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Asia's metrosexuals: Mirror, Mirror...
By Ling Liu (Time)
Updated: 2005-10-28 09:04 For example, Hatano says, he recently criticized a film starlet for having
pudgy fingers. "The actress was a beauty by anybody's standard, but her hands
were not long and slim, so he said they were ugly." This made Hatano feel
better. Points for the boyfriend.
It's not as if men have figured out some secret formula. Behind every love
beauty man, there's a love beauty woman nagging her sweetie to buy new
underwear. Professor Kim Hyun Mee, who teaches sociology at Yonsei University in
Seoul, says men are cleaning up their acts because Asian women are increasingly
independent and can afford to be more selective when choosing a mate. "They
aren't shy about saying exactly what they want in a boyfriend or husband," says
Kim—and what they want are more sensitive partners who smell nice and trim their
nose hairs and love shopping. "Men who possess only the characteristics of the
'traditional' male—strength, reliability or trustworthiness—are not attractive
anymore," Kim maintains. Dandy House, Japan's leading chain of men's beauty
salons (with 59 outlets), got its start in the 1980s because its founders
noticed how women were pressuring men to adopt better grooming habits. "We heard
things like, 'Could you do something about my son?' or 'My hubby is fat, can't
you fix him?'" says Hiroatsu Hirayama, Dandy House's public-relations chief.
Even so, the company's first outlet was opened in a back alley of Osaka's Namba
district where sheepish male clients could sneak in undetected. "We thought it
would be difficult for men to walk into something glaringly visible with a lot
of people milling around," Hirayama says.
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