By : Kara Shultz

There is no need for any modern man to suffer from Wolf-Man Syndrome. This doesn’t mean you have to spend hours getting waxed and pumiced. What it does mean is that as a contemporary gent, you owe it to yourself and everyone else to undergo some regular Manscaping.

The Five Senses Grooming Plan:

1. Sight: Stray Facial Hair

Unruly eyebrows, protruding nose hairs, and wispy ear hairs are a huge turn off. Invest in a small pair of stainless steel scissors, mini mirror and clip back those rogue hairs. If your eyebrows are more singular than plural, grab a pair of tweezers and do away with the middle section.

2. Touch: Pubic Hair

Your nether regions will also benefit from some TLC. You don’t need to give yourself a Brazilian to get up to speed. Just use your small clippers or your electric razor on a longer setting for a natural but well-kempt feel.

3. Taste: Oral Hygiene

Bad breath can destroy even the most charismatic of men. If you don’t own a tongue scraper, it’s time to pick one up. As well, when you brush your teeth, give your tongue some love too. And keep your gums clean by gently flossing at least once daily.

4. Smell: Body Odor

You don’t need to douse yourself in cologne to stay smelling fresh.  Wear clean shirts, keep your pits washed, and wear a deodorant that works well for you. Having nice cologne is a treat and one or two sprays on your neck should suffice.

5. Sound: Nails

Nobody wants to hear your scraggly nails drumming against a desk. There is no excuse for long toe nails or chipped and dirty finger nails. Every Sunday night, take 5 minutes and give yourself a quick clipping and filing. You will automatically look more put together and polished.

Try our Body Image for Him, and Life and Grooming DiscoveryGames to see where your habits lay.

We have all been there, we wake up feeling gross… fat, tired,  old, ugly. All we want to crawl back into our bed with good TV and a bag of chips, but when we do that we end up feeling far worse at the end of the day then we did in the morning. Sometimes we may wallow in this for a few days, or we do something impulsive, like dye our hair a crazy colour, fake nails or join a gym. Fortunately, just around the corner there is another stressful event that will provide a new obsession to distract ourselves with.

But stats tell us that only 10% of  females are ever happy with their looks… I’m surprised by that was I would have predicted it to be more like 0%.  After all, Heidi Klum has said that she has some really ugly days that she doesn’t even want to leave her house.  Let me tell you worst day would be better then my best day. Regardless with all the pressure to look her best all the time, and all the help she has to do that,  she feels it as much as the average person.

We all have obsessions with how we look. For me, I try to keep my skin healthy looking, for some people it’s their weight, other’s hair and even teeth. Our fixations can rotate and change weekly depending on the level of our own ugly scale.

It is  consistent among the experts that what we do is focus on the single thing that is most key to making us feel beautiful.  I decided to  test this out.

So here are the options again are: Face, Hair, and Body.

I have selected Face.. as I can live with extra  fat on my body more then having a  hollow tired looking face,  and my face takes less effort to maintain than my body.  Hair? Hair is far too much work.

Your turn to pick.  Face? Hair?  Body?

The next step is to pick your top 3 areas within your overall area,  e.g. my top 3 areas within face are:

1. teeth
2.  avoid getting even more sun damage
3.  healthy skin.. good level of collagen

Wrinkles did not make it in my top three, I’m willing to live with my wrinkles. I am not the least bit irritated when I see crows feet. Having said that, ten years from now my priorities may have shifted entirely.

This you do an action plan: realize you can not be perfect in all areas, if you were you’d be Heidi Klum or Helen of Troy. Make peace with who you are and love life.

To help stay balanced, try to  keep this in mind:

1. Celebrities spend an average of 200k per year on appearance. “A” listers closer to 500k
2. Photo finishing changes a model from a size 4 to size 0.  It can take off as much as 35 pounds!
3. Genetically 90% of the population can never have a flat stomach. It’s the jobs of the abdominals to hold our colon and other internal organs in place, but flat is not what they do. We have naturally rounded abdomens and that’s healthy.
4. The average height for a women is 5 feet 3 inches. Anything taller is a reason to celebrate, as height hides weight more easily
5. The average weight is 164 pounds.  Therefore a woman taller than average is allowed to weigh more than average.
6. 42% of americans over 40 do not have any natural teeth left
7. 1 in 5 americans will have skin cancer
8.  80% population have increased hair loss as they age
9. Americans spend 1 billion a year on anti wrinkle creams.. and yet 100% will wrinkle as we age… just a matter of time..
10. Americans spend 10 billion a year on beauty products but regardless 90% of americans are unhappy with their looks.

