Thursday, February 23, 2006

Make me pretty.

Alright. Today's topic is mens beauty products. The hair gel, the body spray, the shavers with eleven razors, men (or anyone) needing to tan themselves orange during the winter, the waxing?!!, conditioner for men. What?

At some point, seemingly in the earlier 90's, marketers decided men just weren't pretty enough. They didn't glow and glimmer quite like their female counterparts. So they suped-up the male image to look shinier and sharper. Not like "you look pretty sharp", like accute angles-sharp. The hair. It could literally pop balloons. And the fact a person is expected to take time to achieve the percieved effect of bed head... c'mon.

The smells are funny too. Now, I don't like a smelly person as much as the next guy, but you always have those people who waaay over do something like that which makes buses, elevators, ect. suck more than they have to. Whatever happened to men expected to smell clean, not floral.

And the worst part is this. Men don't want to go the extra mile. Being clean and comfortable, and even taking pride in your appearence is fine. Recommended even. But it's the moment a man feels a little silly for administering a beauty technique to himself, is what I'm talking about. That second of acknowledgement that a man tells himself "I'm doing this in hopes of getting pussy", is when the markerters have won.

Now I expect a little female backlash from this double-standard perspective. "Why should women do it if men don't have to?" The fact is you don't. We could delve into the patriarchal societies throughout history thing, but we won't go there today. Men will want to pro-create no matter what the circumstances.

Imagine me with my shoulder and arm hair all spiked everywhere. I could spray some body spray on me and watch the female chimps swarm my cage. How about a chest hair waxing....ouch! A little moisturizer for my eye wrinkles. Some Viagara if the rest of that stuff works. You see now?

Mojokong the Aesthetically Pleasing