Why Skincare Is No Longer a Distinctly Feminine Pursuit

To say that modern life is very different from what our ancestors used to call living is a huge understatement. It’s plain to see that ancestors as close to us as our very grandparents are shocked by many aspects of our lives. Little things like hairstyles, clothes, computers and ideologies are completely foreign to the older folk. Attitudes that were unthinkable 50 years ago are moving into today’s mainstream with the rise of a new generation of people.

Personal care has been for a long time associated with women. Through the centuries, personal care has gone hand in hand with beautification and the innate impulse of every woman to make herself look as pretty as she could. A pretty face goes a long way toward making a great first impression, not to mention other benefits later on.

However, men have always been supposed to be different. Men were expected to be tough and, if possible, smart. In time, men have let their coarse side show more and more frequently, until it became quite natural for men to be coarse and to disdain personal care. Such activities were seen as soft, feminine things that could make a man too soft for whatever manly business he was supposed to do. A man openly trying to get rid of acne because it made him look ugly must have been seen as a strange character.

However, times have changed. Men are today no longer content to play the old roles, neither at work nor in bed. The exploration of new ways of getting pleasure in bed has revealed that men have a lot to gain by admitting to softer feelings. Metrosexuality appeals to every man’s vanity and to the need to improve one’s chances of getting laid as often as possible. While certain men snicker at face creams, nail polish and strange clothes, these things tend to score points with the ladies.

The rise of Metrosexuality is also blurring the distinction between sexes. Any person can play any role and be anybody. This is why more and more men get to patronize expensive shops instead of simply buying a new pair of jeans when the old one starts to look threadbare and to go to hairdressers instead of barbers. New roles require new clothes, new styles and new attitudes. Modern men and women have become refined pleasure hunters, not easily pleased.