For men only

I had my birthday recently. One of the presents I got was a set of face scrub and moisturiser for men. Oh, good, I thought. Just the sort of thing that a modern man needs. But something about the concept of "products for men" was bothering me. Maybe it was some primal resistance reflex to cleanliness, or maybe it was common sense. Anyway, I did what I suspecteed a modern man would do and did a search on the Internet. The quote below I found on www.expresschemist.co.uk:

"Modern, 21st Century Man is more interested in appearance and health than he's ever been, and so he should be. With all the great products on the market now there's no reason why Men shouldn't be as clean and healthy as possible."

Ah, there we have it! Step aside filthy Neanderthals, the modern man is here and he's armed to teeth with all kinds of manly health products. Technology has finally come up with weapons to fight man's natural smells and looks.

But hold on. There's something wrong with the picture. After the modern man has finally cracked under the pressure and bought himself every possible lotion and potion for men it should be time to sit back and wait for them to start working their magic. But instead a sneaky feeling of suspicion starts to bother the modern man. Suddenly the bathroom is full of boxes, jars, tubes and cans: there's a girly moisturiser for her, and a butch one for him; there's anti-wrinkle cream for her, and a more manly looking one for him. The list goes on and on.

So, what exactly is the difference between a moisturiser for women and the one for men? Do they put a drop of testosterone in the cream for men? Does it make you less of a man if you share a skin product with your wife? Or could it be possible that we are being taken for fools?

It must have been a great moment in the marketing department of the Great Soap and Cream Corporation when (undoubtedly after a long pub lunch) someone came up with it. It was so simple that it was scary: "let's convince men that they need a separate face cream from the one that women use". There it was. All it took was some masculine, blue and chrome packaging and a rumour that using your wife's soap will make you gay. After that they could light their cigars, pour themselves stiff drinks and watch the sales figures double.

And it didn't stop there. Once they had got started the ideas came almost effortlessly: Creams for morning, day, and evening followed. A soap for mondays, hair gel for cloudy weather, and a foot soak for hermaphrodites are expected to be in shops any day now.

I'm telling you, our children will go to museums to see displays of life in the last days of 20th century, and they will cry in front of the authentic bathroom: "how horrid it must have been for poor old mum and dad, sharing a bar of soap, and what's that, oh God NO, unisex body lotion!"