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Hooked on Looks Why are more and more men sidling up to the beauty bar? by Guy BabineauA few weeks ago, Brad Gough, a local costume designer for TV commercials, was standing in the checkout line at a grocery store. His gaze landed on a rack plump with glossy lifestyle magazines. A few covers in particular caught his attention. Several other men were in the lineup; Gough turned to them, pointing at the covers. “When did we become women?” he asked. All the guys nodded.
At least the smiling, scantily clad models posing suggestively beneath the mastheads weren’t starvation-diet skinny. Lean, yes, but nicely filled out where they ought to be, with curves in all the right places: large breasts, shapely legs, firm, round buttocks, slim waists, toned tummies, flawless skin. They’d look good pinned up over the workbench in the garage, except for the accompanying headlines. “Blast Away Your Fat!” “The Easy Way to Hard Abs!” “A Whole New Life in Just 8 Hours!” “Powerful Pecs and a Chest She’ll Love!”
It’s a good thing the cover girls of Cosmo, Glamor, and other women’s magazines are whippet-thin, because they’ve had to squeeze together to make room for the shaved sides of beef crowding men’s magazines such as Muscle, Men’s Fitness, and Men’s Health, one of the fastest-growing American publications. Men’s Health went from a paid circulation of 250,00 in 1990 to 1.7 million today, and a readership of seven million. General- interest fashion and lifestyle mags for heterosexual men, like GQ and Details, have jumped on the bandwagon, capitalizing on the new male preoccupation with physical perfection.
Homoeroticism is as close as the shelves of your neighbourhood drugstore, where pretty young dudes appear on a plethora of packaging for personal-care products.
“O wonder!…O brave new world, that has such people in’t!” says Miranda in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, meaning good-looking men. But real men have love handles. Many, if not most, are at least slightly hirsute. And whatever happened to the notion that a few grey hairs and wrinkles make a man more handsome because they give him character? Have we become women, except with bigger biceps?
Not a chance. If men really were the new gals, we’d have a lot of catching up to do, like several millennia of second-class citizenship, unequal (if any) pay, and no say in government. Brad Gough’s joke had a point, though. From teens to senior citizens, males are succumbing to mounting pressures to look younger, buffer, and trendier—expectations women know all too well. They’re learning what it’s like to be watched, to be judged on appearances alone.
Marketers in the mecca of commerce, New York City, are calling the male body one of the hottest crossover images in advertising to emerge over the past decade. The body they’re talking about is one most of us guys don’t see when we look in the mirror. So we head to the gym at 6 a.m., sacrificing shuteye for fat-free muscles that are cut, ripped, or shredded. Our growing reliance on men’s cosmetics has created a leading growth industry, with North American sales for 2004 projected to reach almost $9 billion.
In secret, we’re going under the plastic surgeon’s knife, visiting spas, and ducking into the hairstylist’s for colour touchups. As the oldest baby boomers approach 60, and 40 looms on the horizon for Gen X, millions of men belonging to the first two generations to view youth as a commodity are using hair-loss treatments on a regular basis. Younger guys aren’t off the hook either. In fact, teenage boys are obsessed with their skin, hair, body shape, and clothing to a degree that would have been considered girlish five years ago. While teenage girls emulate pop culture’s virgin whores—Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Beyoncé Knowles—many of their male counterparts conform to an image that is part boy next door (make that homeboy next door) and part hustler, as popularized by Justin Timberlake, Eminem, and Enrique Iglesias.
“They look like gay porn stars. They’re not selling products; they’re selling sex,” said Gough, referring to male imagery in the media during an interview at the home of his close friend, Tracey Pincott, a veteran local fashion stylist. A prime example is an ad for the Yves Saint Laurent men’s fragrance M7, featuring a full- frontal nude male, which caused a furore when it first appeared in French Vogue and other European lifestyle magazines last fall. “Why don’t they just call it Suck My Cock?” Gough said, laughing.
