Menaissance

I don't care what they say.  I'm not parting with my Kiehl's Facial Fuel, Amino Acid Shampoo, Creme de Corps, Ultimate Strength Hand Salve and Blue Eagle Ultimate Brushless Shave Cream. 

According to a newspaper in Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh?), the metrosexual era is over, men are now retrosexual.

"Metrosexuals, take note: The party's over. The man's man is back. And he's had enough of unisex salons, simpering emo music and the emasculating kryptonite of the Oprahsphere.

"Or so say a spate of ads, books and websites that hail the emergence of the retrosexual, whose attitude and style hearken back to the strong, silent type of the '50s and early '60s.

"The retrosexual keeps things simple. He does not own more hair and skin care products than his wife or girlfriend. He does not "accessorize." Think Don Draper, the dapper, jut-jawed executive played by Jon Hamm in the AMC series "Mad Men." He may be a philanderer, but you won't find a pink shirt in his wardrobe. Like the dark hero characters of ex-spy Michael Westen in "Burn Notice" and U.S. Marshal Raylon Givens in "Justified," "Mad Men" presents alpha males who live unapologetically by their own code."

And it gets worse.  It seems the menaissance meme started with a reporter in Boston (Boston?) who said it first in 2006.  And he's a Red Sox fan no less.  Have you ever seen a well-dressed man at Fenway?  For Christ'ssakes, grown men wear Red Sox jerseys of players half their age, with hats on backwards, swilling draft beer in plastic cups.

"Bearded male models strutted the runways at this spring's New York Fashion Week. Ryan Seacrest sported a scruffier and more reserved look this season on "American Idol," and our obsession with those rugged fishermen on the Discovery Channel's "The Deadliest Catch" is driving the docudrama's success. The series "Lost" is fueled by its large cast of manly men: people like Locke and Sawyer, archetypal hunter-gatherers; Jack, the leader of the pack; Michael, who is single - mindedly preoccupied with his son's well-being; and Sayid, a former torture specialist in the Iraqi Republican Guard. The hot indie rock band Man Man, whose members sport mustaches and tattoos, is so manly it had to use word twice.

"Even gay culture has butched up. The guys in "Brokeback Mountain" were rugged types. That most macho of shows, HBO's "The Sopranos," included a story line about a gay mobster named Vito who hung out in a small New Hampshire town where all the gay men are portrayed as firefighters, jocks, and bikers."

 Read more about my 30-year Kiehl's addiction.