Real Men Wear 'Guyliner'

Are you a real man? Do you wear eyeliner? I hadn't noticed when it first came out, but one of the taglines for Pirates of the Caribbean has been "Real men wear eyeliner." The phrase is obviously trying to capitalize on the suddenly new and bizarre trend of male eyeliner, which Jack Sparrow dons in all of the Pirate flicks. Even Keith Richards, who plays Sparrow's father, went home with six extra little sticks of the dark paste because he liked it so much.

This fad isn't exclusive to the swashbuckling franchise, Tobey Maguire could be found wearing it in the latest installment of Spider-Man 3. Also, bands such as My Chemical Romance, Panic! At the Disco, Green Day, 30 Second to Mars, Fall Out Boy, and The Killers all darken their eyes. This male eyeliner was recently dubbed guyliner to help add to its chic in the hopes of catering to a younger male, and assuredly more emo, demographic. Collen Mastony noted: "Not since Alice Cooper got creative with kohl and David Bowie had fun with eye shadow during the colorful days of glam rock, have so many rock stars and leading men become enamored with the wonders of the cosmetics aisle."

Is there even a market for this stuff? Actually, $4.8 million was spent on male grooming products in the U.S. last year, which is up 7 percent from the previous year and 42 percent since 2001. Still it's hard to imagine male cosmetics really taking hold in Middle America, but even the unanimously-voted manliest of men, Bruce Willis, has allegedly admitted to wearing a little makeup in his own movies. When his manliness was recently questioned by FoxNews, Bruce shot back, "Look, real men should be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their cosmetics!" In related news, 20^th Century Fox is now considering this supposedly oft-repeated quote by Willis as their tagline for the next Die Hard movie: Live Free or Dye It.