‘Tan it like Beckham’ as more men turn to beauty products
UK’S male beauty industry worth £960m,
DAVID Beckham has a lot to answer for, as more men that ever before have admitted to taking more extreme routes in their quest to looking good.
Nearly 20 years after the phrase was first coined, a new study into male body image shows that “metrosexuality” has finally fully hit the mainstream.
More than half of all men (53 per cent) now confess to pampering, preening and using beauty products to improve their appearance, according to research conducted by The Cooperative Pharmacy.
Almost two-thirds of men said they undertake their beauty regime to make themselves feel better and to boost their “body confidence levels”, and almost one in six say they are making a concerted effort to try to look younger.
Yet 15 per cent say they feel under pressure to look good from their partner, 12 per cent say they feel under pressure to look good from their mates and an additional one in ten says they feel influenced by images in the media.
Nearly half of Scottish men identified David Beckham as a “style inspiration”, according to a recent Beautiful Britain survey.
Interestingly, women tend to be more accepting than men when it comes to attitudes towards male beautification. More than half of women (52 per cent) think that it is acceptable for men to pluck or wax their eyebrows compared to a third of men (34 per cent), two in five women (38 per cent) thought it was fine for men to wear fake tan, compared to 30 per cent of men, and nearly half of women think men wearing concealer is fine compared to one in three men.
The male beauty industry has well and truly taken off in recent years.
Since 2006 the market has increased by 104 per cent from