At 4Voo, a seven-year-old Canadian company, sales have tripled over the last four years, according to Marek Hewryk, the founder. Its products — all targeted to men — include a lipstick-shaped concealer called Confidence Corrector ($34); a Lash and Brow Styling Glaze, applied with a mascara wand ($23); and even an eyeliner ($19).
This has everything to do with women, as a group, having more money now than ever before in the history of money.
It used to be - and still is in too many parts of the world - that men bought and sold women - their daughters usually. Usually women were sold into marriage, legally, although kidnapping women into sex slavery or selling your daughter into prostitution is becoming increasingly popular.
Men were the sexual consumers, women were the sexual commodities. Now that many women have money and aren't forced to marry the highest bidder, women are becoming sexual consumers, which means that men now have to work on their appearance, as women have always done.
There's still plenty of resistance of course. I am convinced that the current trend of young men growing big ugly beards is essentially a declaration by men that no, they won't be valued according to their appearance - that's degrading to men, to be judged according to their aesthetic appeal, the way women have.
It's just a matter of time before even the beardos have to face reality.
Now if we can just cure male pattern baldness.