I like my man in.......makeup? Guyliner takes the main stage.

An old article I thought I would share with the masses....er....handfuls.

Courtesy of the Vista (November 9, 2006)


It seems like everywhere you look these days, male rockers are adding a little flair to their style. They travel with makeup kits and artfully apply their eyeliner before shows, photo shoots and TV appearances. Did I say eyeliner? I’m sorry, I meant guyliner—the new socially acceptable pop- culture term for the trend that seems to be taking over the music scenes.

In the wake of the metrosexual’s entrance into society, it’s become increasingly tolerable for men to don more makeup than their female counterparts. Bands like the Killers and 30 Seconds to Mars have stepped into the spotlight and spread this image to the mass public. Looking back, men in makeup has always had a place in rock and roll.

Most notably, kings of rock Elvis Presley and Little Richard commonly wore eyeliner to enhance their physical appearance at concerts in much the same way that most actors wear stage makeup. Two decades later, a variety of artists took the makeup persona to two drastically different levels.

Stadium rock bands like Kiss and glam rock artists like the New York Dolls and David Bowie used makeup to paint themselves as larger than life. Makeup became an integral part of their images and worked to distance them from their audience. Conversely, punk and goth acts like Alice Cooper, the Cure and Bauhaus used heavy dark eyeliner to not only set themselves apart from other musicians, but more basically, to scare people. If a guy walked down the street dressed in all black with spiked or mussed hair (á la Robert Smith) he could expect to meet stares of terror from kids and looks of disapproval from parents.

However, in today’s music scene, guyliner has reemerged as the new couture in the vein of the overdone glam rock of the late 70s and early 80s.

While some bands like nu-metal kings Slipknot maintain the fear-mongering image with makeup and masks, most emo artists today have used makeup to create a new image for themselves.

Bands like Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance don guyliner in what appears to be a reflection of their music—an outward display of their inner melancholia if you will—but they have missed the mark of symbolic and landed right on androgyny.

The most egregious offender however? Pop-punk fashionistas Panic! at the Disco have taken cheesy makeup to astronomical levels in the interest of defining themselves, which only brings them more ridicule from punk purists than their music already does.

So, the question remains, will this trend extend further into the public consciousness and have boys fixing their guyliner between classes, or will this fade into fashion obscurity along with scrunchies?