Why the Beauty Industry Hates Men - Confessions of a Secret Men’s Skincare Shopper

My name is…not important.

If my buddies knew about this, I’d never hear the end of it. And the guys at work? Forget it. I’d walk to my desk and find frilly lace…and whatever on my chair. I’d find magazine cut-outs of Eau de Toilette in my briefcase. They’d replace my coffee mug with a dainty sherry glass. I know those guys. They’re relentless. And how can I blame them? I’d do it to them, and love every minute of it.

Okay. Here goes. (Turns to camera man – I thought you were supposed to obscure my face or something, I don’t see anything on the camera? It’s done with special effects afterwards? All right, man, you make sure you do that or I’m coming after you).

I was a secret men’s skincare shopper.

There I said it.

My Story

I’m not a wuss. You get that? I’m not into color palettes and incense. I don’t ask for directions, I don’t think man toys need instruction manuals and I don’t mind a power saw for Christmas. 

So what I’m saying, is that if you gotta call me something, you can call me a man’s man. I work hard, I play hard, and “if it don’t go good with beer, I don’t eat it.”

But recently, I started to notice something that I couldn’t ignore any longer - my face in the mirror. It was getting older. It was like all of a sudden, the years just caught up with me.

This isn’t about having pretty boy looks. It’s about making it in a competitive world. I can’t afford to look old and dull. And I don’t want to. Who does? I just want to look good - so I can get and stay ahead of the crowd and I don’t have to justify that to anyone.  

Drug Store Dilemma

So, I decide to make my move. I went to the drugstore. BIG. MISTAKE. Have you looked for men’s skin care there lately? I totally missed it the first time. The men’s skincare selection was so skimpy it could fit in a shoe box. So I went over to the women’s beauty aisle. I figured if anybody looked at me funny, I’d just mumble something about picking up stuff for my girl. EVEN. BIGGER. MISTAKE. I’ve been in airports that were less confusing. Row after row of skincare products, all of them claiming stuff that made me even more confused than when I started.  And besides, do I really want to use a girlie cream? No thanks.  

Going into the Heart of Darkness

And that’s when I realized I had to go straight into the belly of the beast. Into the heart of darkness. That is, to the department store at the mall.

It wasn’t easy. I’ve got friends around here, you know. Any one of them, or their wives, girlfriends, or hell, even their kids could see me at one of those fancy-schmancy beauty counters. And one of those beauty attendants even told me I could use some concealer: ‘conceal-what?’ I asked. ‘It’s make-up for men, to even out your skin-tone’, she said. I didn’t even know they made make-up for men! What’s next - a powder cake for guys?

Hey, I know they’re just doing their job... But man, trying to read the product labels in peace, without being interrupted every couple minutes, just wasn’t happening.

I knew that I couldn’t leave empty-handed, though. That mirror was waiting for me back home, and I wasn’t about to leave the belly of the beast without some loot to show for it, so I grabbed some serum, a couple of moisturizers, eye cream, toner, a cleanser and some scrub, dropped several hundred bucks on my credit card (yeah, you heard that right), and ran outta there. 

Red as a Boiled Lobster

So yeah, for a wad of cash and more aggravation than any guy deserves, I expected to see some awesome results. I mean, after what I’ve been through, I was expecting…like a new paint job or something. Like one of those ‘before and after’ commercials you see on TV. Okay, fine – I figured all of those fine-prints about ‘Results may vary…’ didn’t really apply to me, that’s why they’re small and hard to read.

But that’s not what happened.

All that stuff was a nightmare. I forgot which tube went on my face before which bottle and which cream was for day and which one was for night. So I piled them all on (I mean, the more stuff, the quicker my wrinkles go away right?). But all that stuff just made my face feel oilier and dirtier, so I washed it all out.

And then there was the eye cream, which was so expensive that I figured it should, you know, actually work, right? Nope. All it did was disappear right before my eyes. Kind of like my Ben Franklin.

But I saved the ‘best’ for last. Remember that scrub? It was like washing my face with gravel – no, with pieces of broken glass. My face was so red when it was done, that I looked like a boiled lobster…and felt like one, too. Man, the thing was supposed to ‘get rid of dead skin cells’, but I think it was designed to get rid of ALL of my skin cells.  

So like I said, it was a disaster. Instead of coming out looking like a superstar, I came out looking like a guy who just wasted several hundred dollars, hours of my time, and was a boiled lobster.

I was not a happy guy.

Masculine Face Care or Nothing At All

You know, it was hell for me to tell you about the whole skincare thing. But if my confession – saves just one other guy from going through my pain, then it’ll be worth it. Because there are a lot of real men out there, and we need companies and products to give us a fair shake, instead of trying to turn us into a pack of wusses.

My story started out rough, but it ended with Masculine Face Care for a Man’s Man. Your story can have the same ending as mine. Grab yourself some masculine face care products and put your face on a maintenance schedule today.