Man in the mirror...

For decades, men’s grooming has been a 'within the closet' subject. But times are changing as men are now just about nudging the boundaries that curtailed their vanity to what was considered 'socially accepted behaviour', writes Harish Bijoor.

“Men will be men”! An adage that has undergone a tremendous degree of change over the decades gone by. If in the old days, this was meant to be a weak point of justification for a lot of negative things men did and got away with, I use this to negate the very notion of “Men”, as typified by society over the years in a positive manner.

Today, man is no different than woman. In more ways than one. And the one thing I choose to write about is man’s fascination with beauty and grooming. A fascination that seems to deepen by the day, as the men’s cosmetics and grooming accoutrements and services industry runs to keep pace.

Today, India’s men’s beauty and grooming market is defined to be as large as $2 billion. A number it has arrived at from literal nothingness. This number is set to double by 2029. Compare this to the women’s grooming market size in the country defined to be nudging $15 billion. The numbers quoted by me remain fuzzy and not updated enough to keep pace with the reality of the men’s beauty and grooming market. It is no longer a market really, it’s an industry on the fast track.

Out of the closet

Men’s grooming, for decades, has been a “within the closet” subject. In the beginning, men used creams that made their skin glow. Fair & Lovely from the stable of Unilever was the biggest one of them. Men surreptitiously used the cream before going to bed. Their wives and partners knew the truth. But the truth stopped there. Till Emami came out with its gender-targeted Fair & Handsome.

The early outward appearance of this trend was the emergence of men’s hair-cutting saloons (there are 6,80,000 of them in India at last conservative estimation) flaunting products and services that appealed to their clientele. Many of these included beard-trimming kits, beard wax, facial kits, steamers, waxing materials to be used at home and creams/lotions to be used prior to sleep and possibly on the face and feet equally. In came manicures and pedicures, waxing solutions at salons, and possibly 20 other services that men could equally use as women do. Many a beauty parlour went unisex to compete in the market of men as well. This in many ways was Men’s Grooming Ver.1.0.

Ver 2.0 came with the revolution of social media and digital. In comes TikTok into the country, as did Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and more. These social media vehicles led the way to the growth of the digital-interface solutions that came into play in men’s grooming. Men were now just about getting out of the closet of being in the grooming box. These social media vehicles somehow brought in much-needed justification points for the man’s want to groom and look better. These social media vehicles made men’s vanity bearable.

Make a change

Today, man is equally happy to use every product and service that enhances beauty, skincare and overall cosmetic health of body parts that you can see and appreciate. This very broad swathe definition covers a whole host of products and services. It includes the largest organ of the human body, the skin (which accounts for 16% of body weight and covers a large area), and traverses through the realm of hair care (head, chest, arms, and face included) and items that cover the category of fragrances that can be smelt but not seen.

The one other category that needs to be thanked or complained about (depending on the perspective-perch you occupy on this) for the spread of the trend we see in men’s grooming is the e-commerce industry.

E-commerce in many ways brought anonymity to the purchase process. Men were free to surf the web and find products that even men could use in the grooming market. Men understood products and their efficacy and looked at curated product sites to help them. If men needed guidance on what to use, they got it. There is a “curated by doctors” platform called Cureka.com that will possibly help you isolate products and services a man might want to use as well. And this platform is curated from the otherwise “small town” of Madurai. And there are hundreds of these that will help you make that first tentative step into the world of men’s grooming. Platforms such as Nykaa.com will tell you that a lot of men spend a fair bit of time looking for vanity products and services. On platforms such as these, gender is a yesterday concept. Today, equality and gender-equity is finally here. Men will not be men. That adage was so unfair really. Let men be. Note: At this point in time of writing, men are still not using some categories of products that women use in India today. The lipstick and nail polish come to the fore as key categories. But wait. I have trends from men’s salons and barber shops in India on both. Expect a revolution here as well! Touché!

(The author is a business & brand-strategy expert and can be reached at [e-mail])