Men’s Skin Care Marketing is Hilarious

 Recently my boyfriend got into straight razor shaving, which means that he’s been hurtled head-first into the world of men’s skin care, me along with him.

At one time, he was content to carve his face with a plastic 5-blade that, with all its claims of precision, refused to give him a close shave no matter how furiously he hacked at his face. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of buying him a “Shavette,” or a beginner straight razor, for Christmas and now he is a man possessed. There are shaving creams, cakes, soaps, oils, aftershaves, soothing balms, straight razors, safety razors and moisturizers. The men's skin care market has exploded in the last few years, and the ads are pretty much all like this: 

Hey dudes, your skin is like a high-octane car made of science and shit. It’s not weird or gay or anything to treat it real special just like your woman does – only this skin care is awesome and filled with stuff that will make your heavy machinery of a blade operate better with your kick-ass man face. Which is also a machine of some kind. 

 It. Is. Wonderful.

Sure, women’s advertising is insane as well, but what makes men’s care marketing so much fun is that it’s still in its infancy. Watching the ads struggle on their spindly baby horse legs is admittedly entertaining. Because women’s health and beauty marketing has perfected a system wherein companies tear apart your ego so they can promise to build it back up again if you buy their products. It’s a system that works so well that we’ve stopped questioning it for the most part. Of course a zit is a barrier for your love life. Of course wrinkles ought to be eliminated.

But these brave copywriters working on their men’s skin care accounts are still fiddling with the formula. For now, the one that they’ve settled on is a careful balance between explaining how a product works while making sure to constantly stroke the ego of  prospective customers to reassure them that there’s nothing unmanly about beauty products and, if anything, it’s unmanly not to take care of your face-truck. 

Examples:

Every Man Jack

If you’re like most guys, you care about keeping your skin healthy and looking good. (If you’re not, well, now’s a pretty good time to start.)

That’s because your skin is a critical organ that covers and protects your entire body. But as sophisticated as it might be, taking care of your skin doesn’t have to take a half dozen steps and expensive, complicated products. All it takes is Every Man Jack.

Whether it’s cleansing, clearing, hydrating or protecting, EMJ has simple, affordable solutions that get the job done. It’s stuff that fits into your daily regimen. Not the other way around.

This pretty much encapsulates everything I’ve said above.

First, important man science: your skin is an organ. Take care of your body organs, dude.

Second, there’s nothing weird about caring for your skin. In fact, you should have started doing this way before now.

There’s also the not-so-subtle hint that unlike your lady’s skin care, which is filled with promises it can’t possibly keep, men’s skin care is going to level with you, bro.

They're all about being real.

Here’s what EMJ says about its anti-aging regime:

Will I look and feel 18 again?

If you’re 18 right now, absolutely. While it’s no miracle, this light, non-greasy face lotion and hydrating eye cream will help you fight the signs of aging.

 No bullshit, bro. Just the straight facts. Even though “fighting the signs of aging” is a nebulous and meaningless phrase. But would these dudes lie to you, man? Nah. 

L'Oreal Men Expert skin care, meanwhile, seeks to lure you in with celebrities who represent the three pillars of masculinity with the spokestrio of Patrick Dempsy (soulful), Gerard Butler (rugged) and Hugh Laurie (classic). They want to make sure you know that using these products won't change the inner you. You're not going to start covering everything in doilies if you use their stuff. Just look at Hugh Laurie -- he's still so classic and British (in the Michael Caine way, though, not in the Hugh Grant way).

  

And Gerard Butler! Remember 300? That was great.

Another tactic, employed by The Art of Shaving, is basically to say: fuck the naysayers -- pamper yourself, asshole. You're a man. Why wouldn't you take care of your awesome skin?

The Art of Shaving doesn't bother with pandering to your need to think of your face as anything other than a face. It actively encourages its customers to enjoy the luxury of a good shave, not to worry about how it'll make them look to their non-luxurious friends.

