Garbos in, bankers out

Bankers and travel workers worried about job security may consider rubbish collecting or selling skin care products to men as gloom descends on the employment front.

Other potential losers as job cuts mount include tyre manufacturers, boat builders and - to the dismay of few - real estate agents.

New job openings are likely to become harder to find as the economy teeters on the brink of a recession and employers place new hirings on ice or cull staff numbers.

Glimmers of jobs growth, though, are appearing, according to IBISWorld, a research firm. These include the market for consumer goods touting a ''feel good'' factor for buyers, especially for men in need of a bit of a spruce up (perhaps before that next job interview.)

''The 'manscaping' trend is...growing; with men becoming increasing aware of skin care regimes and products specifically marketed to men will deliver a boost to companies producing male-oriented grooming products,'' IBISWorld said.

''The result will be openings for more cosmetic and toiletry salespeople, as well as laboratory technicians and those involved in the manufacturing side of the business.''

Job losses ahead

Tips on job-hunting are likely to be in demand, as the economy stalls, sending jobless numbers skyward.

On Thursday, labour figures out for December are likely to show a fall of 20,000 jobs, economists predict, nudging the jobless rate up to 4.5%, from 4.4% in November. Most analysts predict that rate to rise to 6% or higher in 2009.

As in many countries, the financial sector has been among the hardest hit by the economic crisis, with ANZ Bank and GE Money among those announcing big staff cuts, with more to come.

''(C)ommercial banks will be forced to cut jobs, with many of the losses to come from middle management as operators attempt to rationalise their hierarchies,'' said IBIS World general manager Robert Bryant in a statement. A number of foreign banks will also exit the market, ''resulting in major job cuts,'' he said.

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/

Of men and moob jobs

There was the gym and the diet. Now there's waxing, the mirdle and the £800 million British men spent on grooming last year ... Welcome to the brave new world of male beauty, says Howard Jacobson

To any straight man born before about 1970 the idea of male beauty - of men being thought beautiful or going out of their way to make themselves beautiful - was, and in part remains, embarrassing. As one of those men - the straight and born before 1970, I mean, not the beautiful - I acknowledge that this embarrassment is foolish. The Greeks and Romans had no difficulty with the concept of male beauty; neither, in Shakespeare's day, did the English. At school we could never understand that earring Shakespeare is pictured wearing in the only half-reliable portrait of him there is. Weren't earrings for pansies? But of course that was just the 19th and 20th centuries speaking. Victorian puritanism reserved male beauty for paintings of Christ, and the twentieth century saw too much war and destruction to be able to dwell on the loveliness of the male physique. If men were beautiful, they were beautiful in death. So what we are seeing now - the pampering and exfoliating, the waxing and moisturising, the unabashed vanity and flouncing - is more a reversal than an innovation. After a 200-year sleep, men are back as beauties in their own right.

We were, of course, always vain, though we no more called it vanity than we called it beautifying ourselves. Handsome would have been the word we used - men were handsome or interestingly attractive, not beautiful. And even to be ugly had its own cachet, as ugliness was thought to go with brains and a greater attention to foreplay. 'Fascinatingly ugly' was a phrase I remember women bandying about in the Sixties. I'm not saying we aspired to it, but if that was the best that was on offer, we took it.

We would have hesitated before calling vanity by its real name as well. Aftershave surely wasn't vanity. Deodorant surely wasn't vanity.

Smelling nice was just the least we could do: a matter of self-esteem, good manners and, yes, becoming more sexually persuasive. We attended to our hair, minutely conscious - to within a quarter of an inch - of the latest fashion, though I would never have spent as a boy a quarter of what I spend at the hairdresser's now. This, I admit, is partly the pride of a man who has more hair left than most of his contemporaries, but it also marks a relaxation of the old rigid gender demarcations. I have my hair done at a women's hairdresser now. I am particular about the conditioner that's used on me. 'Body Full,' I say, not ashamed to know. Forty years ago my barber would whisper a bewildering inventory of illicit pleasures into my ear - transistor radios, washing machines, Jaguar XKs, loose women. Now I discuss the state of my roots with my hairdresser, nutritional additives for my scalp, and the 'product' I should be using. When I come out of the hairdresser I look at myself in the windows of every shop I pass. But then I always did that.

