Beautiful Boy
February 11, 2003 | 12:00am
There comes a time in your life when you realize that you have in your possession, every eye cream, lip gloss, moisturizer, body scrub, cuticle remover, every shade of eye shadow and its contrasting liner that ever found a temporary home in Beauty Bar, Essenses, Mercury Drug and Pcx.
As the fetor of the combined scents of ylang-ylang, patchouli, vanilla, lime zest, musk, jasmine and gardenia fill your 10-foot-square toilet, you know that your career as a beauty junkie is game over. Unless you find yourself fortunate enough to be in the company of an ivory soap-scented lover waiting to be scrubbed, moisturized and preened. Victor is a fabulous boy in many, many ways. He tolerates my toy dogs, never complains about my lip gloss smearing his shirts and thinks that it’s totally sensible to buy a "beauty thing" each day to keep my serotonin level up. "Just as long as it makes you happy," he sweetly says. But I got so bored with me and my combination skin, over-processed hair and forever fading fake tan. I suddenly got more interested in him. I mean, after all, with his sweetness and understanding, he is a doll.
Introducing your man to the addictive world of cosmeticasia is much like toilet-training your two-month-old pup. It’s met with much antagonism and skepticism in the beginning. He misses out and you scold him for ignoring your efforts. "Just because" tokens of affection in the form of Lush facial scrubs and Philosophy oil control lotions are left unopened and gathering dust in the glove compartment of his car. However, when a man has a lot of free time, without worries of harnessing his future, taking over the world, or calling that chick he thought was hot the night before, will tentatively unscrew that tub of almond and honey beauty pudding and find himself shamefully delirious in vain glorious delight.
It starts really slowly. Phase one, he starts taking interest in the prism of colors made by your bath gels that adorn your bathroom. His excuses of having to go to the john become more frequent and therefore more suspect.
And with the frequency of his toilet visits, he becomes careless and alas, through a crack of a slackly closed door you catch him reading the labels of my beauty potions sniffing each one with the curiosity of a two-year-old.
Then suddenly, visits to the beauty epicenters are now an experience enjoyed by both of you (though he may still feign a slumped shoulder look and muster a bogus sigh of impatience).
Phase two is the salon phase. Fancier products now line his medicine cabinet. He no longer finds the lemony perkiness of a Neanderthal shave foam moisturizing enough for his patchy and dehydrated complexion. The lone bar of soap finds itself in the company of exotic and sophisticated chums that boast of therapeutic effects that only a Stanford medicine grad could understand. So as you and your beloved one enter the temples of narcissism (i.e., the salon), he worries if he has left his masculinity at the coat check. After all, he is still a beauty junkie in denial.
Reassure him that most eligible bachelors in the country have enjoyed an occasional shoulder rub in a salon chair. So as lover boy gets his knots untied, suggest that perhaps some aromatherapy oil in his hair will levitate him to a state of euphoria. So before he realizes what hit him, lover boy finds himself with an unbecoming plastic cap atop his head, at the mercy of a steamer and timer, with the latest W as his new source of entertainment.
He is now changed. He is now a better man as he realizes that a barber will turn him into a human topiary and a hair designer will make him realize his dreams of becoming a Pinoy Beatty. It’s mission accomplished as your relationship is deepened by midnight chats on how going out too much has taken a toll on your complexions and the dehydrating effects of champagne.
My buttered and sloughed man is now the best friend I have never had. Of course, a big boon to this transformation is additional discussions on pants’ lengths, appropriate hues to wear and if chagrin loafers are "a little too much or a doughty indication of stylish bravado."
Sometimes, we find ourselves giggling over sartorial hoo-has, but we don’t let that get that to us. We find a certain closeness as we share the mirror and primp ourselves together like peacocks.
I sigh as I survey our collection of beauty potions, an exhibit of well-researched and educated preferences (I like Kiehl’s and Shu Uemura, he’s partial to L’Occitane and Lush). Lover boy hangs his unscented macho toilet habits in the past and is now a man of the world as he conquers the world and wins my heart with Creed-scented confidence.
Regrets are hard to come by as I find myself in the company of a man broken in and is golden (thanks to Clarins and Basement’s tanning bed) and dashing (that’s our secret) with the purchasable miracles of life. Unless of course when he starts asking for my lip gloss  that definitely calls for my beauty junkie lover to check himself into rehab.
