Fashion and beauty expert David Yi has written a book that reveals how prejudice has kept men’s beauty routines hidden
The history of the male beauty ritual has been largely undocumented – and forgotten about – due to a combination of gender prejudice and misogyny, according to a new book by David Yi, writer and founder of the gender-inclusive skincare website Very Good Light. “For centuries, it is as if speaking about a king’s cosmetics predilections or a famed ruler’s aesthetics meant they were feminine which meant them being less powerful,” he says.
The author of Pretty Boys: Legendary Icons Who Redefined Beauty concludes that history omits the grooming rituals of leaders and rulers in an attempt to put a modern, heteronormative-filter on the past. Yi says: “Many historians are fearful that the men they have studied and revered would be stripped of their dignity, or perhaps even deemed less powerful, if it was discovered that they wore makeup or had a passion for being pretty.”