While women are supposed to be beautiful and sexy, men are supposed to be charismatic and strong. But if you think that men do not have their own habits and beauty tricks, you would be wrong. Here are some of the things you always wanted to know about men’s beauty without never daring to ask.
Male Grooming facts
Since men are men, we could track in history many usage of beauty gestures, tools, products. From mud bath 3000 B.C. up to the wigs of Monarchy on the 16th Century, Men always took care of their appearance.
Nowadays, men are happy to spend more time to take care of themselves. It is a exponential growing market and many brands became experts on men skin.
Here are the latest figures from Kline & Company and Mintel.
SALES MEN GROOMING MARKET
2012 USA = 2.6 Billion$
2016 USA estimation = 3.2 Billion$
2012 EUROPE = 0.5 Billion$
2016 EUROPE estimation = 1 Billion$
In emerging markets like China, every year the Men Grooming market has a growth of +20%. Brazil figures are even higher. But do you really know what are the main concerns of men? Well, take your notebook on and just pay attention to what follows. Everything you wanted to know without daring to ask…
The Hair
When Samson confessed to Dalilah that his power came from his hair, he did not know that she would cut them so that he would loose all his strength. That’s why men are so picky with their hair!!! Seriously, a man’s hair symbolizes a lot of his charisma, youth, dynamism, etc.. And all men are worried with:
- Loosing the hair
- Getting white hair
- Having Dandruf
Some women like men with long hair, short hair or sometimes with no hair. It depends a lot on the person’s personality. A man, normally, washes his hair everyday while women every 2 days or so. Why that? Because we men believe that:
- It is easier to do one’s hair
- As we are under the shower, why not washing everything!
- We will not attach our hair or put a shower cap… no we will not.
So what happens is that our hair in any case becomes fragile. We should normally wash our hair once every 2 or 3 days maximum, otherwise it looses the hydro-lipidic surface that protects it from daily aggressions. So if you wish to wash your hair everyday (which is my case) please use a soft product, not a harsh one, otherwise you will loose your hair before 40 years old.
Something that many men do, especially in winter is to wash their hair with very hot water, or at least the same temperature than the rest of the shower. This is a shock for your hair. We should always wash our hair with a half-warm water. Not too cold or not too hot. Otherwise your hair dies.
Our suggestion of shampoo, if you feel concerned about your hair, is Everyday Shampoo by Anthony Logistics for Men. Its formula was specially created for a intense hair wash. So your hair will be protected and clean.
About the white hair. Frankly, you can always try to hide them with colored hair shampoo but at the end you should live with it. Unless you are happy to renew your coloration every 3 weeks. To note that the more you have white hair, the drier it is. So you might need to use a complement to your regular shampoo, twice a week, in order to keep things up.
The Face
No matter what happens we, men, need to keep a happy and nice face. Grandma used to say: “we are responsible for the face we make, not the face we have“. She was right but we are also responsible for the face we have, especially if you know that now there are many great products to prevent your face skin to get old. If we have a pretty face, it is easier to accept aging, because people will say that we get old well.
One of the biggest concerns of men it is not the wrinkles, it is the eyes, meaning dark circles and puffiness. This makes you look old and tired. So men are ready to take care of their eyes, even to ask for plastic surgery if this would help. Dark circles and puffy eyes are not the same problem and same treatment. Dark circles are generally a problem of blood circulation. Lack of sleep and extreme tiredness are mainly responsibles for a bad blood circulation around the eyes. So nothing better than good nights of sleep to get rid of dark circles.
Puffy eyes are a diferent story. This is due to an accumulation of liquid around the eyes, which results in the creation of “pockets” below the eye. Some people are more exposed to this risk than others. This process of liquid retention can be solved with some good advices. Drink water, less salt, wash your face with cold water everyday. If this is not enough, and before opting for plastic surgery, you should try some good products, made just for that. Be careful with which product to use as the skin around the eye is not exactly like the skin of your face. So avoid any product containing essential oils and Fragrance, otherwise you might get into troubles. My champion is by far the Supremÿa Yeux La Nuit by Sisley.
