Beauty is the cruelest of task masters.

When it comes to the Pretty Principle, enough is never enough. Between all the body-sculpting, aerobicizing, waxing, hair coloring, moisturizing, and airbrushing, the building of the perfect beast is beginning to wear us down. There’s a quagmire of products that promise to augment your lips, thicken your eyelashes, or brighten your smile, all of which are supposed to unlock some hidden potential you lack in influencing people.

Now, never once has a smile — essentially an involuntary facial reflex we’ve ascribed a social magic to and that any sociopath can flash at will — won me over, nor have I ever noticed another person’s teeth when I meet them. Men will buy penis enhancement pills and women have tried creams that purport to enlarge their breasts, but if I applied that logic beyond genitalia and offered you a product that could, say, increase the length of your arms or legs, would you buy it?

It’s the beauty mandate called tanning — more than even steroids — that I loathe the most. As a lifelong paleface, I’ve been made privy — always without asking — to casual urgings that I should get some sun to make myself more appealing, the implication being that fairness makes you some sort of of photosensitive albino who dwells in darkness with a cadre of bats and mushrooms as your sole companions.

One barely-casual acquaintance (a cunt) I encountered in a gym (wherein everyone always looked as if they’d just traipsed in off the Aegean seashore year-round) advised me that I looked positively anemic and waif-like. All the while I simply took in the extremity of his sun worship and marveled how, at maybe thirty-six, the pores on his arms were craterous, his skin had the tone more so of adobe than sunkissed, and he was developing bastard lines that ran from his eyes down to his jawline.

How weirdly paradoxical the obsession with epidermal beauty is; it would be the nadir of tactlessness to suggest that a non-caucasian should lighten his skin — those who would or even do are viewed as the ultimate of sell-outs — yet we who are naturally fair are pressured to alter our pigment as if it were nothing. (read the full article)

Oh iPhone, is there no end to your totemic ability to synergize?

The oft-lamented bad cliché is that technology only perversely distances us from one another instead of connecting us, but yours is a multi-purpose ingenuity that provides us with our most essential of needs: peers into the lives of inhibition-deficient hot pieces and their tendency for spontaneous thread-doffing at home, at the gym, or anywhere else they can find a reflective surface. The deftly cut-to-the-chase Guys With iPhones is glad to chronicle the glorious self-love you’ve helped to propagate. Why, there was a time when Narcissus only had a reflecting pool to gaze in, so he’d be elated with the latter-day myth that apparently no one even remotely unfortunate-looking owns you.

It’s a convenient win-win situation for everyone, the vainglory-obsessed provided with endless opportunities to admire themselves while being admired, while we the beholders can reap the combined benefits of phone sex and the self-reflexive nudie pic in one shot.

Also see John Calendo’s Hello World…It’s Me!

Troubling men’s style trends are not unlike sex crimes.

Some we walk into like a punch and resist them with everything we’ve got. Others leave us ashamed, wondering if we were somehow asking for it, and over-exfoliating with the loofah.

Some era-specific fads that fell by the wayside in retrospect worked rather well and could warrant being brought back into rotation: Nehru jackets, Carnaby Street suits, Beatle boots, and quiffs cut fine turns on the right men.

Then there are the ones that played out — cargo pants, camouflage, faux hawks, and Caesar cuts — because every guy you passed on the street jumped on the bandwagons. Lastly, there are the Untouchables — the Sucios — that still turn up in dark corners of the world: soul patches, extreme fade haircuts, Mantyhoses, Members Only jackets, Fabio hair, mandanas, and tribal tattoos that retain their claw-like hold on the oblivious.

The Porn ‘stache as this year’s most omnipresent trend polarizes as extremities are wont to do, in no small part due to the fact that there’s little in the way of mitigation when it comes to pulling it off with any sort of aplomb. It may not be as impossibly impractical as a Francois Sagat full-cranium tat or the genital-wilting braided beard, but you’ve got to be near the top rung of the ladder in terms of attractiveness (like this fine guy on the left) in order to even ironically attempt it.

The best case scenario is an ’80s Brawny paper towel coverboy mien; fail in your venture, and you risk the ignobility of looking like that cop from Sleepaway Camp. Virtually every postpubescent male celebrity has opted for some variant on the quicker picker upper, ranging from the appealing (George Clooney, Josh Brolin, Thomas Jane), to the dismaying (Brad Pitt, Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law), to the rape whistle-ready (the hideous Fu Manchus adorning Easter Island-headed Michael Phelps and douche-faced Pete Wentz).

