Is Looking Good Just "For Girls?"

A new Nielsen study shows that the majority of Americans are feeling the pressure to "look good." This, likely, includes you.

Where good looks perhaps used to be considered mainly a young woman's concern -- along with the assumption that her pursuit of beauty was all about attracting men -- things have apparently changed. The subtext of the Nielsen findings, in fact, was that there is now global acceptance of what they termed the "metrosexual male," and I quote:

Seventy-eight percent of consumers worldwide agree that it is "ok" for men to spend time and money on their appearance, including 84 percent of Americans.

Does it feel like we've come a long way, or, at least what people are willing to tell pollsters has come a long way, in the last, say, 10 years? Definitely. Up until fairly recently, guys would be thought sissies for even thinking of using shampoo that cost more than $2.50 a bottle. It just wasn't right to spend money on yourself -- much better to look scruffy like a real man would...

But, marketers are slowly catching up with life as we really know it (where men have long-since been sneaking their wife's/girlfriend's shampoo anyway). And, at the same time the anonymity of the Internet has helped men overcome the embarrassment factor of caring what they look like because no one knows that they are buying fancy skincare.

So, brands can actually expand their markets by de-feminizing entire categories of goods and making sure they are easy, for anyone, to find online. Who knew?

Anyway - while I think we should come up with a better term for it than "metrosexual," if we need a term at all (but, yes - marketing is all about labels), this trend seems a positive one to me. Call me Pollyanna, but life is full of polarizing issues, situations and environments, and I'd like to think the world would be a better place if people occasionally saw their similarities more than their differences. If more of us, men and women, share common ground in wanting to look our best, what of it?

Of course, we are each free to choose how much buying products/consumerism has to do with our looks versus how much healthy eating and exercise has to do with it. Which brings me to an aside: the issue of obesity.

It is interesting to note that so many of the consumers polled by Nielsen supposedly are feeling the pressure to look good at the same point in history that obesity has hit epidemic proportions. Weight is certainly more about health than "beauty," but if peer pressure to look good is stronger than societal pressure to be responsible for one's own health -- more power to beauty as the eternal motivator!

If looking good is no longer just for girls, perhaps health which tends to support good looks, will become a universal, gender-less goal as well? One can hope.

Comments

[Ann Handley]

Great observation about rising obesity rates along with increased attention to "looks." Huh? Tough to square those, eh?

We can only hope that "feeling good" will soon accompany "looking good."

[sonofsamstone]

We can only hope that "feeling good" will soon accompany "looking good."


A wise man once said:
"It's better to loooook good than to feeeeel good"

[dadw5boys]

Men didn't create this world where your abilities are judged on your looks but we have to live in it.
If your a money laundrying drug dealer you can wear designer clothes and have a lot of respect for the way you look.
But Joe at the shop that keeps the family vechile running is treated like a theif when he hands you the bill for his labor and ability.

[leftLibertarian]

Watch classic movies and note how the old school dressed. Gary Grant, John Wayne, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas. Manly and put together. Classic clothes never die.

[OtayPanky]

To answer that question, tune into THE WORLD SERIES OF POKER, a largely male attended event.

One of its main sponsored is some low rent suds called "Milwaukee's Best Light"...with the giant beer can that comes crashing down on some regular guy when he acts wussy.

The tagline of the commercial is, "Men should act like men".

Then there's Degree Anti-perspirant, which sponsors "The Degree All In Moment - for men who take risks".

We're not talking about the GQ crowd here...for sure.

[altohone]

Whether it's high heels and makeup or botox and face lifts, THEIR view of beauty is a joke.

While I agree that public opinion turning against obesity would be positive, the rest of the beauty industry is based on unhealthy misguided notions.

The worst aspect in my opinion is the damage plastic surgery trends are creating.

Bear with me here, but a quote from Jennifer Annistons character Rachel on Friends sums it up nicely. Leaving an angry message for her former best friend who was marrying her former fiance-
"I hope your children have your old nose and his old hairline".

Physical attraction, like it or not, is an evolutionary engine. Manipulated fake features are disrupting the natural process of attraction.

Speaking for myself, women who have had a nose job, breast implants or a face lift need not apply. If you didn't like who you were, I won't like who you've become.

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

You mean that men now get to climb onto the crazy-making, body distorting treadmill that women are stuck on. Great!

[BufoAmericanus]

Metrosexual...
What's Ruro-sexual male?

[OtayPanky]

That would be our pal, Larry the Cable Guy.

Git 'er DONE!