It seems that the apparently invisible 49% of the population - who, for all intents and purposes have only recently straightened their gait to stop their knuckles dragging in the dirt... yes it's you blokes we're talking about - are now style de jour when it comes to the marketing of all manner of manly products to keep the old bean in good order. No longer are a slap of Brylcreem and a slather of Brut 33 sufficient in the grooming stakes. It seems boys today have almost as much choice as the girls when it comes to body beautiful. We commissioned our resident Neanderthal Vulture to investigate.

So, the old pipe and cravat will not suffice when it comes to charming the ladies with that thin veneer of sophisticated manliness, even when iced with the finest Old Spice - that elegant gent's cologne developed in 1934 by one William Lightfoot Schultz with that ubiquitous sailing ship on the bottle. Yup, that's as good as it gets for me. Or, so I thought prior to Editor Burns' decree that I sharpen up the old image and get positively smoothe - 21st century style.

A shave and a haircut then.

T'was a time when there was a clear distinction between where those of the fairer sex should spend dwell time on their looks - the Salon de Beauté, and for the blokes the barbershop - cum tobacconist - cum S.P. bookie. The ‘SALOON'. This was a place of secret men's business and a true refuge from ‘Her Indoors' and her interminable demands upon one's hard earned leisure-time. For the price of a couple of loaves of bread, a man could shoot the breeze with his contemporaries for a spell... talk footy, swear, place a bet, smoke like there's no tomorrow, hell even check out some illicit talent in the odd R-rated girlie mag scattered amongst the form guides.  

Then something happened... Unisex.

I blame The Brady Bunch. Until Mike Brady turned up on-screen with his man-perm, barbershops were still holding their own. But suddenly cuckolded husbands, boyfriends and teenagers were bridled down to the ‘His'n'Hers' hair salon for a bit of natural styling action. Well, in spite of a rear guard action by a few die-hard brickie's labourers, New Australians and pensioners, the jig was up for the local barber. But something strange has happened in the past couple of years. The barbershop is making an heroic return. How excited to discover that a true haven for blokiness had re-emerged like a phoenix from the ashes for your humble scribbler. Or so I thought...

Don't be fooled by the red and white pole out the front. As I found to my acute irritation these new temples of manliness may be portrayed as barbershops, but in reality they have been conjured up by scheming females as a way of getting their fellas to emulate George Clooney or some other swoon-able Hollywood hunk.  Gone: the TAB form guides, Penthouse mags and selection of ‘Continental' hairstyles to choose from the peeling black and white pictures sticky-taped to the walls. In: designer furniture, leather-bound ‘Style Guides', cappuccino to order and Prada-suited stylists. One feels that a dress standard may apply before one sets foot upon this consecrated ground!

But wait, there's more. After being presented the salon menu of services as if it is some divine text of matchless worth, you discover that there is an expectation that you may indulge in such delights as ‘foot spas', paraffin wax manicures, ‘hot stone' massages, ‘flying' colour highlights, back, crack and sack waxes. Bloody hell, who comes up with this stuff? But, more to the point, with stiff upper lip, I'm to be the muse for Editor Burns' heinous crash test dummy social experiment. So, with gut sucked in, shoulders back and with jaw thrust forward, onward and upward I went forth in search of my inner Pitt, or Jackman, or Jude Law, or perhaps in my case; Jack Black.

First the hair.  "Sir will please follow me to the shampoo lounge," trilled a sweet young thing, sporting some creative ironmongery on the face and a most fetching Zen motif tattoo on the rise of her left breast (eyes up, Mr Vulture!). Well, she may have had the look of a SheDevil but she possessed the hands of an angel as she pummelled my scalp until it had the slackness of a piece of raw pizza dough and the bouquet of a herb garden after a soft summer rain. "Forget about the haircut, I'm content just staying here," I mused.

But at that point, Troy "who will be my stylist today" sashayed forth and proceeded to assail me with some of the most alien language this side of a NASA lab as he described the choppy, texturised, lightly sun-kissed, clubby, street-cred hair that he was about to conjure up. "Good luck with the mange that passes for hair on my crusty scone," I thought, but I didn't want to rain on Troy's parade.

About two hours later I was looking at a reflection not quite Colin Farrell, but not too shabby. Hmm, maybe there's something to this metrosexual caper. And all this for a snip at just 180 bucks!

But it's not over yet.

In the interest of science I was also booked in for some bodywork in the enigmatically named spa. (I'm thinking steamy ponds up the back of Rotarua amongst the bulrushes, not some mysterious set of rooms in the back of a hair salon at a local Westfield...). Forthwith, after a delicious tapas selection from the in-salon food and beverage menu to sate the lunchtime grumbles, Felicity "who will be my therapist today" leads me down a dim corridor echoing to the chants of Gregorian monks - or is it whales mating - to an elegant treatment room where I will luxuriate in a hot stone aromatherapy full body massage and foot spa. Woo hoo! 

