Modern maintenance
In the battle to be the best a man can be, the 21st-century boy is confronted by the same question again and again: where to draw the line?
Laser surgery to correct imperfect eyesight, cosmetic dentistry to give you a perfect smile - this is now the kind of routine self-improvement that we get done in our lunch break. But brother - where does it end?
Over the last year I have had two red-blooded males inform me that they plan to invest in a bottom lift. And to me - sorry - that just feels like a self-improvement too far. Yet there is no denying that men are missing out on a lot of the things that women take for granted, and that make them healthier, happier and lovelier. And don't men have the right to be healthier, happier and lovelier too?
What about the facial? To many men - for example, me - the facial has always been on the dark side of what is acceptable for a man. A bit too poncey. A tad too girly. Which just goes to show how far men still have to go.
Your dads and uncles would have distrusted facials. I have been to the mountain, and I have had a facial - and I see at last what I have been missing for years.
This just in - real men get facials. "The face is not another planet," says Su-Man Hsu. "Even men who are very fit, are fanatics about going to the gym, who care very much about the state of their bodies - even these men neglect their faces."
Here the London-based Taiwanese health guru shoots me a dirty look.
"As though the face is somehow separate from the rest of the body," she says. "And it is not. But the reason why most facials in the world are ineffectual rubbish - even the facials you will get at five-star spas - is because they treat the face as separate from everything else. Fools!"
Su-Man Hsu is a body therapist with a client base so A-list you feel a little self-conscious about going to see her if you have never won an Oscar. Indeed, having an Academy Award on your mantelpiece is no guarantee that she will be able to fit you in. During a recent visit to London, one awardee called three times and still couldn't be squeezed in. Sorry, Su-Man's diary is pretty full.
The actress got a knockback because Su-Man was whipping another certain Oscar-winning French actress into shape. But she would have got a knockback even if Su-Man had been fully booked with the high-end housewives and investment bankers who also comprise her client list. She is fanatically loyal to her clients, and they remain devoted to her. Even post-crunch, she is big in the City. When you see an investment banker jump off a roof, Su-Man Hsu is probably the reason his skin looks so good.
Juliette Binoche, the late Anthony Minghella, James Bond director Marc Foster, Harry Potter producer David Heyman - they all take off their shoes and check their egos at the door when they come to Su-Man's spa (a beautiful, converted summer house in the back garden of her London home). "The reason that most facials are useless is because they don't even massage the shoulder and neck muscles," Su-Man says, as GQ takes off its shirt. "And the shoulder and neck muscles are why a face sags as it gets older."
What's she looking at me for?
"I don't just give you a facial," she says. "It is not just about cleaning pores, exfoliating dead skin and toning. It is about exercising the face. If a facial doesn't do that - then don't bother."
I get on the couch and throw myself at her mercy. And if not 60 minutes of gentle but worthless stroking, then what should GQ expect from a facial by Su-Man Hsu?
"You should look healthier," she says. "Happier. More confident. And there should be a glow that wasn't there before." Then she gets that cheeky grin that somehow makes her bossy manner bearable. She is like the good cop and bad cop all in one authoritative package.
"Like George Clooney - but better."
Su-Man's background is dance. For the past year she has been on the road with Juliette Binoche and Akram Khan in the National Theatre co-production in-i (she taught Binoche to dance for the role - no easy task, as anyone who caught in-i will testify).
Su-Man was a ballet dancer and joined the European dance company Rosas. A back injury at the age of 20 introduced her to the healing properties of shiatsu massage - an applied pressure massage that is a lot like acupuncture without the needles. Shiatsu is all about loosening up your tired old body and increasing the flow of chi - the life energy that flows through us all. How to explain the Chinese concept of chi? Well, chi is just like The Force in Star Wars, except it is real. A therapist who understands chi can see serious disease coming over the horizon. Su-Man knew her friend and client Anthony Minghella was unwell before he did.
Su-Man teaches Hollywood superstars to dance, she uses hard-core sweat-your-nuts-off Pilates to keep those A listers trim, shiatsu massage to keep them loose and her own total-body facials to keep them lovely. But to her it is all one thing. And it works. Which is why those big shots keep coming back for more.
