“Now, you know how we feel,” a female friend of mine said when I told her the following story.
I was on the beach in Miami, relaxing under an umbrella. It was a near-perfect Miami Beach day: sunny and warm with a few clouds lazily moving across the sky. I had my book and a crossword puzzle, and there was a daiquiri on the way. Did I say “near-perfect?” I meant “perfect.”
I heard buzzing overhead. I looked up to see an airplane tugging a long advertising banner. In Miami, these are usually advertising nightclubs and other events that are either too late or too loud for me. This time, though, the plane was towing a banner advertising a company called Roman.
Roman, like its competitors Hims and Keeps (yes, I promise, these are real names), sells male-specific pharmaceuticals online. They sell the things you’d expect, such as Viagra and Cialis, but also things that address related areas of male insecurity. This particular banner, for instance, was informing everyone on Miami Beach that day that male-pattern baldness was something you can attack with a pill or a foam or a liquid application. And as the plane passed overhead, the usual hum of laughter and beach conversation dropped very low, the way it does on the street when a funeral procession drives by.
It’s depressing to be relaxing on the beach, already feeling vulnerable and exposed, and be reminded that in addition to your pasty white legs and spillover gut, you’re also going bald. You’re halfway through your daiquiri and have figured out that 4 Down, “Take a break from flying, say,” is “roost,” and you’re feeling good about yourself. And then, suddenly, there’s a message in the sky telling you that you’re old and impotent.
“Now, you know how we feel,” my female friend said. “Beauty and fashion advertising makes women feel ugly and inadequate.”
But there’s business cunning in the cruelty. I sat for a moment in silence, then pulled on a T-shirt and took out my phone and investigated the services that Roman has to offer. After a short online chat or voice call with an actual doctor, you can order a variety of medications designed to compensate for weakened or dwindling masculinity.
These businesses sell you things for your baldness, your impotence, even your work-related anxiety. Two of them sell vitamin supplements in gummy bear form, and all of them sell wrinkle cream. Customers are assured that the package will arrive in a discreet carton. Your letter carrier or UPS delivery driver will not know about your secret shame.
But there’s nothing to be ashamed of! That’s the message these companies want to impart, though it all seems a bit disingenuous. It’s embarrassment that drives the customer to those sites in the first place. The men who appear in the promotional materials all seem young and fit, untroubled by date-night humiliation or an alarming number of hairs in the bathroom sink. The ads seem to say, “These are just dudes, just bros like you!” But if there’s one thing that separates the dudes and the bros from other guys, it’s a full head of lustrous hair and an easy confidence with the ladies.
It would be inaccurate to call my hair “full” or “lustrous,” but my barber assures me that I still have plenty up top. And there’s nothing wrong with showing a little more forehead as a gentleman moves through life. Also, I do not suffer from work-related anxiety. And while I don’t think I could make a living out of it, I do OK in the bedroom. So as I scrolled through the Roman website, I felt a little better about myself. There’s nothing there for me to buy.
Except for wrinkle cream. I do have lines etched below my eyes and around my mouth. My crow’s feet have been with me long enough to have developed tributaries of their own. So I took the required up-close photographs, had a brief back-and-forth with the online doctor, and by the time I got home to New York, there was a simple brown box waiting for me that contained two kinds of face cream.
That was almost three months ago. So far, I can detect no difference in my wrinkles or crinkles, and my crow’s feet seem to be making the same steady march across my temples. The cream is expensive and ineffective, but I keep ordering more because, well, what if it starts to work?
“Now, you know how we feel,” my female friend said.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
