The Urban Grind

I just read this, but I still can’t believe it. Supposedly, the fierce competition for jobs is what’s making their men turn to makeup.

South Korean men spent $495.5 million on skincare last year, accounting for nearly 21 percent of global sales, according to global market research firm Euromonitor International. That makes it the largest market for men’s skincare in the world, even though there are only about 19 million men in South Korea. Amorepacific, South Korea’s biggest cosmetics company, estimates the total sales of men’s cosmetics in South Korea this year will be more than $885 million.

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Evidence of this new direction in South Korean masculinity is easy to find. In a crowded Seoul cafe, a young woman takes some lipstick out of her purse and casually applies it to her male companion’s lips as they talk. At an upscale apartment building, a male security guard watches the lobby from behind a layer of makeup. Korean Air holds annual male makeup classes for its staff at Incheon International Airport.

“I can understand why girls don’t like to go outside without makeup — it makes a big difference,” said Cho Gil-nam, a tall, stocky 27-year-old insurance fraud investigator in Seoul who starts important days by dabbing on makeup after finishing his multistep morning cleansing and moisturizing routine. He carries a multicolored cosmetics pouch so he can touch up in public bathrooms throughout the day.

This is just too funny!

McKinney entered the Avon world three years ago when he realized his wife Joy, a 20-year Avon veteran, was doing six-figures a year in sales. With some experience in network marketing already, McKinney started teaching sales courses to new reps, passing out brochures and filling orders. Today, about 80 percent of his clients are men.

Jovial and stocky with a blonde goatee, McKinney’s a Marine Corps vet who says he twice took shrapnel hits in Vietnam and wrestled professionally under the name “Cowboy Bobby Steel.” He’s no David Beckham-styled metrosexual.

Neither is Sal D’Amico, a corrections lieutenant in Levittown, Pa., who finds a way to work Avon into every conversation — at the gym between bicep curls, at his kid’s soccer games, standing in line at the bank.

Sure he gets a little razzing from his fellow officers, but he shrugs it off.

“A lot of those guys that were willing to mock Avon ended up buying Avon in the future from me,” said the 34-year-old D’Amico.

The only experience I’ve ever had with male beauty product salesmen was once in Nice, when one said to me “Oui, c’est tres bien pour ‘irritation,” about a certain depilatory cream.

Now as a woman, I can understand getting my makeup or hair done buy a gay guy. But otherwise, can you see yourselves pitching beauty potions to women and metrosexual men?

Good grief! What’s are the Iranian metrosexuals going to do about the latest decree from Ahmadine-wackjob?

Black nail polish!

Dashing Diva, which has six nail salons nationwide and manufactures its own colors, said it had expected its darkest color, Black Jack-e Daniels, to catch on with only their hippest customers. ?We thought it would be very extreme,? said Robert Cleary, director of product development. ?Popular, but not for everyone.?

Instead, he said, it is selling to all types. ?On the Upper West Side, moms and kids are getting matching black manicures,? he said. ?On the East Side, it?s high-income businesswomen. Downtown, it?s the SoHo/Village N.Y.U. student. And in Brooklyn, it?s the hip crowd.?

In Brooklyn and in Pasadena, Calif., he said, women are getting ?tips with really dark color and clear acrylic on the rest of the nail.?

Jamie Ahn, president and owner of Townhouse Spa in Midtown Manhattan and Acqua Beauty Bar in Union Square, said one client requested matching black manicures for herself and her dog. And men are asking for black pedicures, too. ?Straight men,? Ms. Ahn added.

Now guys, would any of you be caught dead wearing black nail polish??? Or would you hire a man wearing black nail polish? I doubt it. Some people have way too much time on their hands.

The newest group can be described as Spiritual But Not Religious. And their favorite fashion accessory is Indian inspired, hippy-ish necklaces.

I doubt many straight men would wear this. I don’t know how many gay men would either.

What do you say guys?

Now there are Avon men!

And some of them are successful sales reps as well!

By taking a macho vacation.

Though it would seem that the desire to dress up in fatigues, cover your face with greasepaint and subsist on Meals Ready to Eat would be the result of some curiosity about or identification with the soldiers in Iraq, those who work in survival schools say the war has little to do with interest in these new classes.

“They want to pretend they’re on ‘Lost,’ ” said Mr. Bennett, referring to the hit drama on ABC about a group of plane crash survivors trying to hack it on a remote island. “They watch those shows and think, ‘Hey, that looks pretty cool.’ ” A former instructor of survival, evasion, resistance and escape in the Air Force, he started Hidden Pursuit last year after students, from retired radiologists to Google executives, asked for a more extreme challenge. Now it’s one of his most requested classes.

But here’s what Harvard professor and author of the book “Manliness” had to say about these “courses:”

It’s odd, he said, that “when we need real fighters all we get is pretend fighters.” Young men sign up for extreme survival courses, he said, because “they are as embarrassed about patriotism as they are about manliness, and to go into the military may seem too conventional.”

That about sums it up!

For one such man, it is putting up a list of mens rooms with diaper changing tables.

Another extrememist wussie type has really gone off the deep end.

“Plaintiff John William Ellis is not toilet-trained and wears diapers,” states a suit filed in 1994 in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan by the toddler’s father, Andrew Dwyer, a lawyer, against Lord & Taylor. “While in the Fifth Avenue store, plaintiff Andrew William Dwyer determined that plaintiff John William Ellis needed to have his diaper changed.”

O.K., so it’s not John Grisham, but Mr. Dwyer claimed that under the state’s public accommodation law, providing changing stations solely in the store’s women’s room was gender discrimination.

Mr. Dwyer said recently that after he filed suit, someone from Lord & Taylor telephoned and said, ” ‘What are you doing to us?’ I said: ‘I don’t want money. I want justice.’ ”

In settling the case, the department store agreed to provide changing stations in men’s rooms in all locations where it does so for women. Though the settlement pre-empted a ruling on the gender discrimination charge, Michael C. Dorf, a professor at the Columbia University School of Law, said the argument had merit on the grounds that “you have to provide equal facilities for women and men.”

Whatever happened to just shopping some place else? Or, this idiot could have checked out the Daddy Types blog for baby-friendly mens rooms. Better yet, this man could have been resourceful and come up with some type of product or gadget to market to other metrosexual men for changing diapers in tight spots. Finally, Mr. Dwyer could have, gasp, left the child with his wife, or a baby sitter, if he was so intent on shopping a Lord & Taylor.

But no! It seems whenever some people don’t get their way, they (successfully) sue, thanks to all our black robed schmucktators). They’re like bratty tattle tailer children.

A survey of 1,128 women conducted by Harris Interactive for Dodge Trucks reveals that women prefer manly men over their metrosexual counterparts.

Granted I would be put put off by a man who owned more cosmetics, creams or lotions than I have. On the other hand, poor dental hygiene, sloppy attire and dirty finger nails don’t work for me either. And maybe I’m being too picky, but I can’t stand dental placque!