Are we really spending £93 every month beautifying ourselves? It’s not enough

It amazes me that it has taken all my life for British men to enter this self-transformation game.

Grace Dent
Monday 16 November 2015 18:01 GMT
Comments

A survey by Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour reveals that many Brits now spend around £93 per month on beautification. Make-up, salon trips and self-tanning are where we’re throwing our cash rather than over the bar on bottles of wine. Beauty in, beer-goggles out. To me, this seems unsurprising. Self-improvement, selling oneself – plus the quest for the perfect selfie – are thoroughly modern obsessions.

And not forgetting that today’s beauty products – the balms, the gels, the scrubs, the dyes – have got so damn good. Being a better, sleeker you is so much easier. The day of gloopy Yardley foundation that left tidemarks are behind us, along with Sun-In streaks and wet-look hair gel that hung around one’s temple like Klingon phlegm. Nowadays Kardashian-style contouring, Expanda dust and a good set of stick-on lashes can give you Calabasas chic in Crewe. And, like Americans, we’re thoroughly open to the idea of tweaks and fine-tunings, as well as blatant, swollen-lipped lunch-hour chemical renovation.

In fact, if anything, £93 seems massively frugal to me. Like many people – not just women, men are at it too – I could spend £97 in the large, exhilarating, double-fronted Boots at Westfield Stratford in under six minutes without putting any undue stress on my anti-perspirant. Similiarly, one of life’s sweetest sounds is the sharp ring of the doorbell as the postman delivers an online beauty haul. Unwrapping £93 of creams and varnishes is an infinitely better way to begin a day than with a roaring headache.

It amazes me that it has taken all my life for British men to enter this self-transformation game.

&#13; <p> </p>&#13;

“Pgh, more money than sense!” beauty refuseniks and many befuddled males are no doubt spluttering right now. But that’s untrue, I don’t technically have “too much money” because I gave almost my last entire pay cheque to Bobbi Brown, Anastasia Beverly Hills and Sunday Riley in return for caviar eye-palettes, CC cream, brightening bricks, banana powder, strobing aids and retinol-laced Luna oil.

Not that beauty naysayers would understand very much of that last paragraph but, suffice it to say, the banana powder is not for drinking. The strobing aids do not need an electricity power source. The brick is not remotely brick-shaped. The CC cream is a lot like BB cream but better, the Luna oil is for my face not my car. I hope this makes everything a little clearer.

The vital thing is that these things daubed and slathered together will transform me – hopefully – into an ethereal, ever-young, decidedly shaggable creature. And more accurately they will go some way to draw a polite veil over what I see in the bathroom mirror many mornings, namely, the punk wordsmith John Cooper Clarke after an all-night poetry-slam.

If these magical life-enhancing products are available, then I’m having them. If it’s wine or wine-coloured lip-stain, then I’ll take the sticky one in sparkly jar. In 2015 I refuse to live with my 7am face, with its dark under-eye circles, palid lids and eye-brows that grow in patches like depressed cress. No, I want square-filed, ruby-red, Shellac nails hanging off the bottom of cocoa-brown spray-tanned arms. I want hair with body, volume, shine and moveability and I want it all at once, in one haircut. I am aware this may take several different hair-products, which is why Boots should seriously offer a sherpa service.

One thing that does amaze me is that it has taken almost all of my lifetime for British men to enter this self-transformation game. Because it is only recently that millions have began to ponder openly on Lip Scuff to remove the flaky bits from their gobs. Or eye brightener drops and bronzing gel for those tragically under-slept days when one resembles a Tim Burton cameo. I see no shame in this.

Until around five years ago, the only men I knew who regularly used anything on their face were men who were part of bawdy cabaret acts, or men serving gin and tonics at 30,000 feet.

But times are changing. Recently, friends who work in hospitality confess that the combination of very late nights, early mornings and the need to be “public-facing” have pushed even the more non-vain maitre d’ down the YSL Touche-Eclat route. Today’s Premier League footballers scamper onto the pitch with glowing skin, whitened teeth and the sort of razor-sharp hair which suggests an early morning salon appointment. For the modern footballer, it seems like every Saturday he’s the bride facing an expectant congregation. And while many everyday men I know blanch at the idea of a “beauty routine”, they will then admit gingerly to a face-scrub followed by, cough, y’know, an SPF block. And then a very, very light tinted moisturiser. But very light, mind? Not make-up.

In the future, women will need to accept that men’s looks are just as reliant on “smoke and mirrors” as their own. Men’s chins and foreheads will be made smaller with cunning shadowing. Their cheekbones and foreheads will be highlighted to enhance their slimness. Their lips will be stained plumper and their complexions made altogether youthful with strobing, blush and other assorted pixie dusts.

We too will mumble about “trades description” when we see them take their false eyelashes off. That will be equality. We’ve had a good run at being the only ones allowed to use liquid eye-liner. It’s only fair.

And at this point all the wine bars and nightclubs will be closed due to wide-spread rampant teetotalism, and spending only £93 each per month per person on beauty will seem an enormous bargain.

I have seen the future, people, and it is gorgeous.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in