Gough and Pincott have been involved in the image trade for more than two decades. They’ve witnessed firsthand the changes in how men are represented and perceived. Until the late 1970s, postwar North American society considered conspicuous vanity unmasculine: any guy too preoccupied with his appearance was a pantywaist. “Before, the male model was a very structured thing,” Pincott said. “There was one look: regular features.” Men used to be just props, a backdrop to the clothes or whatever product was being marketed. They were attractive but nothing special, with decent bodies but not the defined physique popular today. And they sported hairy chests and arms, not to mention moustaches. Pincott pointed out that in addition to the hairless, muscular bruisers, a growing number of the contemporary models for youth fashion are somewhat androgynous (read boyish). Critics argue that there’s a connection between pedophilia and the mainstream exploitation of underage female models. What about Prada ads, with their young, submissive, doe-eyed males?
According to Pincott, the recent hand-wringing over male body image is just another example of the old double standard. “Women have been doing all this stuff to their bodies for years,” she said. “How come it’s a shock that men would want to do it?” Let’s not forget that Narcissus was a guy. Greek mythology’s beautiful lad, and western civilization’s most famous figure identified with the folly of vanity, spurned the advances of young men, women, and nymphs alike and was cursed to fall in love with his unobtainable reflection in a pool of water. But is vanity, here defined as having too high an opinion of one’s appearance, the real issue? The narcissist of modern clinical psychology has a grandiose self-image belying unhealthily low self-esteem.
Someone who’s vain looks in the mirror and likes what he or she sees. Most of the rest of us don’t. Insecurity didn’t arrive here with terrorists. Marketing, as any first-year business student knows, is a heat-seeking missile that targets the vulnerable flank of human nature, blowing things up out of all proportion. For years, women have protested the resulting collateral damage: a sense of inadequacy fostered by exaggerated standards of physical beauty and the lifestyle media’s contradictory appeal to both overindulgence and self- restraint.
Now men are finding themselves in the crosshairs, and it’s not a pleasant feeling. The February issue of GQ, for example, carries an advertorial drooling over a Chicago bar that serves free baskets of deep-fried bacon to wash down with your beer. Several pages later, a full-page ad for a bodybuilding supplement promises six-pack abs in just four weeks. Four unrealistically lean models look pleased as punch with the results, which, according to the microscopic fine print, are not typical. Short of harmful diets, most men cannot attain the abdominal muscles pictured unless they are blessed with the right genetics, like supermodel Marcus Schenkenberg, who credits his parents for his streamlined physique. (The 640 crunches he does every day probably help.)
Insecurity still carries a stigma of unmanliness, making men insecure about their insecurity. So we scrutinize our imperfections mercilessly, keeping quiet about the subject. An ascetic silence would permeate many gyms where men work out, if not for the thumpa-thumpa of music, the clang of metal on metal, and the occasional comment about lats or deltoids. Surrounded by wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling mirrors, many men tend to check out their own reflections more than women do. They frequently check each other out, too, to compare how they measure up. Is there a sexual component to all this preening and eyeballing? You bet. It’s no secret that gay men work out to be hot, but so do straight guys.
The Fitness World location on West Georgia Street attracts a mixed clientele of gay men from the West End and straight executives and office workers from nearby office towers, many of whom commute from the suburbs. “There’s a lot more social activity in the gay community that involves the body [i.e., sex],” manager T. J. Bath said. “You’re not going to see a chubby guy dancing on a Gay Pride float.” Bath has a background in athletics and physical education. He is also a personal trainer and spent the mid-’90s in New York City, where he worked with players for the NBA.
“Gay guys usually want a leaner look,” he continued. “With straight guys, it’s all about testosterone and ego and how much you can bench press. ‘Look at how much he can curl; I’m gonna curl more.’ They walk around with their chests puffed out….the alpha male. It’s not like the days when single women complained that there were hardly any single men. Now there’s lots to choose from. Men see what’s going on in popular culture, see what women respond to, and think, ‘Gee, how can I look like that?’ "
Some people seem to think that gay men are better-looking, better-adjusted, and a better bet for a good time, but that’s just because we have better publicists. Post-AIDS, body-conscious gay men have set the bar high for physical perfection, creating a culture in which the gay media—despite its lip service to diversity and inclusiveness—is populated by men with identical bodies who are eternally young and perfectly toned, with utterly hairless torsos. The commodification of our sexuality has become a widespread obsession that has caused more than one Dorian Gay to crack open the antidepressants. Yet no one talks about it.
There’s been a trickle-down effect on straight men. Well, more like a deluge. In secret, many men—gay, straight, and double- dippers—adopt dangerous eating habits and take iffy supplements like steroids to complement their punishing gym regimens.
