Men and their makeover money:

Men now know what women have known for 100 years: If you take care of your skin, you will continue to loo, and feel more youthful. And in life and business, that can give you a competitive edge.

As we mentioned last month, a 2014 Wall Street Journal article reported that men are spending $107.6 billion a year on skin care. The question is, what has changed? Have men come out or simply evolved as metrosexuals, a term coined in 1994 by British writer Mark Simpson to describe “a man (especially one living in an urban, post industrial, capitalist culture) who is especially meticulous about his grooming appearance, typically spending a significant amount of time and money on shopping”?  According to Simpson, narcissism plays a large role in the metrosexual concept. 

Englewood plastic surgeon Mario Imola says men are expressing themselves much more candidly than they ever have in the past, and in addition, seem comfortable doing it. The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery reports a 273 percent increase in the number of procedures performed on men since 1997, when the ASAPS started collecting data. In our clinic where our male patient base has increased significantly, the age range runs from 20-something to 76-and-still-working.

The attitude toward skin care varies among different generations. Our younger clients tend to budget for skin care and consider treatments to be a staple in their life, whereas a number of our GenX and Baby Boomer men come in because their wives are clients and have encouraged or threatened them to seek help. These are guys who believe that taking care of your face means scrubbing it with shower soap (after you’ve washed every other part of your body – really?) in the shower.

Along with the “my wife told me to come in” fellas are the gentlemen who are finding out that experience and intelligence aren’t enough to hang on in this ever moving job market. They feel vital and youthful, but are worried they don’t look it. They want to feel confident and they know that the better they look, the better their chances out in field. The competition is fierce!

It might sound like a puzzling phenomenon to some that in this challenging job market most of our clients (men and women alike) often tell me that this is the one expense they would never cut from their budgets – not even when times get tough. Having good skin is too important to their self-esteem, which affects their self-confidence, which affects their projected image – you get it. And because of how these things are linked, we don’t see the numbers waning any time soon.

The good news in all of this is that men, more than ever, are taking care of the largest organ of their bodies – their skin.