A Guide to Men's' Grooming Basics: Part 2

Well cared-for hands. You'll need a basic manicure set for this-nail clippers, a nail file, manicure scissors, a nail brush and some quality hand lotion. Read on to learn how to do a quick, manly manicure.

Start by getting your hands clean. Soap, warm water, and a nail brush-get all that awful dirt out from under your nails. After this, you can push your cuticles back, if you're up for it. (The cuticle is the skin that grows around the base of the nail, and if they're not moisturized and cared for, they can get ragged and quite painful on occasion). Be gentle and don't use anything really sharp to do this.

After this, trim any ragged cuticles. (As a rule, you should avoid trimming your cuticles, but if you've got pieces noticeably hanging off, they probably need to go.) Now go ahead and trim your nails down to the ends of your fingers if they need it. Trim straight across, and then file down any rough edges or sharp corners with a nail file.

Heave a huge sigh of relief at this point-you're nearly done! Now you just need to apply some good hand moisturizer and work it into your hands well and you're good to go! Drug store brands offer a ridiculous variety of hand creams for reasonable prices. If you need to be pointed in the right direction, I really like Burt's Bees Almond Milk Beeswax Hand Creme, available at www.drugstore.com. If cheaper is more your style, try Neutrogena Norwegian Formula Fragrance-Free Hand Cream. It's seriously heavy-duty stuff, you can get it at a grocery or drug store and you won't smell like a girl.

Clean brows. Don't flip out on me now. I'm not talking about serious eyebrow manipulation or masochistic levels of pain. Just use some decent, angled tweezers to get rid of the hairs between your naturally occurring brows. Nobody likes a guy with a unibrow. If you can manage this much and don't get teary and call up your mother crying, you will also benefit from cleaning up beneath your eyebrows a little bit. Just the stray hairs that clearly aren't a unified part of your eyebrow. If you can do this, I salute you. You're a brave, strong man.

Eliminating hair where there shouldn't be hair. Everyone knows about it and nobody wants to talk about it-this is the worst stuff. Nose hair. Ear hair. The dreaded back hair. It's okay; it happens. But you can get control of the situation, and there's no shame in it. For starters, procure a nose and ear hair trimmer; easy enough, and self-explanatory to boot.

Now for back hair...I know you're thinking about the scene from 40-Year-Old Virgin where the poor guy gets his entire chest waxed, nipples included. The truth is that such drastic and painful measures are tragically unnecessary. There's such a thing as chemical hair removers, most notably the new Nair for Men. After years of poor men using the foul-smelling women's' formula, they've come up with a hair remover just for you! You put it on, you wait a few minutes, and you wash it off. Follow the directions and you'll have a pretty back in no time. Just remember to wash it off after the prescribed amount of time or you may get a mild chemical burn. Come on though, girls use it on their bikini lines. You can handle a bit of it on your back.

Well, you're all set now. I've helped you as much as I can.

In all seriousness though, if you pay attention to these basic things, I'll bet you'll notice quite a difference in the reactions that you get from people. They'll most certainly notice the cleaner-looking, nicely-put-together new you.