Its formula fights dark circles and puffy eyes. Simple to use, just apply it just before going to sleep and let the magic operate.
The Hands
Nothing more reassuring than the hands of a man. But you still need to have good hands. Generally men does not have much troubles with dry hands but if you have, you should carry with you a small tube of cream. Do not use any kind of cream but an appropriate one for hands, otherwise you might end up with oily hands. When you apply the cream on your hands make sure you cover both sides and also that you insist on the areas surrounding the nails, the cuticles. this area is often dry. There are several hand creams, I would advice the one from Clarinsmen, Soin Ideal Mains. This hand cream non-greasy with provitamin B5 and allantoin relieves irritation due to manual work and weather conditions.
The nails
Did you know that most of men do not like the way their nails are? Some men think their nails are too short, others not very large and generally most of men do not take good care of them. They cut them from time to time of course but that is it. There is a trend that brings men to do their nails for several reasons. Of course we talk about fashionistas most of the time but there are other cases. Check this article about male stars and their nails: http://monsieurmademoiselle.blogspot.ch
In South America, men having a manicure is a very virile thing. Women appreciate men with nice nails. It looks clean and shows how healthy, caring and of course wealthy the man is. Many business men get a manicure once a week. It is interesting to see that in countries like Brazil, where men tend to be still a little macho, male manicure is a trend for several years. See the difference for yourself. Which one do you prefer?
Some brands try to get into the nail polish for men, not from a fashion and ambiguous way but more related to certain themes, more manly.
- Combat sports
- Supporting your preferred Football team
- certain manual hard work
One good example is the brand Alphanail. They developed specific colours away from the traditional themes, to help you in your daily men activities. They advertising visuals are quite amazing.
The body
“My body is my temple”. A man’s body is a precious thing. Many times we do not pay too much attention to what we do, how we dress or even what we eat. Times change as we know that staying in good health starts with a good quality of life. Men are generally obsessed to “look good in front of the ladies”. A part spending a lot of time doing sports and going on a diet from time to time, there is not much to do. If you did not know yet, I am telling you now: miracles do not exist. So you need to take good care of your body. Certain areas are more important for the men than others. Why? Because these areas are also very important for women 🙂
- Shoulders
- Arms
- Belly
- Buttocks
A part physical activity, I must say there is not much we can do with products. A few though that might bring an extra help, especially with the famous “Love handles”. The first and ever champion product in this category is the Abdosculpt by Biotherm. A pure cocktail of Caffeine and Ginseng.
The feet
This is an interesting matter. As we are lucky to not wear high-heels and we avoided the pointy shoes trend, men have generally quite good feet. They do not do much all year long and when summer arrives, we are quite good with it. As shoes must be always clean and perfect, it is the same for the feet. Your nails need to be perfectly cut and no hard skin. So here are 2 advices so that you can keep good feet.
First, use a Pumice-stone to get rid of the dead cells. At least twice a week, in the shower, after cleaning your feet, just use the pumice on the hard parts. This should make it disappear in a month or so.
Second advice, use a cream for dry feet. A moisturized skin is a skin which does not die. Everyday after the shower, take the habit of applying a moisturizing cream to your feet. There are several creams in the market you can use. Either a normal cream for the body or there are some special creams for the feet you might prefer. I would recommend the L’Occitane Dry-skin Lavender Foot cream. Practical and really efficient. 15% of Karité butter, Arnica and lavender essential oil. A perfect mixture between protection and caring.
So, now you know more about male grooming than before right? So do not hesitate to leave comments below, ask for an advice or just share your preferred male products. Beautiful women love beautiful men.
Info sourced at all the brands listed websites, wikipedia, other blogs listed in the article. All content is copyrighted with no reproduction rights available.
