OneWomansView2

Sometimes I wonder if when it comes to grooming, men long for the good old days of Leave It to Beaver and Don Draper. Back in the day, all it took to be perfectly groomed was a wet shave and some hair pomade. Even as hair grew longer, beards shaggier and lapels wider, men’s grooming changed very little. In fact, up until recently even the fanciest of dandies could get away with just a shower and a splash of cologne.

Things are more than a little different in the 21 Century. Men are waxed, lasered, tweezed, buffed and polished to within an inch of their lives. Their impeccably arched eyebrows make Joan Crawford look like Leonid Brezhnev and it’s easier to find a Yeti than to spot a hairy chest at Equinox. Then there is the matter of facial hair. Apparently it is now possible to become the Internet’s hottest man simply by growing a lush beard, straight out of the pages of a 19th Century Russian novel. And should you decide to pursue the hirsute path, you can buy organic beard oils to keep your whiskers soft and lustrous and sandalwood-scented pomades to keep those sexy mustaches pointing proudly north.

So what do women think about the advances in men’s grooming? Well, for one, we are all special snowflakes and one woman’s “sexy lumbersexual” is another’s scratchy nightmare. Still, I suppose some of you might need a little guidance, so here are one (very opinionated) woman’