There is something seriously wrong here. WHy are we so hard on ourselves?

Just imagine if you had an accident and your face were burned or you lost the movement of your body. With that in mind, what would you think about how you look right at this moment? I doubt that you would be nearly as critical and you would do anything you could to get even a part of it back.

Just for fun, I have developed a new strategy to feel more beautiful:

1. Marry someone 24 years older. You’ll always look beautiful and young to them.

2. Move to  West Virginia.  Jamie Oliver says average weight is more then any other U.S. State. You’ll either look small or be among friends.

3. Work from your house you don’t ever have to get out of your pyjamas.  Just putting on clothes will make you feel beautiful.

4. Only buy titika as the fabric and designs hold  your body tight. Then you can eat without feeling your pants are getting tighter. Especially make sure you get rid of denim jeans.

5. Wear heels all day. You’ll feel sexy.

6. Eliminate all mirrors from your home.

7. Have a son. He’ll worships you no matter how you look.

8. Hang out with people who care even less about their appearance  then you.

9.  Read about all the pretty stars who are drug addicts.

Or here is a really crazy idea? If 90% of Americans are unhappy with their looks, why be average? Be UNIQUE. Be Special. Be one of  the 10% and love the way you are.

While you’re thinking about that, I am off to worship my body in a long hot bath and then apply this great new face mask that I’ve heard will make me look younger, after only 10 applications  :)

If you enjoyed this post, you should check out our other Health and Beauty Posts

An article in  Cosmopolitan had a huge impact on my personal view of sexuality. I wish I could share it with you, but it dates back to about 1976. The author explained the difference between what it is to be “sexual” vs “sensual”. She explained that we’re all sexual beings but some people are more than that, they exude a sensuality that is difficult to understand, but easy to respond to. I half jokingly call it my “5% Club,” because it’s a trait that we see so rarely in men and women.

The most important thing that needs to be understood about sensuality is that it is not about sex or getting sex. It’s about the way a sensual person makes everyone feel. Not just the people that they hope to sleep with. A sensual twenty-five year old male will, just be being himself make a Ninety year old woman feel young and exciting. A sensual sixty year old woman will make a fifteen year old boy feel as if he were king. Sensuality is the ability to make all people feel as if they are truly special, including the person who is their partner.

Yes, a sensual person is probably more likely to be successful sexually, but don’t limit its significance to that alone.

The first man in my life that I identified as “sensual” was while I was still in school. Guy walked past me as I wrote a math equation on a blackboard. He gently placed his hands on my waist and politely said, “Excuse me” as he slipped behind me. He could have easily passed without the touch, but he didn’t. His was gentle, polite, non-invasive and I died inside. Other men have done similar things and it’s felt like a violation. Why was Guy so different?

First, sensuality has almost nothing to do with looks or physical build. I have a friend, “Mary” she’s very overweight, yet when she’s out at a club she attracts men to her like moths to a light. Another friend, “Elizabeth”, is far more attractive than Mary, not nearly as overweight and very friendly, but she is almost completely unseen by men. What does Mary have that is so good that men will overlook that she is definitely not sexy looking? Mary is rarely without a partner and it has “nothing to do with her dress size.” Elizabeth? Well, she’s been single a long time.

So how do you identify and define “sensuality”?

Remember it’s far more than sexy. Look at a photograph of people in a room and you can define who is sexy by appearance. Sensuality can’t be seen in a photograph, it is experienced. Sensual is how we live in our skin. It’s  our body language, our confidence, how we interact with those of the opposite sex, the same sex, young and old. Sensual isn’t about what you can get from another person, it’s about what you give to another person. It is definitely NOT about getting laid, or even giving good sex.  Sensuality is an aura, a secret knowledge and I think it can be learned. 

Here are my first three tips of how to become a member of The 5% Club:

1. Good posture improves confidence, and confidence is visible. Richard Petty of Ohio State University says, “…our posture can also affect how we think about ourselves. If you sit up straight, you end up convincing yourself by the posture you’re in.”
2. Don’t be afraid of touch, even if it is just the hand that is passing you your change.  Long before the days of the internet, I read a study that indicated that the people of France touch daily 100 times more than North Americans.  Learn how to touch the world and you’ll touch your lover’s heart even more. “Touch is much more than a physical interaction. It [is] the acknowledgement of our shared humanness and mutual recognition of the inherent vulnerability and intense wish for contact that is present in each of us.”
3. Genuinely be interested in other people. Learn and practice this, you can’t fake it. “If you question whether people can tell the difference, DON’T. They can and they will readily make judgments about you if they sense you are pretending to listen.”

