Photo-Illustration: The Cut; Photo: Getty
Rex is your typical teen in that he has a 15-minute skin-care routine. It begins with a dime-size drop of cleanser, specifically one with moisturizing water-lily extract, that when rubbed into cheeks blossoms into a foam. He follows that with the Rile Face Hydrator, a lightweight emollient, or CeraVe’s heavier Night Cream; he likes a heavy cream and rarely goes to bed without spreading Vaseline on his lips. Any leftover mirror time is spent in close self-examination, which is how he first noticed the blackheads. “He asked me to get him a facial,” his mother said. “I asked a good amount,” the 15-year-old added, a single pimple convalescing beneath a hydrocolloid patch on his chin.
His mother, Kelly Atterton, has been a beauty editor for decades and recently founded a beauty brand aimed at teenage boys, inspired by her own. And yet even she is stupefied by her son’s interest in his own skin. “It’s not like he listens to me,” she said. Her own advice, about daily sunscreen use and regular pillowcase laundry, has evaded him. So, during our FaceTime interview, she turned and asked him point blank: “Why do you want to take care of your skin?”
Rex responded first with a smirk, then: “To look good.” He quickly added, in a near whisper, “for the hoes.” (His mother gasped: “Rex!”)
As recently as a decade ago, it felt like male vanity began with buying deodorant at puberty, then shaving in high school, followed by a choice: You could care as much as you wanted about your hair or your beard, even both, for the rest of your life, but nothing else. Skin care was, heteronormatively speaking, reserved for women only. Even those who project the American male ideal, for their job or just for fun, have been careful to not cross the hairline. (I am of course thinking of Brad Pitt’s preposterously shy approach to promoting his own skin-care line, Beau Domaine, two years ago.)
But any written history of male vanity, one spanning from Civil War facial hair to ’90s metrosexuality and beyond, will forever earmark 2020 as the year everything kind of changed. “The concept of ‘Sephora tweens’ may largely relate to young girls, but teen boys are stepping up their skin-care game,” says J’Nae Phillips, an editor at the insights firm Canvas8. “It’s cool for them to take a pragmatic approach to their routines.” The market-research firm Mintel recently found that today nearly 70 percent of Gen Z men, aged 18 to 27, used skin-care products — and so do about half of all American men.
Phillips also pointed to an influx of skin-care brands appealing to teen boys that have popped up over the last four years like chin hairs on pubescent skin. All have playful names: Rile, Insanely Clean, Dr. Squatch. There’s Stryke Club, founded by a dermatologist, and JB Skrub, founded by Modern Family’s Julie Bowen.
Jamie Rosen, the beauty director at Town & Country, noticed that her dermatologist’s waiting room was filling up with teen boys in a story she wrote for the magazine. “I’ve seen a lot of men’s skin-care lines kind of come and go,” Rosen told me. “But it does feel like if there ever was a moment where men’s skin care could sort of succeed, this moment feels as primed as possible.” Over the summer, she sent her 13-year-old son to summer camp with Sophie Pavitt’s micellar cleansing pads in his duffel.
Even if they’re just aping the influencers they see online, or their peers IRL, skin care has been “demystified,” adds Phillips. “It’s no longer something hidden behind closed doors.”
If the men’s skin-care movement could be envisioned as a factory of sorts, one of its biggest engines would also be one of its newest: TikTok, which belches out unsolicited advice 24 hours a day. In one video, a high-schooler with floppy curls douses his face in cleansing oil, snail mucin, and a pearlescent solution that elicits a few adolescent-tinged comment-section jeers. (It was Beauty of Joseon Rice Toner, but they called it “Diddy juice.”) In another, a shirtless teen with a center part spoke into a tiny mic clipped to his neck chain: “Don’t be scared of skin-care routines, bro, they’re good for you!” Behind him flashed images of recommended products, including CeraVe’s foaming cleanser, La Roche-Posay Anthelios, and distilled cow fat, or beef tallow. (It has 1.9 million views.)
Teen boys, like all teens, have grown up in a #GetReadyWithMe world. The ubiquity of beauty and wellness content online has convinced them that things like skin and hair care are not the ministrations of vain metrosexuals, but an extension of self-care. They want to look good — for the hoes, but also for themselves. Henry, a 14-year-old soccer star in Brooklyn, cleanses his face with a washcloth blessed with a few drops of Skinceuticals Simply Clean Gel Cleanser. “I learned on TikTok it’s important to wash your face, especially if you’re an athlete,” he said.
Listen closely and you can hear patois of influencers. The best eye cream is the Ordinary’s serum, according to Gabe, a 17-year-old in Las Vegas. It’s made with caffeine, which tightens blood vessels to make the skin glow. He also uses a moisturizer made with beef tallow. “It’s amazing for your skin,” he tells me.
“I apply a bit of a Calming Cica Toner if I feel I’m especially red, and a lightweight moisturizer,” explained Cam, a 19-year-old in the Philippines, of his routine. “I follow with sunscreen — around two tablespoons full to cover both face and neck.” Cam gets most of his recommendations from Reddit and YouTube. Does he get advice from friends? “Honestly, I think they get it from me,” he said.
Some guys aren’t looking for advice online; still, it’s finding them. Zack, a 15-year-old lacrosse player, says he rarely sees skin care on his “For You” page, “unless it’s a targeted ad.” In any case, he doesn’t really care what any influencers are hawking because his dermatologist has his acne on lock. After he started breaking out at 13, he asked his mom if she could get him an appointment. “When I first started going, I mentioned it to a friend, and he told me he took Accutane,” Zack told me. But Zack decided against it — “unless it was a last resort” — and reports good results with his prescription-strength Azelaic acid. “My helmet makes breakouts so much worse,” he said, “which is why I stick to my routine.” After lacrosse practice, he washes with water and mists with Tower28’s SOS Rescue Spray.
Talking to young men today, it doesn’t seem as if stigmas have eroded as much as they have vanished almost completely, the baggage having been stolen before its arrival at claim. “It’s expected, that you take care of your skin,” Rex said. “Pimples are nasty.” Cam said that skin is one of the most important parts of the male routine overall. “I think basic skin care is integral to good skin health,” he said. “I mean, who doesn’t want to be holistically well?”
The truth may be that, like all other matters cosmetic, they’re just following women’s advice at a more leisurely pace. Men continue to comprise a mere fraction of the skin-care economy at large, and a vast quantity of skin-care marketed toward men is purchased by women and passed on to their other halves. “I see some teen boys caring more about skin care, but I think the majority still lag way behind their female counterparts in interest and commitment to caring for their skin,” says Brooke Jeffy, a board-certified dermatologist in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Any and every trend in male vanity is influenced, in no small part, by women adopting it and metabolizing the stigma first. “If you want to give a teen boy skin advice,” Kelly Atterton told me, “you have to get a woman to give it to him.”
Her son, Rex, gets most of his advice from his girl friends. “But I’ll ask my male friends about what they use,” he said, “because, you know, I’m a male.” There is evidence that, like the rarest flower, skin-care advice does bloom in the locker room. Spencer, a freshman at OSU, concurred. “The best advice I’ve received is how long to wash a bath towel,” he said. “I was told seven days.” He’s also done a better job of washing his sheets, and it’s done wonders for his skin.
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