I am not someone with a grooming regimen. I know, everyone is shocked.
I’ve been thinking about this for two reasons. One, I’m tired of my hair and need a haircut at some point soon. The other reason is that my better half is a huge fan of Queer Eye, and that show just launched its third season. The unfortunate effect of that show is that she starts to think I should use grooming products like the men on the show recommend.
Here’s the problem, I hate these products. All of them. I hate moisturizer, I hate sunscreen – though I begrudgingly use it – I hate all of it, especially if I’m supposed to use it on my face. I hate it because I hate the feel of it, the sensation of having product on me is irritating and I fidget and brush at it until it goes away. She tried to convince me to use chapstick to deal with dry lips, and I quickly decided that I’ll take the dry lips. It feels gross to me, and I want to get rid of it as soon as possible. While I have a beard now, I used to shave, and when I did I stopped using shaving cream because I didn’t like having it there.
I’m not calling her out, I get that she wants me to be healthy and happy, and possibly have nicer skin in the process. I just can’t tolerate it at all.
I sometimes wonder why that is. I was the kid who squirmed away from his mother when she brought out the sunscreen. I was a kid who adamantly refused to get his face painted at kid friendly events - though that also involved a mistaken belief that clowns used face paint as a way to convince people to join their cult, an idea drawn from a fear and confusion when confronted with a clown – who would willingly become a clown? It must be the paint. I can’t handle creams and things of that nature on my face, at all, and I can’t stop fidgeting when one is applied.
The other problem with a lot of these products is that they’re scented. I don’t know if I have a specific scent allergy, but I do certainly have a scent aversion. Many perfumes smell like headaches, especially cheaper ones, and I can’t think of anything that smells worse than air freshener.
The result is that I happily have avoided most grooming nonsense until now, and a show on the internet is working hard to convince me that maybe I should change my mind and start using moisturizer or something. And I refuse, because it’s awful.
I imagine some people don’t use these products because they think it’s not masculine, because they think skin care is too feminine. I think that’s an outdated viewpoint. Besides, grooming products are now marketed quite heavily towards men. There’s men’s shampoo, men’s soap, beard oils and other men’s products now. We are realizing that skin care is not inherently masculine or feminine. Even if it was, I wouldn’t care very much, because I don’t think that people should be defined by gender. The philosophy of doing whatever you like instead of being confined by some gender expectation is now spreading.
But it’s all about doing what you like, and I very much do not like skin care. I don’t care that it supposedly makes your skin look and feel better, at the beginning of the day it makes me feel so much worse. Sorry fans of product, they’re not for me.
