Male vanity "just right"

The theme of male vanity in the city of Fortaleza, CE, whose objective is to understand the relationship between the aesthetic body practices of eleven clients who frequent the unisex beauty salon Presidente and the male beauty salon D`Flávio with their masculinities, because the body is relevant in these constructions. Despite these recurring practices, the interlocutors of this research emphasise in their speeches that they are "vain to a degree", justifying that they take care of the aesthetic appearance of their bodies because of work, ageing, health, hygiene and the demands of women as a way of making these actions utilitarian, dissociating them from "vanity for vanity's sake". For them, being "vain in measure" means being in a position between sloppiness and exaggeration, seen as negative attitudes, because sloppiness is detrimental to closeness, contact and trust in social and intimate relationships, and exaggeration is related to futility, mischaracterisation of oneself and going beyond the "limits" of masculinity.