We were acutely self-conscious about our appearance, that's what I'm saying. It mattered to us how we looked, not only to girls but to one another, because what we saw in one another was how we looked to girls. I kept my collar bones in their own packets, so important to me was it to have the right ones for the right shirts. Shirt collars that turned up at the edges made a fool of a man, in my view. You could not be witty in any company if your collars did not lie flat, nor could you be attractive to a woman. I was similarly fastidious about the length of the ties I wore, the colour of my socks, the amount of cuff I showed. No woman would have spent more time in front of the mirror than I spent checking that my nostrils were clear or that there was nothing left of lunch showing between my teeth.

But we were still a long way from the unguents and the jewellery that modern men take for granted. Yes, we would have found most of it effeminate. And when the jewellery started to appear I, for one, did not know where to look. I still don't, to be honest. Most men look fools in earrings and all men look fools in necklaces. That's not my age speaking, it's fact. An elegantly attenuated boy can get away with it, but a pearl stud in a podgy ear or a gold chain round the red neck of a Chelsea supporter are and always will be the height of fatuity. Nevertheless, much has become acceptable that we would have shied from like wild ponies in the past. We got away with scent by calling it aftershave. I had stopped shaving by the age of 17 but I never went out without sploshing aftershave on my face and down the inside of my shirt. In other places, too, which it were better I don't divulge. What I splosh on myself now - Givenchy, by preference - no longer disguises itself as aftershave. It is fragrance or cologne. And 'fragrance' you can dab anywhere without apology. So why beat about the bush? I am a man who wears perfume.

I am also a man who goes to the gym, which is a mystery considering how much I loathed the gym when I was at school. A fair amount of what I didn't like then I still don't. Getting hot, getting sweaty, getting tired, doing anything that might end in my being upside down. I am a strictly vertical, right-way-up person, my visits to the gym sedate occasions on which I read the morning papers, sip water set at an ambient temperature out of a paper cup, stroll a half a mile or so on the treadmill - the speed moderate, the incline slight - and then lie for 40 minutes on the mat, looking up at the ceiling, thinking my thoughts, and from time to time bringing my knees as close to my chest as I can get them, which isn't close at all by the standards of the gym I go to. Occasionally I mess about with weights. The fantasy that I might develop a triangular torso that is the envy of other men and causes women to gasp when I pass them on the street has never left me. We all had Charles Atlas chest expanders as schoolboys. We all worked out on hand grips underneath our desks. But it wasn't beauty we aspired to, it was bulk. We wanted to know we could punch our way out of sticky situations. We wanted to be feared and admired for our strength, not the exquisiteness of our contours.

So this, too, has changed, because it is the beauty of the built body I now covet. The most unexpected men - bankers, insurance agents, filing clerks - today have muscles we did not know existed in the Sixties, long upper arms that appear to have double the number of biceps we had - biceps major and biceps minor - and shoulders it would once have taken a lifetime of coal-heaving to acquire. I would like to look like that myself, I don't mind admitting, and sometimes press heavier weights than I should in the hope that it is not too late - a hope that invariably ends up with me stiff-necked like Quasimodo at the chiropractor, being told that it is unwise, after a certain age, to exceed one's limit. So what is one's limit? A pound of butter pressed from a sitting-comfortably position?

You can take a horse to water but you cannot make him drink. Not with other horses, if he doesn't want to, anyway. The communal showering at the gym is the hardest part for me. I never did like that as a boy, but no one liked it then. We were ashamed of our nakedness and embarrassed by the nakedness of others. Other men, I mean. Girls were different but we weren't offered the option of showering with girls. Judging from the way men cavort in the shower rooms in my West-End gym, no such shame any longer exists. Where we used to shower in corners, sliding ourselves surreptitiously in and out of our towels, they strut their backsides and their genitals like pole dancers. Their backsides are more shocking than their genitals. How it has happened I cannot explain, but naked and from behind men are hemispherically fuller and plummier than they used to be. Perhaps it's exercise, perhaps it's diet, or maybe it's one of those Darwinian changes that can be explained only by a shift in sexual expectation - men quite simply needing to be more voluptuous because women expect it. That's what it looks like, anyway - a beauty parade.

