This week’s blog post is by The Paternity Test co-host Matt Boresi, who lives in the Edgewater Glen neighborhood of Chicago with his wife (“Professor Foster”) and their 5-year-old daughter Viva, who is completely on board with the “everything is pink and purple and tastes like sweeTARTS” craze.
Ah, Cosmopolitan. Allure. Popsugar. There’s nothing like a good lifestyle magazine when you want to learn about Kendall Jenner’s latest cultural appropriation, the newest eyebrow shape positively slaying social media, or — on a particularly sober news day — sizzling boudoir secrets of former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. From telling readers things they should buy to reporting on celebrities telling readers things they should buy, lifestyle magazines make this vain consumerist world go around.
Two weeks ago I reported on the Starbucks Unicorn Frappuccino, and yesterday, Stephanie Benavidez reported on a variety of other “Unicorn” foods sweeping Chicago, (including an enormous burrito I was afraid would be lavender and taste like SweeTARTS, but which turned out to just be made of unicorn meat, which looks delicious). But the lifestyle mags, they’re reporting on the new “Manicorn” look. It’s not just your coffee and your burritos that need to look like Jem and the Holograms vomited on them, your husband needs to look that way, too. At least according to “beauty influencer” Kristen Leanne. (A “beauty influencer” is someone who makes fashion and makeup decisions for people who unironically use the terms “Insta” and “Starbz.” Where is your God now?)
You may recall the “Glitter Beard” trend from a year or so ago, and my daughter Viva’s take: the “Sprinkle Beard.” Those are so over. The Manicorn look is where it’s at now, or, for those of us with offspring, the Daddicorn look. It isn’t difficult to achieve, you just need some colored mascara and a job that lets you work from home where no one will ever see you. The fashion world is hell bent on making tarted up beards happen, or at least claiming that it’s already happening. After this year’s Coachella festival, the alleged trend was “disco t**s” — a chest covered in glitter and gems. I guess if we’re playing the odds, I’m more likely to wear an aquamarine beard to Roscoe Village Burger Fest than sparkly nipples to Lollapalooza. Maybe Daddicorns really will happen.
Come on, hipster dads, most of you already have the beard of a microbrewer and the haircut of a mandolin player, you might as well go all in with some splashes of pastel and ‘corn your steeze. It’s almost Mother’s Day, and every cool mom is going to want a fuschia bagel and a husband that looks like She-Ra’s horse. She’s already ordered you a “Pony Up Daddy,” so this is really the next logical step.
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