Probably not quite as true in the UK, but the essential trend here is that more and more of us are becoming salesmen of one sort or another. Unnatural grooming is de rigeur in the biz.

I just had a V-8 straberry banana fruit smoothy after getting back from watching George Strait compete in a team roping competition at the annual rodeo here. Reading this article, I'm not quite sure what to make of that combination...

And I thought they were all like Onslow from "Keeping Up Appearances".

I figure one out of three is okay. I like fruit smoothies but prefer large dogs to small ones and don't think I even know what a pedicure is. Something to do with nails?

I would no sooner drink a smoothie than drink a wine cooler. YUCK!

As I approach my dotage, I find that I am more interested in my grooming than I ever was before. Even in a 'business casual' environment I prefer to wear a Brooks Brothers ensemble, blazer, tie, white long-sleeved shirt, Allen Edmonds shoes etc. When I was an impecunious grad student, getting me to wear a CLEAN bowling shirt and pants without holes(real ones not store-made ones) seemed like I was caving into 'The Man' too much. I do not have an explanation for this phenomenon.

As far as woofers are concerned, I generally prefer them to people. But I am Corgi fan, and Corgis are short, not small dogs. They are the Joe Morgans(the second baseman not the half-witted manager)of the canine world. Little yapper dogs like Lhasa Apsos can be very annoying.

We should all strive to be more like Hank Hill.
As for everything else:
Smoothies: Sure, why not? They taste good.
Small dogs: As long as they know their place and aren't pampered they're fine.
Pedicures: I wouldn't wish my worst enemy an encounter with my feet.

I don't know about the others girls, but Norm Abrams has been my hero since the first time I saw him on "This Old House."

What a guy!

Fruit smoothies are fine in their place, but if you've just been mowing the lawn for an hour and you're covered with sweat and stray blades of grass and you have scrapes from the rocks the mower kicked back at you and your instinctive reaction is "Man, I could really go for a fruit smoothie!" then I'd put you in the pedicure and small dogs category.

On a similar topic, I remember an article when the concept of "metrosexual" was new about a guy who used a product called "hair glue" - and it wasn't something designed to keep your beer hat on at the game. He maintained he was straight, LOL.

I'm surprised that in the course of dating several women the past year at how many quickly told me that they did not like metrosexual men. It's obviously a meme most women reject. Thankfully for them, it seems to be something that exists mostly in magazine articles and not in real life - and least not in AZ.

Chris - Yes, and the funny thing is, the MSM have been pushing this meme for decades. I remember that in the 1970s they pushed the New Sensitive Guy that all women were supposedly suddenly panting for. (I'm also told by that the MSM did the same in the 1960s, though I'm too young to remmeber that.) They did the same thing in the 1980s, with a particularly noxious twist, "Modern women like to see their men cry," ugh. Then they did exactly the same thing in the 1990s, and now in the 2000s, rebranded as "metrosexual." One thing about the MSM: Once they decide they like a meme, they're gonna push it. And push it.

And push it...

In Manhattan, there is a store that sells skirts, not Celtic kilts but honest to G-d skirts, for men. When the store opened it must have gotten 24 hours of free publicity on the local news stations and all of it was glowing, claiming this was a wonderful thing.