There’s nothing less attractive than vain men

Obama detailed his seven almonds a night rule in order to stay svelte

‘When I was in my late teens, I caught my boyfriend laughing in the bathroom mirror. He wasn’t laughing at himself (which would have been disturbing enough) but admiring his own laugh – which was disturbing enough for me to dump him.

This long-buried memory bubbled up at the weekend when I was sent a survey detailing the “vanity statistics” of British men. According to interiors retailer Furniture123.co.uk, men are officially now the vainer sex, stopping to admire their reflections 28 times a day, while we sneak in just 21 peeks. That equates to almost eight days in concentrated self-worship per year.

The memory of the ex with the choreographed laugh made itself known again yesterday as I read the outraged (mainly male) reactions to a British headmaster’s declaration that for young men now, “the most important goal in life is to look like a male model”. Andrew Halls, head of King’s College School, Wimbledon, had warned on Sunday that reality TV shows like Love Island were propagating “impossible images of perfection” that “can lead to an obsession with going to the gym and taking diet supplements, which is far more common than many realise”.

Yearning for a return to an Orwellian Britain, where people were celebrated “for ‘mild knobby faces, their bad teeth and gentle manners’”, Halls urged young men not to buy into the Love Island philosophy “where physical defect is a form of curse”. Wait a second, the Twittersphere protested: haven’t young men (teenagers especially) been insufferably vain since the beginning of time? Women shouldn’t have the monopoly on vanity, should they? And, in any case, isn’t caring about how you look a valid and healthy form of self-respect? Yes, no, and hell no. Not to the extent that the “Mr 15-packs” mannequin men on Love Island do it. Although both the survey and Mr Halls were right, neither went on to point out that this isn’t vanity, this is narcissism.

Vanity (an obsession with one’s appearance) is both irritating and off-putting in either sex, but we made our peace with the male strain of it decades ago, when Beckham kicked off his 20-year preen-athon by sporting a sarong; action stars began freezing their foreheads and unironically discussing their grooming regimes in public; Obama detailed the “seven almonds a night” he limited himself to in order to stay svelte; and teenagers stopped nicking their mums’ beauty products and started buying their own.

Just the other day, I witnessed a man on an LA restaurant patio produce a black powder compact with “FOR MEN” emblazoned across the

front and start unselfconsciously blotting as he talked. To be fair, there’s nothing like unwanted facial shine to ruin a good night out.

Narcissism, on the other hand, is a malignant state of self-centredness that is noxious to the point of making it difficult to forge significant or lasting relationships or, indeed, feel empathy, gratitude or remorse. It’s a millennial disease fuelled by social media first and foremost – and, yes, the poolside parade of threatened masculinity that is Love Island. It’s epitomised by the mango-haired US president’s scrupulously de-chinned Twitter profile picture, and I’m not going to lie: it’s a problem.

Here’s the funny thing about male narcissists: although they appear supremely confident, they’re actually deeply insecure. And they’re not really interested in sex either (on account of it necessitating more than a cursory interest in another human being), which is why the whole premise of Love Island is fraudulent. Oh and it’s also why millennials are the least sexually active generation in 60 years. Then again, when you’ve got free porn on tap and the most mesmerising creature you’ve ever laid eyes on permanently within reach, why bother?

The sex thing is important because it means that the plucked eyebrows, the French face creams, the surgical interventions and the spray tans are not about making yourself attractive to women, as they might have still been even 20 years ago, but self-seduction.

Equally, those physiques are not gym-honed in order to carry animal carcasses home to your woman or protect her. They’re not even going to be used to help a woman with her shopping or hold the door open for her, let’s face it. No: they’re built up with self-gratification in mind.

This is probably why the mannequin men who Mr Halls is referring to are so repugnant in their perfection – not unlike the Ken doll my six-year-old left out in the garden the other day. With his shiny plastic abs glinting in the sun and his sculpted glutes packed into a tiny pair of nylon trunks, he looked just like a Love Island contestant. About as manly too.