Mirror, Mirror...

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So Aerosmith's Dude Looks Like a Lady is now the background music for the region's fashion zeitgeist, and gender confusion is the order of the day. "When I got to Asia, I had trouble differentiating between gays and straights," says Norm Yip, a gay, Chinese-Canadian, Hong Kong-based photographer who released a book of portraits called The Asian Male earlier this year. Yip is not suffering disorientation in isolation. When two Hong Kong TV stations decided to host separate male beauty pageants this summer, producers had to wrestle with the amorphous definition of modern manliness. "Everybody knows the standards with female beauty, but how do we judge men?" asks Wilson Chin, the executive producer of the Mr. Hong Kong pageant, held in July by local network TVB.

In years past, the answer might have been arrived at through caber-tossing or spitting for distance. When it staged its own male beauty pageant, Hong Kong TV station ATV, a rival to TVB, decided the old values needed a little updating. