In the Salon

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This is what it takes to be a modern metrosexual: I'm lying on my side on a black leather lounger, dressed in a yukata robe that ends about mid-thigh, soothing New Age music on the stereo, a burning candle jammed in my ear. My skin care specialist explains that the hollow candle will create a gentle vacuum to draw out excess ear wax, impurities, maybe some loose change. I'm somewhat dubious—with a 20-cm candle sticking out the side of my head, I feel less like David Beckham than a human birthday cake—but this technique was used by the ancient Egyptians, and a civilization that knew how to extract the brain via the nose probably had no trouble removing waxy buildup. After 20 minutes, the specialist plucks out the candle, cuts it open and proudly shows me the gobs of crumbly stuff that emerged from my ears. Sure, she probably nipped a little brain matter, too, but who needs IQ points? I'm going to be pretty!

I haven't always wanted to be pretty. I was always taught that pretty was reserved for girls, and possibly men named Giorgio. But there is a new breed of guy out there, men who stock their medicine cabinets with skin creams and exfoliators, unlike the rest of us who use them to store excess beer. I'm the type of fellow whose relationship with cosmetics began and ended with Clearasil, but I can sense when evolutionary winds are shifting.

I will not be left behind by the men who moisturize, with their hairless backs and fancy gel soap. I will become pretty, too. Also, my editors told me it was this, or cover the next World Congress of Accounting in Dushanbe.

I make my appointment for a rejuvenation treatment at a Hong Kong men's skincare center, figuring I can undo 27 years of neglect in about two hours. Upon my arrival, the receptionist hands me a glass of lemonade (I wonder briefly if I am meant to splash it on my face) and a detailed questionnaire about my skin type. Surprisingly, "dull and pasty" isn't an option, but I fill out the rest. Do I have oily skin? Check—during adolescence my forehead was practically a member of OPEC. Enlarged pores? You bet—I've named some of them after lunar craters. Of course, I hadn't realized large pores were a bad thing. Now I'm paying $150 for professionals to tell me just how imperfect I am.

Then it's into the salon, with the mood lighting and the mini-yukata and the music that was apparently written and performed by hobbits on Valium. If you listen closely, you can actually hear my Y chromosome unraveling. After the candling, I receive exfoliation and rejuvenation treatment. My skin is doused with gentle citric acids. I feel a deep, satisfying tingle; I haven't been this relaxed since I accidentally mixed Ambien and Taiwanese cinema.

Then the skin care specialist says, "Now it is time for the blackhead extraction." She attacks me with a tiny blade, boring into my pores, digging out the dead skin cells and accumulated oil—basically, most of what makes up my face. Perhaps I'm not qualified to say this, but blackhead extraction is more painful than giving birth. Apparently when I checked off "sensitive skin" in the initial questionnaire, it also meant "please gouge out tiny holes from my tender flesh." I would have cried, but I was afraid my tears would bind to the moisturizer-soaked cotton balls over my eyelids, leaving me blind—albeit free of those fine lines around the eyes. If this was what it took to be pretty, I didn't have the guts.

That's why most of us will never be metrosexuals, no matter what the magazine covers urge us to do—we just won't try hard enough, and we just don't care enough. Like a police state, the beauty industry seeks to instill in its customers a constant, free-floating sense of insecurity: you must shrink your enlarged pores, quench your dry skin, jam a burning candle down your ear and come back next month for another $150 appointment (the lemonade is free!).

But most men aren't self-aware enough to be made insecure about how we look—if we were, there's no way so many of us would sport goatees. I'll leave the metrosexuals to their pursuit of pretty. I'll just have to get by on my personality.