First Felicity gives me a fluffy white gown and a matching pair of fluffy white slippers and suggests she leaves me for a couple of minutes while I disrobe. Now this is all good except for the fact she hasn't told me to what level of undress is de rigour. In other words, do I leave the jocks on or get totally nude? Will she think I'm a pervert if she finds me buck naked or am I a prude if I still leave the Y-fronts on? Holy shit! Panic sheaths me like a hot tsunami of emotions until I hatch upon a cunning plot... I'll take the undies off, but I'll cleverly and nonchalantly hang them from the coat hook so that when Felicity comes back into the room and sees me lying on my stomach with my bare butt covered by a towel, she'll note the two dollar Jockeys dangling in the breeze and be well prepared for my birthday suit apparel beneath. Lame plan I know, but it was the best I could come up with under pressure.

All good so far, except that for the foot spa, where I have to sit on the side of the bed and drop the hoofs into a steaming bowl of fragrant liquor. So, as quick as a flash I leapt to the side of the bed hitching the towel around the waist in a flurry of limbs, fingers and cold sweat. I note Felicity maintaining a discreet distance as she acknowledges the presence of a clearly disturbed character in her midst. But as she started kneading, scraping, buffing and polishing a serendipitous wave of calm descended upon me and all concerns about modesty evaporated (which was just as well, as I was to discover later in my treatment).She then went about rubbing my tight and twisted muscles with about ninety minutes of hot stone action. This was just plain delicious - what with these slippery superheated stones of various shapes and profiles melting about half a century of life's cruelty away. And just when I'd discovered Nirvana, Shangri La was revealed to me by way of a steaming, frangipani strewn tub about the size of a small swimming pool within which I would rinse away the massage oil and dream of naked seraphs (down boy...). Running total, including the hair: $350.

Right then, all that was left was a bit of hirsute reduction. Felicity passed me on to Daphne the depilation specialist to relieve me of any excess body hair. Unbeknownst to me, Sean Connery-style body hair circa Goldfinger was no longer acceptable in polite society, so decades' worth of hard-earned growth was to go. "Well, anything to look younger," I thought - and after a couple of hours with Felicity, how hard can the removal of a bit of chest hair be?

My first surprise was the waxing room's ferocity of light. Having come from what must be the closest experience to being back in Mum's womb, my senses were assaulted like a bad Stanley Kubrick sci-fi as I stepped into the blinding luminosity and was summarily ordered to strip naked, and instructed to lie on what looked like an operating table by the, by now, evil-nurse Daphne. And without a cautionary word I was slavered in hot beeswax by this blade-wielding maniac.

Senses now working overtime, my first feeling was that of warmth as the wax enveloped my skin... okay, maybe this is going to be alright... strips of muslin... what are they for?... oh, for smoothing the beeswax into the skin... not bad, odd smell, but it feels fine... Nurse Daphne pats at the muslin... so maybe it just kind of melts the hair off... I don't know why women complain about this stuff... seems pretty easy... panic over... all good... Daphne flicks at the edge of the muslin... no worries... grips muslin... this is new... balances her weight against the edge of the bed... panic rising... grabs edge of muslin and rips against the growth of body hair...

Holy Christ! I close my eyes as tears well from the searing pain, daring not to open them, as for sure I've been flayed alive and I'll look down to a bloody, weeping carcase that was once my beloved body. There should be sanctions about this in the Geneva Convention for the treatment of prisoners of war.

Daphne then proceeds to move onto the shivering bits. Digging deep for courage I inform her that time has defeated us, and the sack and crack will have to wait for another day before they are brought back to pre-pubescent splendour. After what appeared to be a wrestle within her cranium between good and evil, with a sigh she released me from her treatment/torture room/chamber, and I re-emerge into what passes as civilisation front-of-house, where I am proffered a soothing draft of some kind of organic lolly water and my account, which has now grown to a hefty 495 clams.

This is what it's come to for those of us made from XY chromosomes. A day at the salon - two parts ecstasy, one part sheer malevolence - and they tell me that this is what your Brad Pitts of the world endure to preserve their allure and self-confidence. It's clearly working because on the day of my visit the place was pumping.
And to think that all it once took to catch the eye of a fair maiden was a clean shirt, a smear of Californian Poppy (to give the hair that groomed wet look regardless of the state of trim), and the occasional snip of those wretched nostril, ear and brow hairs that seem to sprout in direct inversion to the loss of coverage on one's head. As someone wise once said: "the feminine form is a thing of beauty - a piece of sculpture, whereas the male is a thing of utility - like a tractor."

But now, with the rise of all manner of grooming and dare I say it, ‘beauty' treatments for men, perhaps we are witnessing the ascent of the Adonis. As long as I don't have to wax...