There are many other things you can do that will help you to feel more confident, sexier and increase your sensuality. However, if you start with these three, and pay attention to what the people who always make you feel good do, then copy it, you’ll be teaching yourself how to walk through the world in “Sensual Skin”.

What makes a person beautiful / sexy/ desirable?  The answer very much depends on your culture, upbringing, religious beliefs, status in life, your environment and even your personal tastes.

As examples:      

• in countries where native people have naturally darker complexion, the store shelves are littered with whitening products while in countries with natives who have naturally fair complexions have tanners and bronzers extensively displayed in the supermarket’s beauty aisles.
• in Mauritania, northeast Africa, women’s beauty is revered but thin isn’t in, plump is sexy!  And the more the women are divorced and have stretch- marks the more desirable they are!
• in Brazil, women’s beauty has long been a national obsession, staying slim and toned butts being pre-requisites to ‘measuring up’.  More recently, due to the global influence of the US perception of beauty, big breasts are a must and Brazil’s plastic surgery is second only to the USA!
• in Iran,  yes Iran,  where women cover most of their bodies, they’re performing an estimated 60,000 nose jobs a year! For women who have this surgery, it’s a badge of honor and they proudly wear their bandages for prolonged periods to show off the beauty of their only exposed body part-the face!
• Paris, the City of Lovers, knows a thing or two about beauty. And for Parisians, slender is sexy. Once the body is perfectly moisturized and the complexion is flawless, the next step to sexiness is lingerie. It’s all about feeling good from the inside; and they look forward to getting older—turning 60 is sexy!  Their goal is to stay slim, trim and well groomed as they age. French women feel entitled to be sexy and desirable all along their lives.  And the list goes on.

However the North American marketing world wants us to believe that beauty is exemplified by the super skinny runaway model. They want us to believe it because that image has been engrained into our minds over several decades and it sells products. They work on our psyche having us believe that if we buy their products we will come closer to matching these models looks. The reality is that less than .001% of us can ever look like that and so we just keeping buying more beauty aids in hope that they will somehow miraculously transform us over time.

In my years of marketing and studying consumer behaviour I have learned a lot about what sells. So let me be totally honest with you…

Men are more likely to click on this image

Than this image

Why? We can speculate. Men notice blondes first and they like blondes. Her features are more perfect? She has a more alluring come hither look. And so you get a sense as to why this image had 100% more clicks than the other one.

Tokii also tested a campaign where we use more every day average looking couples, not perfect internet sourced images.

The overwhelming preference was for perfect looking couple like this one.

Versus this one:

So why are we drawn to perfection?

Let’s face it, very few of us have those statuesque measurements and certainly after the age of 20, life’s stress and gravity begin to take charge of our bodies! Does this mean that we are no longer considered beautiful? Far from it, but the first step is to get real! It seems that we have let this ‘beauty image’ thing become a runaway train that most women feel inadequate to board.

Look at any women and you can see beauty. Sometimes it’s the face, sometimes it’s the legs and other times it’s the whole package. Still at other times, it’s the aura that a woman projects. These French gals referenced above, start with the realization that aging is inevitable. Certain treatments and exercise can slow it down but regardless of how much you attempt to slowdown the aging clock, it will happen! And so the best advice they offer is to manage the process, employ beneficial cosmetic products, dress tastefully but sexy, especially the undergarments and strut your stuff. And most importantly enjoy your beauty at every stage of your life and make the most of what you have. It’s that old adage, “if you look good you’ll feel good”.  Confidence is an important ingredient and just knowing that someone else admires your beauty can be the trigger to boosting it even more.

So ladies go out and strut your stuff and don’t be shy. Carry yourself with grace and emphasize your best attributes and I guarantee you, the man or men in your life will take notice! And by the way, since we gals are quite competitive, you can bet that other women will also take note! We each have great assets and it’s a matter of highlighting them and flaunting them!  You have every right to sing your anthem loudly “I’m too sexy for my skin.”

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