Anyone else noticed the recent advertising blitz by the cosmetics companies targeting men? Shit like "You think you look rugged, she thinks you're working too hard."

I can't begin to tell you how much it gets up my nose. Nay, fucks me right off.

I went for a quick swim at the gym this morning. Afterwards, in the change rooms, I watched transfixed as one of the guys hauled out a hair dryer, complete with various attachements, and then proceed to spend the next 10 minutes crafting one of these mohawks that are so popular at the moment. You know, the one that looks suspiciously like you spent the night with your hair crammed up someone's butt crack.

And it wasn't even an isolated incident. At the same time one of the other guys commandeered another mirror to do the same thing. Admittedly, he wasn't nearly as well equipped and had to make do with his hands. Clear this troubled him because eventually I was done and when I left he was still standing in front of that mirror trying to decide whether or not hair #25,132 should lie slightly to the left or stand at a 27.2 degree angle.

Now I'd imagine that one popular "defence" might be that there's nothing wrong in trying to look good. Bullshit. This is fallacious. "Looking good" in this case means meeting an arbitrary set of criteria driven by a combination of current fashion (few things are more arbitrary) and (to a much larger extent) a group who have decided that men are the next market to be exploited.

But who can blame them? Look at how successfully they've managed to exploit women.