Though satire-inclined urban hipsters (these are the same guys who tried to bring back the zoot suit during the especially lame late-90’s swing dance resurgence) are the ones likely to be given credit for sporting the look and propelling it back into the public eye, the truth is the Porn ‘stache has remained extant in various circles since the advent of hardcore porn in the late ‘60s. (read the full article)

“How verdant is the heather, how manly are my loins?”

The song rings down the glade as the Highlands meet the Lowlands.

The kilt is back with a vengeance, though it never truly went away.

Old by 19th Century standards when it was popularized by the Scots, the garments are becoming more visible than ever. The Scottish Military still requires them as a uniform. In Europe, rugby players and their roughneck fan base don them on and off the field. They’re even turning up on the runway. Now the kilt even has a fab subcultural acronym: the M.U.G., i.e. the Modern Unbifurcated Garment.

Why the resurgence at this time in history? Aesthetics for starters. The look is undeniably hot and surprisingly complimentary to nearly every type and age of man.

Legs characterized by granite thighs and vascular calves can often be a man’s best feature after all. The kilt accentuates the power of the waist, the breadth of the shoulders, the contours of the hips. (read the full article)

Christmas is almost here, with its perennial promise of expanding our wardrobes, often with gifts so unnecessary and trendy we’d feel too guilty to buy them for ourselves. Magazine ads are all about retail, where waxy models put away the swim trunks and don the most up-to-date name brand clothing.

That’s good news for the oglers, because there’s something about a well-dressed man that never disappoints, even as we grow so accustomed to exposed 6-packs that they get boring.

Fashion is something I forgot through college, where everyone conspicuously dresses like shit. But in high school, attire was a person’s primary identity statement, and conversations about attraction used to go like this: (read the full article)

Gentlemen, your body is a follicular battlefield.

The male identity conundrum of the moment is body waxing. When to do it? How much is too much? Should we even be bothering at all? Is the aesthetic pressure placed for centuries upon the female form striking back at us like a livid rattlesnake clutched by the tail?

The full-throttle nether region wax — dubbed “the Boyzilian” in beauty industry vernacular — is not unlike the Gaza Strip: sacred ground for those male specimens stridently opposed to intimate grooming and an area destined for occupation by those keen on altering the lay of the land. The struggle for manly self-definition may at last be reaching a tipping point; more men are apparently opting for yea rather than nay.

David Beckham — he of the blissfully unthinking visage and Neoclassical physique — and his recent underwear-clad Armani fashion spread have only made the trend that much more discernible. The footballer’s silky bikini line has accrued as much scrutiny as his cod piece-worthy groin. With the heartthrob-of-the-moment and other depilitated notables caught in the flash bulb going flush below their equators, salons are reporting an influx of men from all walks of life following suit. Not just your uptown Patrick Batemanesque power brokers either. Construction workers and other hands-on types are reported to be the most surprising converts. (read the full article)

The time has come to reform your wardrobe for all those possible upcoming romantic interludes that the Autumn affords. That hoodie isn’t going to cut it this time. You’re a year older, for starters, and it has become slightly greasy — much like an ailing cat. Thankfully, resident celebrity psychic, Miranda Celeste-Walters has agreed to chart the course for your Fall fashion future, and beyond!

• The first thing I’m seeing on a lot of men this fall is an over-sized, mid-length short with an insulated lining and “folk” details reminiscent of lederhosen. But this is not a traditional item. This is going to appear for the first time, possibly in a Kanye West promotional spot called “Candy Love,” and it’s going to spread out of control.

• Your socks are going to be completely modernized this Fall. People are going to get serious about waterproof, and there’s going to be a move toward the statement sock. (read the full article)

Richard Grieco put his disease in me.

It’s his fault that I have a thing for Guidos. It was fate that I just happened to be entering the initial materialization of sexual identity at the very time he was sauntering into his 21 Jump Street/Booker brief glimmer of stardom.

During that era, the teen crush objects of Saved By The Bell and Beverly Hills 90210 were Clearasil-skinned Mickey Mousers; Le Grieco was the antithesis of pre-fab Wonder Bread idols — a trashy, spike-haired, downtown slut with the class of an alley cat and a porn star smirk. My Yasmine Bleeth Reflex — the design flaw that leads the well-adjusted inexplicably drawn to ruinous headboard pounders — triggered and my formative Grieco obsession has left me forever susceptible to the wiles of the Guido.

The sexual fantasies that we always turn to are the ones that make us feel the most ashamed, the ones that make us question who we really are and what we really want. It’s when we feel the most dirty that we’re the most gratified. Our polar opposites – those we would never conceivably cross paths with and who personify everything we’re not – can sometimes attract as much as they should repel. (read the full article)