He-wax Gets the Trousers Down, Full Compliance with IFRA Standards Reported

Now that “metrosexual” has graduated from the fringe to the mainstream—as most U.S. beauty professionals, such as those who have a cosmetology license or cosmetology CE credentials well know—a new but natural addition to the menfolk’s brave march to the beauty salons has hit the headlines once more: he-wax.

Not that men have gotten any braver in the short time it took to say without flinching “I’m going to the beauty salon, Dear,” but the nouveau trend to be more groomed has driven more and more men to seek measures hitherto reserved for the ladies. And that, painfully, now includes depilation of the gentlemen’s nether parts.
The New York Times says the eponymous named he-wax (men’s bikini waxing, or Boyzilian, for the uninitiated) has caught the beauty industry with its pants down.

It reports that he-wax now accounts for a big percentage of the business in some shops—for instance, as much as 70 percent of the weekly business at Face to Face, an off-the-beaten-track male salon in Manhattan. “In the past two years, it’s been crazy,” said proprietor Enrique Ramirez in the Times article. For $85 per rip, men of straight or not-so-gay persuasion are more than willing to drop their trousers.

As with she-wax, salon aestheticians strongly recommend aftercare, the risk of infection being heightened because of ingrown hairs, particularly where the hair was originally thick and curly. They advise for the next 24 hours after depilation abstaining from hot baths, workouts, and anything that can get the defuzzed area overheated. For some men, unfortunately, that might include the steamy romp in bed, too.

And some more good news. All perfumes evaluated within the sixth cycle of the IFRA Compliance Program, which covers the period May 2011 to May 2012, were found to be fully compliant with the IFRA Code of Practice, according to the International Fragrance Association (IFRA) through a statement.

IFRA is the official representative body of the worldwide fragrance industry. Its stated mission is to ensure through a dedicated scientific program that fragrance products available worldwide are safe to use.
Every year, the IFRA conducts, through an independent testing laboratory, a series of tests that check for the presence of prohibited or regulated substances in selected fragrance formulations that are available on the global market.

The latest batch involved 50 fragranced products that included not just fine fragrances but also body-care products and household products randomly chosen from 450 marketed products from ten different countries.

“This sixth cycle of our compliance program has once again demonstrated that the standards are adhered to. Our objective at IFRA is to ensure the safety of fragrance products for the consumer and the environment,” stated IFRA president Pierre Sivac. “We look to achieve this by evaluating the safety of ingredients through the industry’s research centre, RIFM, and by setting industry policy based on the outcome of exhaustive independent reviews of the results by a panel of experts. Our industry has collectively undertaken the responsibility of enacting this compliance program to ensure that the IFRA standards are respected and I am very pleased that the results of this latest cycle show 100 percent compliance.”