manager_1 David Yi, a fashion and beauty expert, has written a book about how prejudice keeps men’s beauty routines secret. 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. He says, “For centuries it was as if talking about a king’s cosmetics preferences or a famous ruler’s aesthetics meant that they were feminine which meant that they were less powerful.”
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.”
