Monday, November 10, 2008

What qualifies a Guy as a M.e.t.r.o.s.e.x.u.a.l...?

The Metro sexual man - " a single young man with a high disposable income , living in or within easy reach of a metropolis – because that's where all the best shops, clubs, gyms and hairdressers are and who has clearly taken himself as his own love object ..." - wikipedia


Like many of you, i too heard the term Metrosexual, when it was first associated with David beckham but didn't give it much thought as i thought it was yet another scam term to imply that men are spending more money on cosmetics...
At that time, men using beauty products was not commonly seen ( at least outside the 4 walls of their house)...Recently i read a nice blog in which one of the things that struck me was the fun poked at the use of Cuticura talcum powder, which was till a few years ago , one of the sole well know beauty/ personal hygiene products in India...And now we have Shahrukh on TV telling guys not to use girly fairness creams and instead,use products made specifically for men...

All this made me look at the present day scenario...and what a great place to begin than my very own room which i share with 5 others. I went and collected vials,bottles and tubes of all kinds (except the soap,shampoo n tooth paste ones) and placed it together on the table ...
The initial number of items was a bit shocker but then i saw that most of them would come under hygiene products rather than 'beauty' products per se...Out of the 20 or so items only 3 could be called as 'beauty' products while the rest were sunscreens, aftershaves and deodorants. The odd ones were a shoe deo and a sprain spray for sport injuries...The fact that we all had a tally of around 25 pairs of foot wear in the house reminded me that the situation wasn't that bad...

And to remind me that ours was still a true bachelor pad, i took a look around me and got satisfied...





So are men suddenly turning towards beauty products and that too in large numbers ?

Well there are many who would have tried a simple facial or the more adventurous ones a pedicure or manicure...Even the local barber shop at the corner is giving the former...

My barber used to try regularly to tempt me into doing a facial or face massage.I used to refuse the offer but things changed after a trip to home town during which many commented that i had grown dark due to the Chennai sun. Then it got really personal...I forgot what thalaivar Rajnikanth told in the movie Sivaji regarding the quest for fair skin

So the next time i went for the hair cut,without the barber asking (he must have given up on me or accepted that my naturally handsome face was already perfect), i told hesitantly the four dreaded words ...'i need a facial'. The barber got very happy and finished the usual 20 min long hair cut in a jiffy.I thought i knew what i was getting into...i mean, i had seen guys of all ages sitting with creams on their faces during my previous visits to the hair saloon and it didn't look too difficult.

Now i know people of all ages read this blog so I wont get into the gruesome details, but the highlights were


  • The pure pain i endured when he gave first degree burns on my face with hot steam

  • When he scared me to death by acting like Sweeney Tood , by opening a tool box full of sharp tools and then approached me with a smile usually seen on Project Mangers during annual reviews. He was brandishing the sharpest weapon from his collection, saying that this will remove the 'blackheads'...heck i thought he meant my head...Anyway he then proceeded to scrap the entire skin off my nose, while i tried to hold a straight face as if lost in the world of the 'jatka' movements running on SS music channel.

Luckily i survived without much injuries and after wiping clean my face, the barber pointed to the mirror and told with a ironical smile, ' Parungey...Hero mathiri aayitten' (Look, now you look like a hero)...although we both knew my face and physique were more apt for the baddies who get bashed up in South Indian movies.

I did try it another time and it wasnt that bad...i had the most wonderful sleep in the cool AC room, with cold cream on my face...i think they can make more money if they package this as a relaxation, stress relieving treatment...Of course i told him to leave the blackheads alone this time, and he continued to give me condescending looks through out the next hour or so...

The thing is, it didnt change my looks...the 'glow' unfortunately lasted exactly till the time i washed my face, (i completely forgot i just had a facial).To see how my peers were in this 'race for beauty', i tried to enquire and found that although many had tried it once or twice, none of them did it on a regular basis.

As for the more extravagant pedicures and manicures, no one had tried them, and one guy commented 'who will pay so much to cut nails man' and then proceeding to bite his nails to prove the point (his GF was not in office that day)... Of course there are others who apply kadala maav (channa paste) on their faces at weekends and those who apply pure fairness creams religiously, but these are a rarity..

So i guess as long as we men are clean,hygienic, iron our clothes and apply deodorants (mildly, not like the AXE ads) i guess its okay...Society doesn't want us with flawless skin...that burden in most cases, still falls on the fairer sex :-)

Oh, that reminds me, i have to buy sunscreen with SPF 30+ , for the trip we roomies are planning this weekend... ;-)

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