As the fetor of the combined scents of ylang-ylang, patchouli, vanilla, lime zest, musk, jasmine and gardenia fill your 10-foot-square toilet, you know that your career as a beauty junkie is game over. Unless you find yourself fortunate enough to be in the company of an ivory soap-scented lover waiting to be scrubbed, moisturized and preened. Victor is a fabulous boy in many, many ways. He tolerates my toy dogs, never complains about my lip gloss smearing his shirts and thinks that it’s totally sensible to buy a "beauty thing" each day to keep my serotonin level up. "Just as long as it makes you happy," he sweetly says. But I got so bored with me and my combination skin, over-processed hair and forever fading fake tan. I suddenly got more interested in him. I mean, after all, with his sweetness and understanding, he is a doll.
Introducing your man to the addictive world of cosmeticasia is much like toilet-training your two-month-old pup. It’s met with much antagonism and skepticism in the beginning. He misses out and you scold him for ignoring your efforts. "Just because" tokens of affection in the form of Lush facial scrubs and Philosophy oil control lotions are left unopened and gathering dust in the glove compartment of his car. However, when a man has a lot of free time, without worries of harnessing his future, taking over the world, or calling that chick he thought was hot the night before, will tentatively unscrew that tub of almond and honey beauty pudding and find himself shamefully delirious in vain glorious delight.
It starts really slowly. Phase one, he starts taking interest in the prism of colors made by your bath gels that adorn your bathroom. His excuses of having to go to the john become more frequent and therefore more suspect.
And with the frequency of his toilet visits, he becomes careless and alas, through a crack of a slackly closed door you catch him reading the labels of my beauty potions sniffing each one with the curiosity of a two-year-old.
Then suddenly, visits to the beauty epicenters are now an experience enjoyed by both of you (though he may still feign a slumped shoulder look and muster a bogus sigh of impatience).
Phase two is the salon phase. Fancier products now line his medicine cabinet. He no longer finds the lemony perkiness of a Neanderthal shave foam moisturizing enough for his patchy and dehydrated complexion. The lone bar of soap finds itself in the company of exotic and sophisticated chums that boast of therapeutic effects that only a Stanford medicine grad could understand. So as you and your beloved one enter the temples of narcissism (i.e., the salon), he worries if he has left his masculinity at the coat check. After all, he is still a beauty junkie in denial.
Reassure him that most eligible bachelors in the country have enjoyed an occasional shoulder rub in a salon chair. So as lover boy gets his knots untied, suggest that perhaps some aromatherapy oil in his hair will levitate him to a state of euphoria. So before he realizes what hit him, lover boy finds himself with an unbecoming plastic cap atop his head, at the mercy of a steamer and timer, with the latest W as his new source of entertainment.
He is now changed. He is now a better man as he realizes that a barber will turn him into a human topiary and a hair designer will make him realize his dreams of becoming a Pinoy Beatty. It’s mission accomplished as your relationship is deepened by midnight chats on how going out too much has taken a toll on your complexions and the dehydrating effects of champagne.
My buttered and sloughed man is now the best friend I have never had. Of course, a big boon to this transformation is additional discussions on pants’ lengths, appropriate hues to wear and if chagrin loafers are "a little too much or a doughty indication of stylish bravado."
Sometimes, we find ourselves giggling over sartorial hoo-has, but we don’t let that get that to us. We find a certain closeness as we share the mirror and primp ourselves together like peacocks.
I sigh as I survey our collection of beauty potions, an exhibit of well-researched and educated preferences (I like Kiehl’s and Shu Uemura, he’s partial to L’Occitane and Lush). Lover boy hangs his unscented macho toilet habits in the past and is now a man of the world as he conquers the world and wins my heart with Creed-scented confidence.
Regrets are hard to come by as I find myself in the company of a man broken in and is golden (thanks to Clarins and Basement’s tanning bed) and dashing (that’s our secret) with the purchasable miracles of life. Unless of course when he starts asking for my lip gloss  that definitely calls for my beauty junkie lover to check himself into rehab.
BrandSpace Articles
<
>