Men Are Grooming-Obsessive Spa Hounds

By Irin Carmon  |  July 16, 2010 | 2:00pm
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Who’s more likely to say they groom themselves to attract the opposite sex — men or women?

In fact, 55 percent of dudes answered in the affirmative in a recent GQ/Allure survey of 2,000 adults, compared to 41 percent of women. The survey also found that the average number of products men regularly (11) isn’t much less than women (16). Moreover, 78 percent of men reported visiting a salon or spa in the last year, compared to 80 percent of women. Their most popular service there was getting a massage; for women manicures topped the list.

Not that it’s all parity when it comes to expectations of beauty. When asked about whether “Women today are under more pressure to care about their appearance” than 10 years ago, 82 percent of women agreed. (74 percent of men agreed that women were under more pressure too.) And 92 percent of women said the last ten years had brought more pressure to look younger than your age.

This also caught our eye:

There are some crossovers here — classic, confident, intelligent. But whoa gender binary! And apparently the pressure to look youthful has not yet spread to men.

It won’t surprise anyone who’s looked at a men’s magazine that men are (apparently successfully) marketed to with images of attractive women — and so, of course, are women. A far greater number of women would like to see those images include “real” women rather than an attractive guys selling them products, which surely has to do with the fact that women have been sold idealized images, including of youthfulness, for so much longer. But no matter what, everyone is looking at women.

 
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