Is “Brotox” a Good Idea for Men?
Apparently, more men these days are getting “Brotox” (a mixture of the words “brother” and “botox” if you are wondering) to keep up their competitive edge in the job world according to this news article from Dallas/Fort Worth:
There are men in D/FW who are walking around with a big secret –– for them, it’s key to staying successful and fresh in today’s highly competitive job market.
Dallas businessman Don Pelham falls into this group. He says looking good is part of what keeps business booming.
“I usually get guessed for much younger than my age,” he said.
But, at 47-years old, Pelham says it’s become harder to stay fresh in his highly competitive field….
Image consultant Valerie Sokolosky says first impressions are everything when it comes to securing new business or a new job.
“Women can have a new hairdo, do some color, or make up,” she said. “It’s not as easy for men.”
She says men of a certain age have to be open to new ideas in order to rise above the rest.
The comments to the article are interesting and observant, for example, one commenter says:
america focuses on the superficial and wonders why it is going down the drain.
And another says:
Notice the irony here: Dr. Adelglass is quite clearly older and in worse physical shape than Don Pelham, yet *he* is the one giving the treatment. The lesson learned here is quite valuable, yet simple: choose your profession wisely!
What do you think of “Brotox?” Necessary for men or too metro-sexual or something else?
No problems with Brotox. I hope all liberals are injected with neurotoxins. It would be very healthy for America.
Good looking men, and plain women, are found most likely to land a job interview.
http://news.healingwell.com/index.php?p=news1&id=646959
I’m sure there are success stories where having an eerily stoney expression and shoe-polish colored hair has given more than one man the extra confidence to do well on an interview and get a job. And not frickin starve as his unemployment runs out.
Gads.
Phil Condit used to die his hair. Man he looked strange giving employee pep talks at Boeing.
To be honest a middle aged man that is died and made up to look like a robot is kind of frightening.
Too metro. One of the nice things about being a man is less obsession with looks and age.
The bleeding of the superficial social culture of females over to men is not a good thing. Especially in its effects in how employees are chosen. It used to be that you picked the best guy for the job, regardless of looks.
That was one of the feminists original complaints; the young, clueless tart hired over the experienced older woman. But, now that women have broken the glass ceiling, they are bringing their social culture that values and favors looks and appearance over competence into the workplace. So, now men have to botox and dye their hair and get mannies to get hired. Quite frankly, screw that noise.
Thank God I work in a masculine field.
No, no, you don’t understand. It’s not sexist when women objectify men, because women are incapable of sexism.
(Seriously, that’s the mainstream Feminist word on male objectification.)
When did age, wisdom and experience becomes less valuable than the way one looks?
Any industry where this kind of BS is necessary to get the job is an industry in terminal decline. A lot of the problem is that HR departments are doing the hiring process. HR was never part of the hiring process during the 80′s and early 90′s.
At first I had to really stop and think. But that was because of a whole other thing. No, brotox is something men say they are doing for work, just like many women keep way too much make up and keep dying their hair way too long past the bloom. Both are a form vanity that don’t wear well. Some people get stuck on this “youth or nothing” bandwagon. Maybe in some professions it works? I just don’t believe it.
I will say though, that a lot of people have not saved up for retirement, seizing the day and living like there was no tomorrow. If I were in the workforce, in this economy, with zilch in the bank, and at 45 years old or older? I’d be terrified. Though I don’t think looking like you get done up at the mortuary is going to help. Panic leaves much room for error?
What I was most struck by was the need to call it “bro” tox. Powerful men in executive positions have long put endless painstaking care into their dress and their looks, that’s been going on for generations (unnoticed by all the endless writings of people who claimed it’s only women under pressure on their looks).
The need to masculinize it is what struck me. Really? We need to rename is “Bro” tox so it doesn’t seem feminine? The “feminists” will view that as something like “because he doesn’t want to be “diminished” to female status,” but I don’t buy that; if that’s part of the mix maybe (in the same way that we make fun of women who grow facial hair or whatever), but I think a bigger part of it is what writer Mark Simpson refers to as “Men impersonating masculinity.”
As a gay man Simpson tends to look at these issues from a perspective neither women nor most straight men can see. In his book “Male Impersonators: Men Impersonating Masculinity,” he notes a strong cultural tendency of men to act, dress, behave, and even use language that is hypermasculinized to the point of absurdity. And Simpson avoids the easy tropes about “homophobia” or “anti-feminism” to explain it. It is more a matter of men feeling somehow compelled to constantly prove their masculinity and their worth as men, to the point where anything that doesn’t seem “manly” MUST be changed in some fashion, either by word or deed, to “prove” that there’s nothing gay or girly about it and therefore his value as a success-object, a provider-man, a self-sufficient manly man, is never in question. Whether it’s burping-farting-chestbumping and fisbumping or finding a new way to label something old just to make it “masculine” instead of, ya know, just what it is, it’s like we have a whole cultural mindset that men must be a certain way and men must constantly prove it.
