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 Skin stretching for those not suffering from some sort of connective tissue issue can be done in multiple ways. But to discuss skin stretching presumes you are on the same sheet of music for the direction of your razor stroke as the person telling you how to stretch your skin.
You must really examine why you want to stretch your skin in the first place. Basically there are two reasons to stretch the skin. The first is to better expose the whiskers to be shorn, a proactive reason. The second is to protect loose skin from the sharp edge of the razor, a reactive reason (keeps you from shouting expletives).
In general to satisfy the reactive reason it is best to stretch the skin from behind the razor, i.e. behind the direction of the razors travel. This provides a wrinkle-, fold-, and flap-free area for your masterful razor stokes to glide over. There are numerous techniques for attaining this stretched state aside from honking on your skin. Here are some:
- Twisting your head from side to side and tilting it up and down
- Contorting the face via jawbone calisthenics
- Puffing air into the cheeks
- Displacement
With the exception of displacement, these techniques should be intuitive if you keep in mind that which you wish to accomplish.
Displacement, on the other hand, is all about moving the area to be shaved to a new location. Displacement is the most common approach for one of the areas that is always a challenge, i.e. along the jawbone. Many gents complain about being unable to get a clean or smooth shave along the jawline and the area immediately under the jaw. The prime reason for this is the area(s) are difficult to reach while maintaining good razor control and you do not have the nice resistance of naturally taught flesh (believe me, it gets worse with age).
Enter displacement, stage left and right. Relating back to my statement about being on the same sheet of music for the direction of razor stroke, here it comes. To shave the jaw line, I am telling you that our stroke goes from the ear to the center of the chin (or the reverse). What we wish to do is displace (move, lift) the skin on the jaw by pushing up against the cheek so that the skin that normally drapes over the jawbone is now up where the lower cheek was. After displacing the area to be shaved into the new (desired) location we carefully stroke away. This works in both directions and when carefully applied moves that skin below the jaw to an advantageous position for the proactive removal of whiskers.
As you must have already shorn the cheeks before the jawbone displacement is required (remember that sheet of music?), there is little to no issue of shave cream creating a slippery area on your cheek and interfering with your displacement stretch.
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