A Hair’s Breadth from Beauty?
Why are men so against the idea of having beauty treatments? For example when we asked one male friend for his thoughts on this topic he replied that all men who have any beauty treatments “…should be taken out and shot at dawn and you can quote me on that”. Well we have quoted him but we certainly don’t agree with his sentiments. From a woman’s perspective it’s quite fascinating why men feel so scared and intimidated over the prospect of the beautician’s table. Are they worried that if they have a facial their masculinity will be magically drained away? Beauty treatments shouldn’t be seen purely as a feminine act that helps women pass the time.
If men take care over their appearances and are prepared to pay a trained professional to make them look good and more importantly feel better then this is positive. However men can take this idea to far and be incredibly vain. We once went to the cinema with one of our mates and over the course of the film he put on moisturiser five times in the dark because apparently his skin looked a bit red (I don’t know how he could see his face in the dark anyway!).
Are these notions of masculinity purely a British phenomenon? We wondered if these things were seen differently in other parts of the world. Ayaka Kawabata, a Japanese exchange student has noted that Japanese men have embraced the notion of beautifying themselves, “One night when I took a trip with my classmates from my Uni (in Japan) last year I was manicuring my nails and the guys from my class came into our room. One guy asked me to manicure his nails, and the other two guys wanted their make-up applying. So, I did it all! One guy even wanted me to style his hair in a plait! ”
In Britain, men tend not to go that far, so we bow down to James and Sam who somehow found it in them to happily (and somewhat naively) volunteer for the project. Little did they know what was involved… Suffice to say there was blood, sweat and tears before it was over – what people will do in the name of a good story, eh?
Back, Sack and Cracking Up… James Doughty sacrifices his modesty and tests his pain threshold with the back, sack and crack wax More >>
Flame-ing Mental Intrigued by an advertisement in a previous edition of nouse, Sam Fugill faces the flame More >>
Pain for the Vain In this issue, James questions our obsessin with beauty, and tries to make himself sound intelligent by mentioning Marxism… More >>
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