Another thought occurs to me as I turn my back to the shower cubicles, adjust my towel, and pull my clothes on underneath it, item by item, from my locker - and that is that this beauty contest is not simply for women (there are no women here, after all), and not simply for men who like to look at men either, but is an expression of jungle competitiveness, a need to be confident in your fitness and your beauty and your youth - for beauty in our society is a token of the bloom of youth - in order to succeed professionally. Are men finally discovering for themselves what women have known forever: that there is no crueller taskmaster, in work as in love, than appearance?

You would think that those of us who are past having anything to prove would be immune from this blackmail, but we are not. Indeed there is defiance in our assertion of our right to go on being as beautiful as we choose. 'You're worth it,' Pierce Brosnan says in a new ad for L'Oréal for men. Not the usual L'Oréal 'Because you're worth it', which implies that the woman is having second thoughts, wondering what right she has to throw money at her appearance. We men are not apologising or explaining. We're worth it, full stop. All of us.

A tattoo around my midriff remains out of the question, as do ear studs, bracelets, and a scrotum wax, but the collar bones and shirt cuffs matter more than ever, and so does weight. A nutritionist and dietician has me on wholemeal bread - which I find disgusting - and no carbs in the evening - which I find heartbreaking. My wine is down to 15 units a week, though we argue as to what constitutes a unit. She says a small glass, I say a magnum. We compromise at a litre bottle. And when I order a cappuccino I must stipulate skimmed milk. There is a phrase for it. A skinny cappuccino. Rather than say, 'A skinny cappuccino, please,' I would have my navel pierced. But I would not rather put on weight. It is unbecoming in a man who is too old to press anything other than a pound of butter (all right, low-fat margarine) to carry a swelling Falstaffian gut before him. Unhealthy but also, yes, unbeautiful.

I do not yet have to dye my hair. Not only is it still plentiful, it is still golden. But my beard is whitening by the day and though I have so far resisted darkening it, I don't know if I will forever. I thought I would be happy to look like Hemingway at the last, as I thought I would be happy to look like Falstaff. Life forces, both of them. But the lineaments of laughter and experience are no longer valued. It doesn't matter how old he is, some last lingering remnant of the loveliness of youth is now required of a man as it has always been required of a woman. Serve us right. We have demanded this of our spouses and mistresses and now they demand it of us.

Do not go gently into that good night - go as the young go: heroic in your hunger, flat-stomached, plucked and painted, smelling like the Beckhams' bathroom cabinet, so many Cupids and Apollos with Senior Railcards in their Armani wallets.

Howard jacobson
The Observer

ck one Launches a New Worldwide Advertising Campaign

NEW YORK -- Calvin Klein, Inc. a wholly owned subsidiary of Phillips-Van Heusen Corporation announced today that Calvin Klein Fragrances, a unit of Coty Prestige, will launch a new worldwide advertising campaign for ck one, giving voice to the optimistic spirit of a new ck one generation.

Fifteen years after the fragrance debuted -- as the world's original shared fragrance and most successful launch to date -- the ck one "we are one" campaign offers an uplifting message of unity. The television spot features a large cast of men and women of diverse ages and ethnicities singing an original song about the power of people coming together as one. The campaign continues the legacy of ck one's iconic black and white imagery and of-the-moment casting and injects the brand with a positive point of view and compelling campaign front man in musician Jamie Burke.

"The ck one "we are one" campaign is inspired by a social movement of people coming together in the spirit of unity, connecting a diverse range of ages, races, genders, and cultures," says Catherine Walsh, Senior Vice President of American Fragrances, Coty Prestige. "The heart of the campaign is a powerful original song, which reminds us of the common language of music."

"Having maintained its status as an iconic global brand, ck one is as relevant today as it was when it first launched in 1994," says Malcolm Carfrae, EVP, Global Communications, Calvin Klein, Inc. "Since then, ck one advertising campaigns have become famous for their creative direction as well as for the talent featured. At the forefront of this most recent introduction is musician Jamie Burke, who has also appeared in two recent Calvin Klein Jeans campaigns. The latest ck one campaign strikes a chord by reflecting a spirit of unity through music and the current zeitgeist of social change and optimism."

The campaign was directed by Trey Laird of Laird + Partners in conjunction with Calvin Klein, Inc.'s in-house creative studio, CRK Advertising. The print campaign is a virtual portrait gallery of striking and uplifting black and white images of a celebratory group of beautifully unique men, women, and children on a mountaintop, shot by photographer Steven Meisel.