So a man can’t just say “I’m trying to look younger because I think it will help my career.” That has to, somehow, be hyper-masculinized to the point of absurdity. The man can’t simply be doing what he’s doing, a manly excuse must be found. It’s pretty weird.
(I do not support use of botox or the youth-obsession of our current culture, FWIW, I’m just making an observation. “Brotox?” Really?
There is no need for b(r)otox; just avoid the 3 S:
don’t Smoke;
don’t Shave (trimming it down to a stubble is OK);
don’t expose your face to Sunshine: never go out without a wide brimmed hat.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with men getting botox, but I’m not personally interested (that might change for me 20 years down the road, who knows).
What does bother me though is the trend of using the prefix “bro” to describe anything catering to men. It just reeks of immaturity and trivialization.
It’s always weird to observe freaks, I mean, people who’ve had “work done” think their work has helped them. How often they get work despite their self-mutilation, not because of it. (It’s quite horrific to see a previously beautiful actress or handsome actor show up after a haitus looking downright ugly. It’s also quite pleasing to see a celebrity age with grace.)
If you get a dent in your fender, you go and have it fixed and no one thinks anything about it. Why not your face? It’s when it becomes expected and you are considered odd for “going with the wrinkles” that it gets aberrated, in my view. But then, when I was in my twenties I drove around with a crushed front headlight and people were always telling me to get it fixed because “it looked tacky”. Oh well.
I had collagen done back in 1986 and I was really happy with it. And if I was young today, I’d still do it. But at my age, the face is what it is and I have other fish to fry!
The story is set in Dallas. Dallas has always had glossy, polished men. This is just another way to be glossy and polished. The largest makeup sales area in the world is at the Neiman Marcus in Dallas. The well-coifed, well-maintained women of Dallas go well with glossy, polished men.
Honestly, full makeup- base, powder, eyeshadow, mascara, concealer, three glazes of lipstick, just to go get the milk. Dermatologists there drive very, very, very nice cars.
Mary Kay cosmetics is based there. Men use the face cream all over their body, at least the most Dallas-y guys I know do.
I hate people who use Botox for vanity treatments. They are making it difficult for stroke victims to get treatment they need. My husband is a stroke victim who is trying to get Botox treatments to reduce the spasticity in his arm and leg from the stroke … if this can be done, he can get further physical therapy that might restore some use of those limbs. But guess what … due to the vanity treatments, insurance co’s are very stingy about Botox treatments and make it extremely difficult and expensive for people to get them for medical needs. I hate people who use Botox for vanity treatments.
After working for 30 years for the same company with good performance reviews, I was laid off in April 2010. My job and 1,100 others had been exported to India. For the next 13 months, I was unemployed.
At age 56 finding a new job was very difficult. People from 20 to 30 years younger than me often interviewed me. I know, but cannot prove, that my grey hair and age spots were a major factor in my difficulty in finding work. I considered the idea of coloring my hair, but decided against it partly out of stubbornness and partly because I was afraid that if my hair looked younger, my face would look even older and that the result would be a look of desperate foolishness. So, I soldiered on.
After every interview, I was told that I was in the short list but that they had one or more candidates left to interview. In each case, the job went to a younger person.
Finally, I found my current employer, a consulting company run by a woman in her 60s who had been in the same boat. After I was hired, the owner told me that being a “greybeard” was a plus because we know how to work, miss fewer days, and have less drama.
A great many of the staff here are over 45. I don’t feel like an outsider. The IT industry as a whole may think I became stupid when I turned 55 but the folks here do not.
I can understand why someone would try to look younger particularly in sales or other customer-facing job. It is a dog-eat-dog job market, and the younger dog usually wins — even when the job is more skilled. Do what you have to do to keep your job or get one; there aren’t that many out there.
My brother-in-law, in his seventies, has a very lucrative sales job. He dyes his hair.
Are you kidding. The insecurities that make a man get brotox, are unappealing. That will show through. True confidence and competence is attractive.
Brotox? No. Because…..no.
If you’re in a career where you can’t continue to be successful unless you look young, you should have planned for that eventuality. You’re not always going to look 25, and if you try to do so you’re just making a fool of yourself.
Personally, I’m 48 and have a good amount of grey in my beard and some on my head. Big deal. I actually figured I’d be fully grey by this age, my father was.
I am reminded of Meg Ryan(whoa!), and even Joan Rivers as she currently looks.