GQ's facial is, quite frankly, 75 minutes of pleasure and pain. The soothing, chilled-out bliss of having a master therapist devote her time to only you - and sort out medical problems on the way (she made me realise that my neck had been aching for months). And the pain of having someone manipulate the muscles in your face until they are vaguely where they should be.
Modern maintenance
Whatever you do with Su-Man - from the facial to Pilates to Shiatsu to learning to dance - it is not for wimps or the weak-hearted. Along with the deep cleansing moisturiser, expect agony and ecstasy. A recent BBC documentary on Juliette Binoche learning to dance with Su-Man revealed that the little French minx was covered in bruises. Binoche did not look as though she was learning to dance. She looked like she had just played 90 minutes against Don Revie's Leeds United.
But to the facial. First Su-Man assesses the state of your skin and then cleans your face while a steam machine gently opens your filthy pores. More smoke than the video for "Bohemian Rhapsody".Next comes some serious exfoliating and then the stuff that makes her unique. She gets her little fingers and thumbs stuck into the muscles of your shoulder and neck, and manipulates away the damage of the years. Not an easy task. But the physical power of the woman!
When I whimper with pain, she tells me that this is the crucial bit - the kind of thing they will not do for you in those scented spas at your holiday hotel - but this is the essence of her facial. "Nothing ages a man like the sagging of his jaw," she says. "So stop whining."
Su-Man applies a clear collagen mask over my face. No need to panic! This is deep, penetrating hydration, so that my skin loses some of that dried-out, prune-featured look that Kate Moss has made so fashionable this year.
"The years and unhealthy living remove the moisture from your skin," Su-Man says. "So we have to put it back."
I have never had a facial before - what kind of sissy boy do you think I am? - but I imagine a lot of what Su-man does is what you would expect from any superior facial. What is different about Su-Man is her holistic, Chinese approach - the creed that a facial is only a part of full body therapy. I stumbled in with a bad cold and when I complain my nose is blocked, she briskly massages the bottom of my eye sockets… and my nasal passages are suddenly clear.
Again and again, she comes back to the line about the face not being another planet, and Su-Man demonstrates her code by massaging the muscles in my legs, and attempting to pull my toes off.
After the collagen mask comes off, I get more massage in the shoulder and neck. It feels great - like being an old Tom cat that is being stroked after a night on the tiles. But was my face really so saggy? Oh yes - and this puts years on your clock. The way gravity pulls you down as the summers die one by one.
"Juliette Binoche was the face of Lancôme for years," Su-Man says. "But it wasn't its products that made her look like that. It was me." I believe her. After a morning with Su-Man, I feel that I will soon be ready to model skin products for Lancôme myself. Su-Man applies a second mask of vitamin E - a soothing, deep tissue hydration to give me the glow that the ladies love. While that is setting like stone over my eyes - it is not quite as totally terrifying as it sounds - Su-Man massages my arms, hands and scalp.
There is something brutally soothing about being massaged by the hands of Su-Man. Even when you suffer, you feel that it will all be worth it. I am given a final moisturising massage before we end with what is known as the percussion technique - which is basically being smacked in the face, and having your head treated like a set of bongos that need to be broken in.
And when I look in the mirror… it has worked. After 75 minutes of intensive care my skin has lost that dry, papery look that I had resigned myself to. I don't look so tired. I don't look so old. I am glowing like the first light of a summer dawn. My face looks less like the Dead Sea Scrolls and more like a newly minted first edition.
And if I am not quite George Clooney - the woman can't perform miracles - then I am certainly not quite as baggy, saggy and George Michael-like as I was before. But my face is only a part of it. My legs, my arms, my neck, my shoulders, my feet - they all feel looser than they have in years. My blood seems to be pumping again. I don't ache in the places where I used to play. I want to do it again. It's a lot like childbirth - you forget the pain and remember the pleasure.
And I feel better. And I feel good. But then that is what Su-Man Hsu does - you give her £100 and she makes you feel like a million euros. Which is why all those people with stiff limbs, dry skin and Oscars are standing outside her door.
And they still can't get in.
Apply for an appointment on 07779 151346 or su-man@blueyonder.co.uk
Originally published in the June 2010 issue of British GQ.