"What's incredible about Calvin Klein is that it always manages to reflect what's going on in the world, sometimes even before it happens," says Trey Laird the campaign's consulting creative director. "I think with the original ck one launch over a decade ago there was a little bit of angst, a little bit of independence and rebelliousness that was reflected in the people in those ads. It was very right for the time and really struck a chord. Today people are more about getting involved, being part of a solution, and coming together with hope for the future. It's not just about you; it's really about what you can do in your part of the world."

The ads were shot on location at the Big Sky Ranch in Simi Valley, California and feature a cast of 27 men, women, and children from all over the world. Ranging in age from three to 40+, the group includes a pair of sisters, and a mother and son -- all led by musician Jamie Burke. Burke's striking looks and natural rock star persona led to him being cast in the Spring and Fall 2007 Calvin Klein Jeans campaigns. He emerged as the front man of the ck one "we are one" campaign, performing and producing the campaign's original song. ck one campaigns have always presented intriguing casting; the original campaign featured Kate Moss and a group of "Gen X" hipsters including Donovan Leitch, Stella Tennant, Jenny Shimizu, and Kirsten Owen, who also appears in the current campaign.

Set on a mountain top, the television campaign, directed by Francis Lawrence (I am Legend, Constantine), is a free-spirited display of togetherness amongst the t-shirts and jeans clad cast. Television commercials begin airing globally later this month in :60, :45, :30, :20, :15, and :10 spots. The print campaign will premiere in February 2009 magazines around the world.

A limited edition ck one collector's bottle with "we are one" handwritten in various languages and packaged with an mp3 speaker, will launch the campaign. The collector's edition will be available at fine department and specialty stores globally, also beginning this month.

Calvin Klein, Inc. is one of the leading fashion design and marketing studios in the world. It designs and markets women's and men's designer collection apparel and a range of other products that are manufactured and marketed through an extensive network of licensing agreements and other arrangements worldwide. Brands/lifestyles include Calvin Klein Collection, ck Calvin Klein, Calvin Klein, Calvin Klein Jeans, and Calvin Klein Underwear. Product lines under the various Calvin Klein brands include apparel, accessories, shoes, sleepwear, hosiery, socks, swimwear, belts, eyewear, watches, jewelry, coats, suits, fragrances, and cosmetics, as well as products for the home.

Phillips-Van Heusen Corporation is one of the world's largest apparel companies. It owns and markets the Calvin Klein brand worldwide. It is the world's largest shirt and neckwear company and markets a variety of goods under its own brands, Van Heusen, Calvin Klein, IZOD, ARROW, Bass and G.H. Bass & Co., and its licensed brands, including Geoffrey Beene, Kenneth Cole New York, Kenneth Cole Reaction, unlisted, A Kenneth Cole Production, BCBG Max Azria, BCBG Attitude, MICHAEL Michael Kors, Sean John, Chaps, Donald J. Trump Signature Collection, JOE Joseph Abboud, Tommy Hilfiger, Perry Ellis Portfolio, DKNY, and Timberland.

Coty Inc. is the largest fragrance company in the world and one of the leaders in global beauty with net sales of approximately USD $4 billion. Coty Inc. operates in over 25 countries and sells its products in both broad and select distribution channels in over 80 markets spanning the Americas, Europe and Asia. Coty Inc. has an impressive portfolio of over 30 well recognized celebrity, designer and lifestyle brands. Top sellers include Calvin Klein, adidas, Rimmel, Davidoff, Lancaster, Jennifer Lopez, Jil Sander, Joop! and Kenneth Cole. Additional distinctive brands include Aspen, Astor, Baby Phat, Celine Dion, Cerruti, Chopard, Chupa Chups, David & Victoria Beckham, Esprit, Exclamation, Isabella Rossellini, Jette Joop, Jovan, Marc Jacobs, Miss Sixty, Miss Sporty, Nautica, Nikos, Pierre Cardin, Sarah Jessica Parker, Shania Twain, Stetson, Vanilla Fields, Vera Wang and Vivienne Westwood. For further information on Coty Inc. and its products, please visit www.coty.com.

For more information on ck one, go to www.ckone.com.