Through the Eyes of a Straight Guy: Straight guys and make-up? I only know two reasons. A girl and acne.

I don't know when you discovered the magic of makeup. When you were little, when you were playing? As a teenager, when you wanted to break into modeling? Or as college students enjoying the luxuries of the big city? It's different for everyone, but for me and my crew, it was the latter. First year of college. Second year of college. And maybe third year of college. Then, I guess naturally, there came a point where we decided we were too pretty for makeup.

Oh, by the way. I don't believe anyone who says they've never tried it. Everyone has wanted to avoid that awkward moment when you have a big red traffic light in the middle of your forehead. And that's worse than not enough beard, which is also a problem.

You'll graduate. You go to college. Adult. But somehow everyone knows you're not an adult. Why is that? Because your face is adorned with something adults can't. Acne. A pimple. A rocket. Red giant. And so were some of us. Sure, we all had a friend who had smooth skin.

Idiot.

We hated him. But that's the way it is. Like a pretty girl has to have an ugly friend. It's not in the books, but everybody knows it.

But then you're at that college. You want to be on par with everyone else. And that's how we discovered the magic of makeup. A little bit here, a little bit there, and my skin looked fantastic. We thought. The ego suddenly made a hole in the ceiling. Now we can compete with the guys who can afford to spend thousands on skin care. Here we go. At the time, we were following a lesson that Bolek Polívka articulated so well.

I don't mind the bitter cold. I don't mind a torrential downpour. I don't mind uncomfortable heat. I love any weather that drives me to the pub.

And so we went.

The pub. To the bar. For music. On Mondays. On Tuesdays. Wednesday. Thursday. And all the time.

We wanted to have fun. We wanted girls. We were tired of studying. We liked this idea of college life. It cost me personally my first year of college. Too much partying. Little time to study and do chores.

So you used makeup to boost your self-esteem and cover up imperfections, because that's what matters. De facto, you put makeup all over your face to make it symmetrical. Then it was out the door.

Or there's the other pole.

I had a friend who used to put a little makeup around his eyes. And always just around the eyes. Why is that? Right at the beginning of our pizza binges, he learned from a girl that she had very pretty eyes.

True or false?

It didn't matter. We enjoyed watching his almost surgical concentration as he applied makeup around his eyes. He wanted them to stand out. He saw it as a strength. And to his credit, he heard it many times in the years that followed, so it bore fruit.

I repeat. We weren't metrosexual. We just wanted to please the girls. Enjoy college privileges. And that's why we allowed ourselves to enjoy this means of support. But mostly, we didn't find it weird. We just took it that way. We wanted to be courted and confident. Because next to our older fellow students, we had a handicap. Maturity. But we grew up there. By then, we had to sacrifice 20 or 30 minutes of prep and makeup slapping.

I even remember stealing makeup from my mom when we attacked bars in our family town. She was freaking out.

What about today's 20-somethings?

I don't know. It seems to me that these guys today are all infected with a healthy lifestyle. We smoked. We drank. Slept in. I don't have as much insight today as I did with the generation 10 years behind me, but I have a feeling. Maybe you can disprove it.

They all work out. Drinking different potions of different colors. All it takes is two beers and they're on top of Everest. But they're fitter. They're more Adonis. I think it's the time of year, too. Nowadays, healthy eating and healthy living is promoted a lot more. Cigarettes cost so much that they're becoming a rare commodity.

So logically, these guys must have healthier bodies. Less harmful substances. And I wish them well. Every generation has its own thing. But ours had this. Or rather, our gang back then had this. We used to show films on the wall of the Academy of Sciences. We smoked out of our apartment windows. Drinking hard liquor out of bottles.

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...and dealt with their acne with makeup.