Bath couldn’t persuade any of his gym’s regulars to discuss their feelings about body image, let alone illegal steroid use. They’re the strong but silent types. However, a fascinating recent book, The Adonis Complex: The Secret Crisis of Male Body Obsession (Free Press, 2000), claims that muscle dysmorphia (or “bigorexia”) is a serious and very hidden epidemic, one that’s fuelled by abundant steroid use. “I can tell when someone is taking more than a normal [legal] supplement,” Bath said. “I know that in some cases you can get steroids through hospitals, where it’s kept for AIDS patients, for example, and there are male nurses who have access [for a price]. Or go to a gym and look for the biggest guy.”
Or, like other drugs, you can get them at your local high school. Several recent studies indicate that young men think the opposite sex is attracted to a body considerably bigger than what women really want, and teenagers are no exception. The fixation with being big is a fairly new phenomenon. It may have started with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1977 bodybuilding documentary, Pumping Iron, which dignified the sport. Soon he, Sylvester Stallone, and Jean-Claude Van Damme were making action movies that introduced boys to a new kind of hero, an aggressive muscle machine who made Superman look like a wimp. Enter Vin Diesel and the Rock. Even though Tobey Maguire’s Spider- Man has a small frame, the geek didn’t get the girl until he got ripped. Kids scoop up video and computer games populated by monstrously musclebound brutes. Spinoff action figurines ripple with gigantic muscles. A good gauge of changing times is G.I. Joe. In the 1960s, if he had been a real man, his biceps would have measured 11.5”. Today, they’d be 32”. According to Health Canada, more than 80,000 teens across the country, mostly males, are using steroids. Reports from the U.S. suggest that as many as one out of 10 male teens uses the toxic, body-distorting substances.
“Really?!” exclaimed 15-year-old Daniel Kennedy when he heard those figures. Kennedy lives on the city’s East Side and is a star basketball player at his school. In a phone interview, he said that lots of his friends work out but that he’d never heard about anyone being on steroids. Again, that could be because nobody talks about it. Kennedy, who uses six hair-care products besides shampoo and conditioner, knows exactly why teenage boys are so conscious of their physical appearance. “The girls take such good care of themselves, and look so good, that they can get who they want,” he explained. “When I tell them about a friend, they’re like, ‘What’s-he-look-like-what’s-he-look-like?’ ” Not everyone uses steroids to achieve an ideal body. Some turn to cosmetic surgery. Over the phone, Evan (not his real name), a man in his early 40s, explained why he had liposuction, which vacuums away deposits of body fat.
“For 18 years, I was too busy building my company to work out.” He is a businessman who employs almost 200 people. When he finally found himself with some free time, Evan, who’s unmarried, realized that he was really out of shape. He got a personal trainer and hit the gym for two years, and the results showed. “But no matter how hard I worked at it, I couldn’t get rid of my love handles,” he recalled. It took some time for Evan to take the next step: cosmetic surgery. “I thought it was vain. Then I thought, I’d given it [working out] my all, so I’d earned the right, and I don’t think it’s fair for anyone to criticize me for that.” He certainly doesn’t regret the improvements in his appearance and self-esteem that the operation gave him.
Wisely, Evan spent some time shopping around for a dependable plastic surgeon, eventually settling on Dr. David K. Ward, who runs a practice in Surrey. “In general, men want to feel as good about themselves as women do,” said Ward, chair of the plastic-surgery division at Surrey Memorial Hospital, in a phone interview. Evan was his only male patient willing to be interviewed for this story. Ward has witnessed an increase in men coming to see him over the past five years, and they now comprise about 20 percent of his patients. Most are in their 40s, some in their 30s. They’re often senior professionals concerned about keeping up appearances in an increasingly youth- conscious and competitive work culture.
“They’re sophisticated men. Many have families and are involved in the community and charities,” Ward said, dismissing prejudices that paint men who have plastic surgery as shallow and narcissistic.
It’s not just middle-aged men who are fretting over society’s obsession with youth. Darren Ewert is a 26-year-old model who has worked here and in Europe. He has the kind of looks that take your breath away, and perfect skin that he subjects to a range of treatments at the Facial Rejuvenation Clinic on West Georgia Street. As well as taking Propecia to prevent his full, thick hair from thinning, Ewert is combating wrinkles before they happen with regular injections of Botox, a muscle-freezing, wrinkle-smoothing drug made from a potent neurotoxin. According to the clinic’s manager, Sarah Haydahl, business has grown dramatically in the year-and-a-half since it opened, and the number of men walking in off the street is on the rise. Ewert is gay. The clinic was at a loss to find a straight male patient willing to be interviewed.
