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Grooming. Why bother, right?
Maybe you've had a bad hair decade. And maybe your bathtub's got more rings around it than an old-growth redwood. But life is busy. Why get worked up about a little thing called hygiene? One easy answer is: PEOPLE NOTICE!
Hair, Nails, skin, the wafting bouquet of your fuzzy parts - for whatever reason, people pick up on these details, and they care.
Neglect comes in many forms. Some men really do mean to take better care of themselves but never get around to it. Or they don't have the know-how to try. A lot of guys aren't trained to think about grooming at all. And by not trained, I'm talking about the kind of man who isn't aware that there are actual tufts of hair protruding from his nostrils. They walk around in their life...all the time...all day...living with this hair. And if they do notice it, they think, "Okay, well, that's just what my nose does. On my nose, hair comes out of the nostrils, and on Brad Pitt's nose, it doesn't...I guess that's why I'm not a movie star." Somehow it just never occurs to them that these little twigs can be hacked off. What if you made eye contact with some hot guy from across the room? He walks over to you and he's got...FULL-ON NOSE BUSH. How would you feel? It would freak you out. Why do you think it doesn't freak other men out when they see it on you? It does.Primping ain't easy, boys...it takes work. But the real trick is doing it not just for someone else, but for you. It's time now to take your hygienic well-being into your own hands.

Repeat after me: "I am an uncouth, untweezed, improperly exfoliated stink-bomb of a man who'd best clean up my act before the Ministry has to break down my door, restock my medicine cabinet, and forcibly tousle my hair."
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Good grooming isn't just about aesthetics. Looking hot is one goal...but looking good and feeling happy is a better one. This is just one more aspect of how we present ourselves to the world. How we dress, where we live, what we talk about...all that's about self-expression. Grooming is no different. For some reason, men have really missed out on an education in style. Whether it's clothing or knowing how to take care of your skin, your hair, or your teeth, in American culture these things have always been thought of as feminine topics. Why that is I have no idea. Puritan values? Disappointingly small migration of quality male manicurists to the Old West? Now, though, the role of a man is changing within a society that's changing. You could write a whole book on that. But the point is that guys, gay and straight, feel a certain freedom now to think about how they're taking care of themselves and how they're expressing themselves through their personal aesthetic. Not a minute too soon.