Changing Value of Beauty

Welcoming the Metro Sexual Male and Saying Goodbye to the "Perfect" Woman Beauty has always been emphasized in popular culture. But currents are pulling in different directions today as the myth of women's perfection is heightened by the exposure of photoshopped pictorials and as female comics like Lena Dunham take the "sexy" out of Sex and the City by portraying realistic womanhood with all its fat, wrinkles, spots and imperfections.

As for men, the once rugged masculinity of the John Wayne type has given over to the Bradley Cooper/Tim Gunn type of well-groomed "metro sexuality." In one sense, it appears that the idea of woman as goddess is being, to an extent, displaced (or at least rivaled) by the idea of man as Adonis. In short, beauty -- in terms of manicured nails, good skin, and full-bodied hair -- is no longer just for women.

Evidence for this stunning claim is found in NY Daily News, which reports a 66% increase in the sale of male beauty treatment products from 2011-12, putting men on pace to be at par with women in the purchasing of such products ("Men Spending More to Look Good"). This statistic supports what can readily be observed in the media as iconic male models are more and more frequently noted for their fastidious attention to appearance.

One explanation for this change may be found in the individualized attention that male users receive on the Internet, where a barrage of personalized ads daily produce a vision of masculinity that is based less on character and more on appearance. Several websites like RealJock.com have published articles devoted solely to the art of "manscaping" (Hafferkamp). Hafferkamp asks the most important question of the day for the modern metro sexual: "To manscape, or not to manscape?" (Hafferkamp).

In other words, should a male wax, shave, pluck, apply chemicals, or resort to electrolysis in his efforts to remove unsightly hairs from his body (whether face, chest, or pubic area)? What was once a question reserved for women has now become one asked by men. The art of manscaping -- of paying particular attention to the private region of a man's body -- is thoroughly discussed by Hafferkamp.

The site is geared towards gay men, but in today's market place, straight men are taking their lead from their gay counterparts -- and the perfect example of that is the television show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, in which gay males with a flair for fashion give straight men a fashion makeover. Gay men have for years been known for their fastidious tastes. What Queer Eye did was give birth to the metro sexual -- the straight man whose fashion sense was cultivated from the gay man's cues.

The line between gay and straight blurred as a result. It was no longer taboo for a straight man to obsess over his body, his looks, his overall presentation. Now, he the straight man is expected to cultivate sex appeal, style, and fashion sense. Meanwhile, two competing strains of women's beauty appear in the marketplace -- one, the "sexy" Victoria's Secret type of beauty; the other, the "realistic" woman.

However, the fact that the "realistic" woman is played for jokes by comics like Mindy Kaling suggests that "realism" is not exactly an ideal. Mindy Kaling portrayed Kelly Kapoor in the hit sitcom The Office. Her facial features are wide and heavy. Her skin is dark. She is the opposite of what one might find on a Victoria's Secret runway. And yet she has charmed audiences with her "realistic" sense of humor. Lena Dunham has done the same.

She first caught the eye of produce Judd Apatow after starring in her feature film Tiny Furniture. Apatow was drawn to the realism which she brought to her character on screen. Under Apatow's guidance she created another comedic universe, in which the "real" side of women might be shown. In the show Girls, Dunham plays Hannah Horvath, a twenty-something in Brooklyn, who learns life lessons the hard way, and who in no way measures up to the sex symbols typically found on the big and small screen.

The charm of her character is.