Men wearing makeup

By Ernest Bazanye

IN the year 2012, men all over Uganda will be wearing makeup on a regular basis. This conclusion follows extensive research and powerful reasoning.

In ten years’ time, as you walk the streets, you will have no trouble bumping into a gentleman in eyeliner, mascara, and foundation, as opposed to the way it is now, where you have trouble bumping into a gentleman who knows what mascara is.

“Isn’t that what happened in Rwanda as depicted in that upcoming film?”
No, that was a massacre. Mascara is stuff you put on your face — you know — to make it prettier.

At this point the gentleman will laugh a bellyful laugh, slap his thigh and stagger off, while wiping his eyes because a real man isn’t meant to cry.

Nevertheless, you cannot stop history. The inevitable is inevitable. There are incontrovertible reasons to believe that a decade hence, you will all be painted up like Nancy-dolls, refusing to walk in the rain for fear that your mascara will be ruined.
And you will all know what mascara is.

It started simply enough, innocuously enough, the way these things usually do, with women dropping sly hints about the similarity between the smell of men and the smell of men’s dogs.

For a while, we did our gruff, manly belly-laugh thing. We scratched our hairy backs, belched, and said amongst ourselves, “These women-people, they think they can influence our thoughts and behaviour? How ridiculous a notion is that?”

A mere handful of centuries later and we all shave, go to the gym, and smell distinctly un-doglike. They just snuck up on us — I am not sure who “they” are. I hesitate to say it is women, though they are the ringleaders, but I think it is more general. Western culture, the growth of individualism, and the diminishing ozone layer all had a part. But most of all it was the fall of marriage as a conveniently male-centric arrangement. You know: “Oga, I like your daughter.” “Agu, I like your cow.” “Okay, let us exchange.”

The days came where the man actually had to be attractive to attract the woman, hence deo, shaving products, and so on. To make them seem less radical, men’s cosmetics were packaged in gruff, butch, macho ways. With names like ‘Brut’, ‘He’ and ‘Jungle’.

Even men who were lazy as mud would be proud to wear something called Brut. Like Old Man Wekesa, the gatekeeper of the estate where I lived as a child. His job consisted of opening the gate one day, and then sitting next to it for the rest of his life. Wekesa never had to sweat, but he, too, would love to wear Brut, Jungle or Beast, and probably imagine that this ups his sex appeal and makes the neighbourhood chicks say, “That heap of rags and hair by the gate, the one which never moves save to exhale a plume or two of cigarette smoke; I think it is a human being. If so, it’s suddenly quite alluring!”

Which brought us to modern times, where we men walk around wafting the fragrance of Cool Wave, Winter Bliss and Dark Secret in our wake as we step smartly up the street, never pausing to think, where is it that we are going?

This is where we are going. The inevitable conclusion of the process started so long ago when “they” made us start using soap, is that we will wear facial makeup.

Luwum Street shopping arcades will boast men’s cosmetics counters, alongside the counter for shoes, the counter for videotapes and the counter for mobile phones.

There, you will be able to purchase men’s mascara, which is distinguishable from women’s mascara in nothing but the name. Men’s eye shadow will also be available.

Unlike the women’s variety, which is peddled by famous homosexual designers, men will be able to get theirs in rugged, manly X-treme sports range from Nike or Reebok.

It will be called “Dirt” and macho men will love it. These men will even belly laugh scornfully at gamma males who wear the cheap knock-off brand from Malaysia, called “Pirt.”

Extensive research reveals that if you type the words “men’s make up” into an internet search engine, you will discover sentences like: “Beard & Brow Shader is the ideal product. It subtly sculpts and defines areas of the face and beard, creating a strikingly handsome effect.”

What they are speaking about here, these people at mensmakeup.com, is eye shadow for men. They want to start by making you think you are buying it for your male beard.

Then when you are off your guard, they leap in to say... “Beard & Brow Shader also works great as a subtle shadow for eyes.” For the price of $14.50, excluding postage, any man in Uganda can look “strikingly handsome!”

Don’t say you were not warned.