Of Men and Body Wash

Whatever happened to pine tar soap and, while we're at it, men like that big guy on the paper towels? Log-sawing, steak-chewing, shave-needing fellas who knew a thing or two about being a man?

And it didn't involve body wash?

Those days are gone, my friend. Dead as a redwood chopped down to make doilies. Just last year, for the first time in history, body wash started outselling bar soap. "Blame the American male primarily for this," Jack Neff writes in the magazine Advertising Age. "Men who were once heavy users of such manly brands as Irish Spring ... Dial and P&G's Zest have been converting to body washes over the past seven years."

The same seven years that brought us a war, a recession and "Temptation Island," mind you.

It was Axe, the folks who made pubescence even more pungent, who also made body wash "cool" for guys, according to Neff. Yes, Old Spice was first to enter the male body wash market (a metaphor, thank goodness, not a place), debuting its soft soap in 2003. But really, when you're Old Spice and your average consumer has been dead for three years — his whiskers STILL growing — how hard is it to realize you need a new tack?

It was just a year later, by somehow linking bikini-clad girls with a liquid other than Bud — with liquid soap, in fact — that Axe jumped in, instantly convincing young bucks that 1) it's cool to be clean and 2) it's not uncool to use the stuff their moms and sisters use — as long as it's a different brand, one associated with depravity.

Men who use body wash claim it cleans better, smells better, lathers more, yada yada yada. They even talk about "exfoliation." What next? Super Stud Suds with one-quarter cleansing cream? (Answer: Yes.

Dove is pushing a mushy male soap, too. And it's got Drew Brees!)

Texas sculptor Pablo Solomon defends his choice of nonsolid soap. He may be a macho type who has trained commandos, worked in oil fields and repaired locomotives, but when he takes his spring-fed outdoor shower, darned if he doesn't use body wash. "Nothing feels better to get that tingling feeling; yes, I used the T-word," he says.

What is all this pampering/tingling/exfoliating doing to the American male? "Men have more body image issues than ever before," says Joseph Rosenfeld, an image consultant in San Jose, Calif. "It used to be that men knew what to do. They'd lather up, dry off, brush their teeth, put on their deodorant and they were out the door. But now there are so many expectations." Including, Rosenfeld adds, the expectation to be silky soft — like women.

Brawny Man, meet Fawny Man.

Of course, it's also possible that the newly inverted bar-to-body-wash balance does not represent a sea change at all. Rather than thinking long and hard about their skin and masculinity, men may not be thinking at all. "We'll use whatever is in the shower," confides computer programmer Steve Silberberg. "A woman could place Drano in the shower and some guys would use it instead of soap."

Or perhaps Edward Cooze, another computer guy, has gotten to the real root of the issue. There is no stigma, he says, associated with dropping the body wash.

Lenore Skenazy is the author of "Who's the Blonde That Married What's-His-Name? The Ultimate Tip-of-the-Tongue Test of Everything You Know You Know — But Can't Remember Right Now" and "Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry." To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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