You like good scotch and stuff? Then why are you using some POS shave cream?

Moron.

 Let's be clear: all skin care marketing is silly, and it all panders to stereotypes.

But that doesn't mean that we can't have a bit of a laugh at the expense of companies trying so hard to essentially say, "No homo." Upper-class men used to wear makeup and powder and wigs and would spend a fortune on fashion. Smearing a little bit of cream on your face after a shave is hardly going to destroy masculinity.

The No-Buy Cheat

I cheated a bit this holiday season, but hear me out.

Annoyingly, my friends and family were respectful of my no-buy promise for this year and got me a lot of great non-beauty products. So I decided Christmas money was basically the same thing as a gift card, which might as well be for beauty products anyway. Right? 

First, the Shoppers Drug Store near my work had 50% off all Philosophy gift sets, so I kind of got… all three of them. Christmas Morning, The Bake Shoppe and Snow Angel.

Philosophy is rarely on sale in Canada and the Christmas sets are so amazingly sweet that I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. I’m still going to work through my current stash of bath and body products, so it’ll be a while before I can break out the amazing shower gels and body lotions.

The second kind-of cheat was my Clarisonic Mia2, which sadly was not on sale but was exactly the amount I had left over from my Christmas cash haul. I'd like to think it isn’t technically a cheat because the little Neutrogena Wave that I bought six months ago had already broken down. I really liked The Wave, but the constant need to replace the little pads with each use was a bit annoying and eco-unfriendly. 

I can't properly review it just yet, since I've only used it once while drunk, but I promise to have a review up after about a month of use to properly give it some time, as I've heard the initial purging period can be nasty.

Anyhow, I hope you aren't all terribly disappointed in me. Happy New Year!

Mirror, Mirror: Chanel's New Collection Takes its Beauty Cues from Versailles

 According to Canoe, Chanel's newest line (created by the legendary Peter Philips) will be a capsule collection inspired by the palace of Versailles. Says Canoe:

Packaged in the classic Chanel compact box, the concealer is designed to transfer the pomp and splendor of life in the royal household into modern life, and is embossed in relief with an architectural detail from the famous Château. Pink lipstick, eyeshadow and blusher complete the collection.

 When I first heard this, I was at least hoping that it would be taking its cues from the beauties who lived inside the palace -- namely the infamous Marie Antoinette who, according to her portraiture, loved an enormous amount of rouge and blue eyeshadow -- but instead it just seems like it's affecting the packaging, while the cosmetics inside are essentially whatever Philips wants them to be.

I'm sure it'll look pretty, but it seems as though more thought could've gone into this. Why not some let them eat cake pink gloss, poor circulation blue eyeshadow, a highlighting powder inspired by the sparkling tears of the poor or free-flowing neck wound red lipstick?

The collection is due out on December 1st of this year. Decapitation is optional.

The End of Goo Hoarding: Week 2

We're already at Week 2, which means I need new goo to review.

Given that my products span just about every beauty category, I'm kind of pulling things at random that I can be sure I'll use daily so that I can fairly and accurate review them all. So, in light of that, I've made myself a complete "face" for this week and I'll see how I like it by next Monday.

The Problem with "Normal" Skin

For most skin care companies, "problem-free" skin doesn't exist. Above is Clinique's Skin Type abacus where women can determine whether their skin better resembles a grease slick or a a set of flaky fish scales or -- if you're really lucky -- a combination of the two.

I remember poring over this in-store questionnaire at 14, wondering how my face failed to fit into any of these categories. Instead of feeling proud that I wasn't dry, oily or some combination of the two, I worried that there must be something wrong with me for not having skin that could be cured by any number of the multi-colored bottles at the cosmetics counter. Because surely all skin needed curing. So, because I was very pale, I convinced myself that I had sensitive skin -- surely there was a grey cloud in that silver lining if I could just find it. I used any number of hypo-allergenic, gentle, alcohol-free products that likely did nothing for me (though, to be fair, didn't hurt, either).