UrbanUpdate

It's 2015, and men have embraced moisturizer, indulged in beard oil, and hijacked our girlfriends' eye serums. What we haven't wrapped our faces around yet is the peel, despite promises of looking younger and shinier in ten minutes or less. GQ's Sam Schube scrubs in

It turns out that when a cosmetic laser is aimed at dirty pores, the ensuing micro-immolation makes a popping noise: not quite a gunshot, but definitely louder than a bowl of milky Rice Krispies. I'm lying on a glorified hospital bed as a woman named Candice vaporizes my skin gunk with medical-grade G.I. Joe weaponry. And I'm keeping it together, until I catch a whiff of my own flesh sizzling. That's when I ask myself: Could a slightly prettier me be worth this sci-fi scenario?

Lasers, I've learned, are the newest frontier in men's skin care. Until now I thought I knew the rules: I wash my face every night. I (sometimes) wear sunscreen. I don't even blink at moisturizing anymore. But facials? Lasers? Grandma's chemical peel, the one that left her looking like a red-faced demon? All together now: Nah. Right?

I'm not sure anymore. A new set of spa-esque treatments—fast, powerful, and results-focused—are tailor-made for guys looking for a quick facial pick-me-up.

That's how I found myself booked for a session at Manhattan's Skin Laundry ($65 for ten minutes of laser resurfacing), my eyes covered by a pair of American Psycho-style tanning goggles. “This is a YAG laser,” Candice said, hefting the foot-long implement. (What's YAG stand for, anyway? “I have no idea, actually,” she admitted.) Skin Laundry's lasers clean your skin by vaporizing whatever's stuck in your pores, and they're effective. I left twenty minutes later with an appreciably brighter complexion, as—no joke—Michael Jackson's “Man in the Mirror” played me out. But I hadn't anticipated the violence of it all: the bottle-service-sparkler sound, the man-on-fire scent. Verdict: effective, but too face-melting for this guy.

Convinced I could upgrade my mug less violently, I set out the next week for the Peel Bar in New York's Flatiron District. It's a chair inside a bustling salon designed for in-and-out convenience—basically, Chipotle for your oily mug. The concept? A peel is an acidic formula that eats away at your face's dead skin cells, ideally yielding a less zombified you. I leaned back, and an attendant slathered it on using gloves; fifty bucks and two minutes of mild itchiness later, she washed it off. And you know what? I looked great. I was smoother-skinned, less harried-looking, and—hell, I'll say it—practically dewy. And I still had time to grab lunch.

Both shops suggested that this should be a monthly ritual, maybe even weekly, but I'm looking at these quick-hit facials the same way I do a splurge-type haircut: not strictly necessary, though worth the confidence boost before a big moment—a first date, maybe, or a job interview. Look, it still feels nuts to willingly coat my face with acid. But until recently, wearing skinny jeans sounded crazy, too. I'm betting that soon enough the man-peel won't sound so absurd—it'll just be common sense.

Face Off Against the Sun

Sunscreen is to dermatologists what flossing is to dentists: the thing they won’t shut up about because it’s truly, annoyingly important. Wear sunscreen every day—in summer, in winter, and especially when you’ve just had the outermost layer of your face dissolved via acid—and you might not look like a crumpled- up paper bag at 45. The easiest way to get your daily SPF? Try a moisturizer with built-in sunblock, like this blessedly non-gummy one from Image. It’s like smuggling broccoli into a kid’s omelet—but for your grill.

Sam Schube is the GQ Sports director. He began working at GQ in 2014 as an editorial assistant, and in the years since has assigned and edited features and profiles, written stories about subjects ranging from Johnny Knoxville to professional golf's existential crisis, and worked on all manner of magazine... Read moreGQ Sports DirectorXInstagramRelated Stories for GQSkincareGrooming