“The change in attitudes which make it much more okay for women to talk about things now is beginning to spill over into males, but I think it’s going to take longer,” Alastair Carruthers said. The Vancouver dermatologist pioneered the cosmetic use of Botox with his wife and work partner, ophthalmologist Jean Carruthers. Alastair is a clinical professor in the division of dermatology at UBC. Botox is by no means the main thrust of Carruthers’s practice. He spent many years performing corrective surgery on cancer patients and is passionate about the research and development of new dermatological products and technologies. One of his newest procedures is repairing the facial wasting of people living with HIV/AIDS.
When he first tested Botox on heterosexual men, Carruthers was surprised by the unanimous positive feedback he received. It’s a common assumption in the business world that good- looking men climb the corporate ladder faster and higher (although Warren Buffett and Bill Gates will probably never win a swimsuit competition). Although many, if not most, middle- aged men cite professional reasons for having cosmetic surgery, Carruthers thinks other factors may be more prominent.
On a speaking trip to Saudi Arabia, where cosmetic surgery is primarily for women (who are generally not even seen in that Muslim nation), he said he got an insight into why so many females and, subsequently, males have opted for cosmetic surgery and other enhancements. “The number one reason why women have these procedures is for their own self-esteem. Number two is for their appearance to other people. And number three is for members of the appropriate gender.” Although Carruthers thinks that those priorities are probably the same for men here, he believes that males are more concerned than females about their sexual attractiveness.
More than one million North American men a year are purchasing cosmetic surgery, including pectoral, calf, and penile implants. Although an anonymous phone call with one of Carruthers’s heterosexual male patients had been arranged, the interviewee had a change of heart.
So-and-so got a nose job, someone whispered on the sly when they heard about this article. What’s-his-name had an eyelid tuck. Buddy-boy had cheek implants, and it was awful—one of them slipped! (But don’t tell; they’d all die if they knew anyone knew.) E-commerce sites such as Ottawa-based Menessentials.com—started by James Whittall, a computer techie who was well into his 30s during the dot-com bubble and felt the sting of its rampant ageism—are raking in the dough, with millions of hits every month. Customers want undetectable products, and they want to buy them undetectably. Even though some men will publicly purchase the cosmetic sequels to women’s lines, such as Nair for Men, Nivea for Men, and L’Oréal’s Feria hair colour, probably just as many ask their girlfriends and wives to pick the stuff up for them. One brand of men’s cosmetics sells itself with the coy tease: “Men don’t wear makeup, they use Mënaji.” Guess what? It’s makeup, as are age- defying items offered by Mënaji like, no kidding, 911 Eye Gel.
An effective way to deal with insecurity is denial, which quickly leads to defensiveness. When he was in his 20s, former Oxford student Samuel Fussell became addicted to weight training and wrote a book about it called Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder (Poseidon Press, 1991). According to Fussell, rather than improving his sex life and relationships with people, his preoccupation with body image, which led to an Adonis-like physique, did the exact opposite. Never in his life was he farther from being loved or getting laid. He likened it to putting on a suit of armour or turning his body into a tank. The U.S. military’s recruiting campaign seems to have picked up on men’s collective crisis of confidence, associating body image with national security. “I am an army of one, and you can see my strength,” says a male voice-over on a TV ad for the U.S. Army targeting 18- to 24-year-olds. There’s a full-page ad for the U.S. Air Force Reserve in the February issue of Men’s Health, showing young, sweaty, hunky recruits doing painful crunches. The headline: “First you are a part of it. Then it becomes a part of you.” Ew. Quick, someone call Sigourney Weaver to come and get it off.
Women have enjoyed growing economic independence and sexual freedom over the past three decades, allowing them to be more selective about bedmates and life partners. This, as well as the influences previously discussed, could be a reason why men are sidling up to the beauty bar. But the root cause is probably more basic: the appearance industries found fresh fodder when women’s sales levelled off. Like the saying goes, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Whether or not men have become women is a red herring swimming in a sea of tired clichés about gender differences, stereotypes that get in the way of men and women understanding and appreciating our similarities. It doesn’t matter if you’re single and lonely in a one-bedroom apartment or fighting exhaustion to raise kids with a partner while both of you hold down full-time jobs: no amount of pumping, nipping, and tucking is going to banish the profound uncertainty of life in a society that doesn’t take proper care of its citizens, especially old people. Why are we trying to make them disappear?
