener smell. I didn't use any lotion afterward, and the next morning, my leg was still soft and moisturized.

The Gillette leg, however, caused a mess in the shower such that I had to break out the squeegee afterward. There are still blue bits in there, I am sure. It was moisturizing, but not more so than the Shaving Oil.

Finally, I can retire the Neutrogena Triple Moisture and start using it on my head again, where it belongs!

$6.95 for 0.5oz, available at pacificshaving.com and several retailers in California, New York, Oregon and Montana.