The Times Paper!! - Write up on our Barber Shop!!

My week living like a womanAre men ready for a life of Spanx pants and serums? I tried it for a week to find out if the gain was worth the painToday is a big and uncomfortable day for men. “Shapewear” underclothing for chaps will appear, reproachfully, on the shelves we visit. Both M&S and Spanx, the S&M-sounding tummy-tightening phenomenon responsible for helping millions of women “firm up”, are releasing torturously tight and “sculpting” underwear for my sex.This was never something that was likely to pass the editors of Times 2 by. The release of such a remarkable series of male garments by the mainest of mainstream clothes-sellers reminded them that these kinds of products, standing on the border between Beauty and Discomfort, had been worn by women for years.There had, they reasoned, long been the corset and its successors, the girdle and pantyhose.


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Then, in 1991, the Wonderbra claimed to take breasts of all kinds and turn them into something completely else, essentially by squashing and lifting well beyond Nature’s capabilities. So why, in the age of equality, should men not also suffer for the sake of appearance? M&S, in this sense, offered men a taste of what many women had long endured.But the “enhancing” male underpants (surely more Lucifer than St Michael) represented only a fractional part of the everyday female experience of having to look good. Or feeling that you have to look good.

As I researched this article, it became clear that many of my female colleagues and friends did not regard the business of constant enhancement as optional. It might at times be fun — as in choosing a swish accessory, or trying flamboyant lipsticks — but looking your best was also seen as being essential. As being a serious business.A business, however, that (unfairly) only women had to endure and that chaps couldn’t comprehend. So what if some sober male columnist were to be, a woman for a week? Not Mel Gibsonning around with leg-wax in the preamble to having a miraculous insight into What Women Want, but trying as hard as possible to do the male equivalents of what many women do.This is by way of telling you that I was made to spend seven days doing things that are against my nature. But, of course, that’d be only a partial truth. Up until the age of about 3, most boys asked whether they want to be a mummy or a daddy when they’re older, apparently choose Mum. That’s how we start and then we have the femininity knocked out of us. At any good excuse, we plunge back into the scented, silky mystery of our mothers’ clothes drawers, or open potions and lotions and take a deep nasal draught. There is, however, also shame and, in our culture at least, weakness attached to such desire.Everything I did was at the suggestion of my women colleagues atThe Times.

I didn’t say that women took little salads back to their desks and then binged on chocolate come 4pm, I didn’t come up with the manicure on a Saturday morning, the underwear, the clothes swaps, the moisturiser, the pre-dinner costume change or the lunchtime exercise class. Write to them, not me.Several colleagues explained to me the confusing and complex rituals of skin-care and I wrote them down, hoping to create a chart, or body and face recipe, which would ensure that I did everything in the right order. Then, when I was completely confused, they reminded me that, though I didn’t have to, they would also add makeup on top of that list.This was before we chose what to wear, what to carry with what we chose to wear, what to eat, how to exercise, or any of the other myriad stratagems for self-optimisation. After just a few conversations I seriously doubted whether I could actually internalise the compulsion to look good and the information required to make it happen. But I tried, and this is what happened in my week as a woman.Monday I start off at the Pall Mall Barber Shop near the National Gallery, to be properly shaved in the old-fashioned and more time-consuming way. I do this to get an idea of what happens if you apply to male grooming the professionalism and care that goes into womThe owner, Richard, takes a brief look at me and decides that I need some more tips on skincare. “Men clog up the pores with moisturiser and look shiny,” he tells me, adding, “you look shiny.”So, it’s a preshave lotion to soften the skin, to open the pores (pores open, Sir!), soften the bristles, then an exfoliator, applied with a careful circular motion (not the wild dabs and frenzied rubbing that I prefer) and then the blade, changed every week. Afterwards the cold, damp towel, then a moisturiser, then to combat shine, a matte. facebook

(“You could do with a matte,” Richard says.) “The thing for men,” Richard adds sagely, as he hands me my jacket, “is to come in under the radar. Do the stuff, but not so anyone notices. With women the change is the thing. It needs to be seen. With men it needs to be done.”In the evening I begin on the creams in earnest, applying gunk according to the chart-created diagram in the office.First rub visage with cleansing wipes to take off the day’s grime. Time taken: two minutes. I know it can be done more quickly, but my face isn’t all elfin and small-featured. Second, splash on cold water (to open the pores — weren’t you listening?), 30 seconds. Third, apply something called rejuvenating serum, which will combat wrinkles somehow. I was told, yet the details begin to fade. Five minutes. Fourth, on with the moisturiser — a substance I think I understand. Three minutes.Fifth, eye cream for the vile rednesses, telltale baggy bits and lack of brightness. Again I can see the purpose here. If one part of me is ageing, it’s the bit round my eyes: bags below

Applying this one is a problem, because I keep getting it in the eyes, making my peepers look as red and rheumy as a 97-year-old drug addict. Or Keith Richards. Time: Five minutes.Then I look at the bottles and realise that, somehow, I have forgotten where the toner is supposed to go. In fact I have forgotten what the toner is for. Looking at the blurb on the package is of no use. Later I ask my wife and she informs me that toner is unnecessary, contradicting what I was told when I embarked on this voyage.

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Whoever was right we’ve now added the best part of 20 minutes to my bedtime ritual, which once used to consist of just going to bed.Someone told me that these moments can constitute a soothing ritual time for many women, away from family, phone and dispensable fornication. Who am I to disagree? But, at the moment, it feels like an imposition — a pharmaceutical conspiracy to take time away from late-night googling or sleeping.Tuesday Office day. Arguably the most important day of the week for appearance. I am trying hard to feel that people might judge me, consciously or unconsciously, on how I’m turned out. So, objective: look good, smart, vigorous and professional. Begin day with half-hour ablutions, adding yet more moisturiser, serum and eye-slap to last night’s efforts. Still confused about the toner.After my shower I apply body moisturiser to make my skin younger.

You spent a long time in there,” my wife says as I exit the bathroom. Didn’t I just? With the evening ritual, that’s nearly an hour added to my toilet.But the big thing today is clothes. Let us start with the underwear. I know Orson Welles wore a girdle all though filming Jane Eyre, so it’s not as though men have never had help. But what about the modern shapewear? What about knickers, in M&S’ euphemistic words, “designed with an internal support pouch to define and visibly enhance your shape and silhouette”? This, to be straightforward, is the shape and silhouette of one’s penis and testicles (not words likely to find their way into the catalogue). Yet, what IS the right “shape and silhouette”? I more easily see the point of pants with an extra tummy suppressor and a vest “which flattens and supports the torso [and] instantly gives a flattering, slimmer silhouette”. This is not something I can afford to sneer at. My worry is that the bulk has to be going somewhere. Squeezed in the middle, isn’t it just rippling up to my neck or down to my thighs? But it’s all for art, so on it goes.en’s appearance.



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