At a university where male students wear pink polo shirts and use more hair product than some of the women, it's getting harder to find true "guy's guys."
On a quest to find one of the few men on campus who has remained impervious to facials, pedicures and other oddities that his "O.C."-watching peers crave more and more, The State Press Magazine finds ASU aerospace engineering senior Mark Grupczynski and gives him the challenge of a lifetime: Get a facial and pedicure and share the experience with the student body. Both will be paid for by SPM, of course.
Grupczynski, who is in man world on Sunday afternoon sitting on his black leather couch, watching a football game and scarfing pizza, couldn't get further from being a metrosexual -- a heterosexual man who places fashion and self-maintenance almost as high on the to-do list as he does women and sports. Grupczynski says he has never participated in such foolishness and that such men are nonexistent.
"There's no such thing as metrosexual," he says. "Even if they date girls, they're all in the closet. Why would you want to look gay if you're straight?"
SPM tears Grupczynski away from the Sunday game and coaxes him into entering a world of pampering, a world Grupczynski calls "ridiculous and a waste of time."
First stop: female-filled Beauty Brands for a facial. Grupczynski follows esthetician Jennifer Coates into the facial room, where she tells him to take off his shirt and lay down on a bed that looks more like it belongs in a doctor's office.
"On my back?" Grupczynski asks.
"Well, it is a facial," Coates says.
"That makes sense then," Grupczynski says.
Grupczynski lies down on the bed, hands in his pockets, feet tapping nervously.
"Is it illegal for me to open my eyes?" he asks.
Coates places cotton pads over his eyes and wraps a warm towel around his head. As steam blows in his face, she tells him she is starting the exfoliation process.
"I love exfoliation," he says sarcastically.
Coates pulls out something that looks like a glue gun with a big yellow tip at the end.
"Geez, Jennifer, what are you doing to me?" he asks. "It feels like a little toothbrush on my face. I have no idea what's on my face. Is it colored?"
She assures him that what is on his face is not colored. Then, she finishes exfoliating and moves on to the dreaded extraction process. She concentrates on Grupczynski's nose, where she squeezes blackheads using a small, silver tool. Coates tells Grupczynski that she is "getting some good stuff."
"You can see all of the stuff coming out," she says. "This is my favorite part."
Coates says she has about 10 male clients a month and that most come in for facials and waxing.
"Most want their eyebrows waxed," she says. "But bodybuilders wax everything. Guys are definitely the biggest babies, though, when it comes to pain."
After blackhead removal, Coates begins a grape seed oil massage.
"Now this feels good," Grupczynski says as Coates rubs the oil over his face and upper body.
Coates finishes up, and Grupczynski is whisked away to Comely Nails for a pedicure.
"This is going to be horrible," he says. "I have the biggest big toes you've ever seen; they're like oranges. I don't ever wash my feet. I don't ever look at the bottom of them either. And I wear sandals in the summer, and they just get nasty."
Grupczynski is shown to a pedicure chair. He quickly informs the pedicurist that he is a "first-timer."
"That's one thing I don't do very often: the toenail clips," he says. "I really have no clue what's going on here."
But then Grupczynski spots something all guy's guys recognize as one of their closest friends: the remote control. The massage chair's remote quickly becomes his security blanket throughout the harrowing experience. He masters the controls, leaning the chair back to a 45-degree angle and intensifying the massage while the pedicurist takes a sander to his feet.
Grupczynski's sense of security is short-lived, however. He soon notices he is the only male customer in the salon.
"I feel really gay being here," he says. "I really do. So are we hitting up the tanning booth after this?"
An older lady next to him pats him on the shoulder and asks if he is all right.
"I just get really nervous when people touch my feet," he says. "I don't have any clue what any of this crap they're putting on my feet is."
The pedicurist squirts pink lotion on his feet and calves and begins the massage, or what Grupczynski terms as the "she's hitting my foot" portion of the pedicure. A younger woman next to him informs him that it's called a massage and that he should really consider getting his eyebrows waxed next.
"Thanks, I think I'll pass on that, though," he says. Grupczynski is getting cranky.
The massage is over, and after deciding there are no shades of pink suitable for his toes, Grupczynski is released from the hostage situation.
He says he still thinks pedicures and facials are a waste of money, and although having a glowing face and clean feet is nice, he'd rather "spend the money on booze."
"I didn't like being probed during the extractions, and I don't like people touching my feet," he says. "I'm ticklish. I wanted to kick her in the face a couple of times. But the calf massage was great. (It) had a tingling sensation that I enjoyed, and the head massage felt pretty good."
Reach the reporter at heather.wells@asu.edu.
