Dr. Jordan Foster

So we've seen, for example, the term looks maxing really trending among men.

So silly.

But it's a sort of more masculine way of referring to like practices of beautification.

We've seen men, you know, talking about self-optimization, taking a sort of entrepreneurial spin toward their beauty practices and investments in appearance and attractiveness.

Sometimes we might just be calling this bulking up, right, or becoming more attractive or available, right?

You'll sometimes see a sort of sexualized bent on this too.

So we might see men, for example, describing this in terms of optimizing appearance for women, for their dates, for making sure that they show up as their best self.

Yeah.

And I think that's a big part of it, right?

Is that beauty is this deeply feminized subject matter or domain, right?

Of practice.

So

We often associate practices related to beauty as being frivolous, as being superficial.

And that sort of is consistent with how we've often treated feminine subjects and femininity more broadly.

So it's not surprising in light of that, that men are sort of, as you said, allergic to the term beauty, that they might be critiqued as superficial or vain for having, like you said, a stick of concealer or even using lip chap.

Now, on the other hand, there is some, I would describe, maybe more progressive conversations around beauty online.

So there are more men talking about, you know, I do have that stick of concealer or I am using like a CC cream to color correct my face to sort of look a little bit better.

Not often in that language of beauty.

It's couched in other spaces and other kinds of vocabularies.

But it is, I think, a positive to see more men at least openly beginning to have this dialogue and this conversation around the work that they're doing on their bodies.