Death, not sex, is North America’s biggest taboo. We sweep it under the carpet, or give it a makeover if we’ve got money. Processes and procedures to enhance physical appearance are never far from where the buck stops. The spa at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas has started hosting Botox parties for its male and female guests. Twice a month, a Beverly Hills doctor flies in to inject aging partygoers while they sip champagne and enjoy entertainment. Other casinos plan to do the same.
According to a new UN report, one in four men in the world’s richest countries will be 60 or over by 2050. Are we going to be geezers walking around with the Hulk’s body, albeit sagging, and the faces of Siegfried and Roy? What will we say when someone asks us if we had work done? If things continue as is, we’ll probably pull a Michael Jackson and tell them that it’s perfectly natural.
The Male Beauty Index Compiled by Guy Babineau Percentage of men who think physical attractiveness is important to succeed: 84
Percentage of American fitness club members who are men: 48
Percentage of Americans who are men: 48
Percentage of men who worry about their appearance frequently or all the time: 46
Percentage of teenage boys who are dissatisfied with their bodies: 45
Percentage of compulsive eaters who are men: 40
Percentage of men who wanted bigger pectorals, in a recent survey: 38
Percentage of women who wanted bigger breasts, in the same survey: 34
The ideal body type among college-age men: 27 pounds heavier than they are now
Percentage of teenage males who would choose a body type attainable only with steroids: 50
Number of male teenagers in Canada sharing steroid injection needles: 7,500
Percentage increase in sales of men’s grooming products from 1999 to 2000: 12.2
Cosmetic surgeries performed in North America in 1980: 330,000
In 2001: 8 million
Number of men who had cosmetic surgery in 2001: 1 million
Body issues men are most concerned about, in descending order: abdomen, weight, muscle tone, overall appearance, chest
Top five cosmetic surgery procedures for men: nose reshaping, liposuction, eyelid surgery, hair transplantation, breast reduction
Top five non-surgical cosmetic procedures for men: chemical peel, laser hair removal, microdermabrasion, Botox® injection, collagen injection.
Percentage increase in the number of men having liposuction between 1992 and 1998: 400
Percentage of male university undergrads with tattoos: 20
Percentage of male university undergrads with at least one body piercing: 40
Percentage of spa visitors who are men: 25 to 40, depending on the spa
Percentage of Canadian men who are overweight: 57
Height and weight of the average Canadian man: 177 centimetres (5’10”) 81 kilograms (180 lbs)
Height and weight of the average male model: 184 centimetres (6’ ½”) 57 kilograms (152.5 lbs)
Amount, in $billions, North American men spend annually on cosmetics, gym memberships and home gym equipment: 8
Amount, in $billions, needed to provide an education to all the developing world’s illiterate children: 8
Amount, in $billions, North Americans spend annually on (non-medical) health, beauty and fitness products and services: 39
Amount, in $billions, required to raise the poorest Canadian senior citizens to the poverty level: 1.5
Household income of the average US health club member: $69,2000
Percentage of health club members with household incomes over $75,000: 42
Household income of Canadians with the greatest increase of overweight individuals since 1985: $80,000 to $100,000
Percentage of men in the least developed countries in 2000 who were over 60: 4.9
Percentage forecasted for 2050: 9
Percentage of men in the most developed countries in 2000 who were over 60: 14.2
Percentage forecasted for 2050: 24.8
SOURCES: The Adonis Complex: The Secret Crisis of Male Body Obsession, Looking Good: Male Body Image in America, United Nations, Health Canada, Statistics Canada, Euromonitor, American Association for Single People, Time Magazine, Salon.com, ScienceDaily.com, Mayo Clinic, Canadian Fitness and Lifestyle Research Institute, The International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association, American Society of Plastic Surgeons, Askmen.com, The Institute of Plastic Surgery (Toronto), American Society for Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, MSN, National (Canadian) Council on Welfare
Cover story in The Georgia Straight, Canada's largest independent weekly © Guy Babineau 2003-2004
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