Gender in Japan.

Flying in the face of the overtly masculine image of men presented by western media, Japanese metro sexual men http://www.mynippon.com/men/metrosexual.htm are unafraid to make themselves look pretty. Every day I encounter Japanese men who have seemingly spent several hours prepping their hair and fastidiously choosing an outfit that will be deemed trendy. Having lived in Australia and England before my current stay in Japan my previous definition of metro sexual was a guy with a stylised mullet and a "salmon" coloured polo shirt. Japanese men have taken metro sexual to the extreme, their entire ensemble would put most Australian women to shame. They can be seen in the trendy (i.e expensive) areas of Osaka, carrying a plethora of shopping bags which sport designer labels. These shopping bags are often accompanied by their 'man bag' (essentially a handbag) a pair of skinny jeans and some ludicrously over sized sunglasses, which remain on long after the sun has gone down.

Japan has a male cosmetic market that accounts for nearly one-fifth of men's cosmetics globally and sales of men's skincare have surged in the past few years, growing an average 13% per year, according to Mandom, Japan's second biggest cosmetics maker after Shiseido. http://www.glasshousetalent.co.nz/index.asp?s1=Client%20Resources&s2=Articles&s3=Metrosexual%20Sales%20On%20The%20Increase

Mandom goes on to say that delicate men are 'in fashion' at the moment, Japan has always been willing to take trends to the extreme, maybe what I have witnessed in my time here is just another example of this. Perhaps several summers from now Japanese men will be dressing up like outlaw bikers complete with dirty denim and greasy beards. Although I respect ones freedom to jump on any bandwagon they wish, I find myself irritated by the fact that most trends require people to spend ridiculous amounts of their income on what amounts to nothing more than a fleeting moment of 'cool'.