Shane Hegarty's encyclopaedia of modern Ireland
Would Ulysses be considered the greatest novel in English if James Joyce had started it this way: "Stately, plump, evenly self-tanned Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror, a razor and a tube of Lancôme Homme Rasage Velours Mousse lay crossed. A copy of Men's Health tucked under his oxter, he held the bowl aloft and intoned - I'm going to get a wax. Crack, back and sack"?
The male-grooming industry has exploded. Men moisturise, exfoliate, shower more than twice a week. Body hair has become something to be particularly embarrassed about. Men pluck their nostril hair and zap their monobrows. They let strange women wave hot gooey strips at parts of their bodies that Irishmen wouldn't have shown their wives two decades ago. There is nothing that better encapsulates their metamorphosis than the fact that men now have bikini lines. Our forefathers would turn in their graves, if it didn't mean getting tangled up in their nostril hair.
Many Irishmen pursue the "Lynx effect", even if, in many instances, this means reeking like a teenager who has sprayed half a can of deodorant over unwashed armpits. But the quest for beauty goes deeper. A survey showed that one in 10 Irishmen would consider getting cosmetic surgery and that the most popular procedure was an eye-bag lift. Wouldn't that take away something quintessential about being an Irishman? Wouldn't it erase his history, flatten his character?
There's nothing wrong with men scrubbing up, of course. It's about the Irishman scraping the earth from under his fingernails - and not just in a metaphorical sense. It's about him looking in the mirror and saying: "You know, I no longer believe my rampant ear hair is particularly attractive to the modern woman."
But if there's nothing wrong with persuading men that they shouldn't always look and smell as if they've slept in a field, there are plenty of unreconstructed Irishmen who wonder if we haven't lost something of our Irishness when we enter an era in which grandfathers carry the aroma not of mothballs and mustiness but of Manly Brand Walnut Exfoliating Body Scrub. Perhaps they feel threatened by the gradual feminisation of manhood. Should they be concerned? Well, how might men react were there a similar masculinisation of women? If ladies let their moustaches grow, let their leg hair run wild and decided that rubbing an old T-shirt under their armpits was an acceptable daily hygiene regime?