“He often wore make-up, even when he wasn’t on TV. Maybe it just appealed to his sense of always being a performer.” The political journalist and author Robert Harris’s damning assessment of Tony Blair last week contained many swingeing blows at the former prime minister. But few cut as deeply as Harris’s assertion that Blair is a fan of foundation.
To be revealed as a man who wears make-up for any purpose other than reducing the glare of the Newsnight studio lights would seem most emasculating. But Blair is not the only alpha male with a penchant for the pan stick. The closer Donald Trump gets to power, the bronzer he becomes — the tan-o-meter seeming to notch up a deeper shade of orange with each of his rabble-rousing speeches. Boris Johnson lately admitted, and then retracted, the fact he is now a bottle blond. Most impressive of all, on a recent trip to New York, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu caused controversy by running up grooming expenses of $1,600 on hairstyling and $1,750 on make-up.
Could it be that male make-up today is simply becoming less taboo? According to the beauty services website Treatwell (formerly known as Wahanda) men are now signing up for all sorts of grooming practices, and don’t care who knows it; Brazilian blow-dries (whereby the hair is lacquered to prevent frizz) are up 200 per cent since last year; waxing is up by 85 per cent and 25 per cent of their male clientele book a manicure.