You're a together guy. You live in the right neighborhood, work out regularly, eat carefully, wear tailor-made suits and take quiet pride in your corner office.
But what are you doing about wrinkles? Not to mention that unsightly redness that flushes your skin after you shave.If you aren't taking care of your skin (slapping Aqua Velva on after a shave does not constitute taking care of your skin), you are simply not a '90s kind of guy. Skin care - along with the attendant skin worries - marks the men of the '90s.
Salt Lake City apparently teems with such men. Salt Lake department stores do a brisk business in men's skin-care products, and the business gets better with each passing season.
"In the last year, our men's skin-care business has grown 30 percent," said Valerie Thompson, manager of the men's cologne department at the downtown ZCMI.
"Men are becoming more sophisticated in their knowledge of skin care. They are eager to talk about it," she said of her customers.
Grocery store offerings don't do it for educated, upscale men anymore. They want rich shaving creams scented with their favorite designer cologne, self-tanning creams that give them a bronze look without the ravage of the sun, balms specially created to soothe the skin after shaving, moisturizers and - the pinnacle of skin care - anti-aging creams.
Anxious to assuage men's new appetite, makers of designer colognes - once the purveyors of simple choices like "splash on" or "spray" - have plunged into the skin-care arena with an army of products to rehydrate, rejuvenate, polish, burnish, tan and protect.
The panoply of men's products rights an old wrong: men passing through department stores now have as many lures thrownout at them as women do.
Unfortunately it also perpetuates a longtime injustice: skin-care products for men cost a fraction of what equivalent products for women cost.
"Men's lines are less expensive than the women's lines, and they offer a great quantity of product," Thompson said."You can buy all the products in most lines for about $100." Some of those same companies charge $50 for one jar of women's skin cream.
Lancome's eye cream for women ranges from $25 to $33, said Nancy Davis, counter manager for Lancome. But Lancome's eye cream for men is only $16. Both products promise the same results.
The creams and soaps for men are similar - if not identical - to the ones made for women. "Essentially it's the same product. But men will buy it in a little gray tube where they won't in a pretty, white jar," said a ZCMI manager.
Despite the lower prices, companies must be making a hearty profit. A new skin-care line for men is born is each month. Manufacturers will be launching three new skin-care lines before the end of the year, Thompson said: Eternity, 273 and Ricci Club.
Estee Lauder, Lancome, Clinique, Juvena, Drakkar Noir, Pierre Cardin, Paco Rabanne, Aramis, Fendi, Obsession, Lagerfeld and Clarins all have skin-care lines for men, most launched within the past two years. Many extend beyond face care to shampoos for thinning hair and shower gels.
The products appeal to highly educated, professional men in their mid-30s and older, like lawyers and bankers, said Dell Stokes, manager of the downtown ZCMI. In fact, that education may be put to use understanding the complicated use schedule advised by most manufacturers.
If a man used each product in the Aramis Lab Series, he would wash his face with dual action face soap four mornings a week to wash away dirt while softening his whiskers. The other three mornings, he would replace the soap with active treatment scrub, which helps prevent blackheads and ingrown hairs. Each morning he would shave with tri-gel shave formula, which has a polymer complex purported to "create a comfort zone between skin and razor."
He would follow the shave with razor burn relief, a "post-shave therapy" that "blocks" razor burn.
He would then "rev up sluggish skin" with the skin-clearing solution; follow it with an anti-aging supplement that "firms and tightens skin in just three weeks" and, for dessert, the instant moisture complex that promises to "lock in moisture for up to 12 hours."
Washed, buffed, shaved, soothed, revved and moisturized, an Aramis customer can face the world secure in the knowledge that he's done everything humanly possible for his skin.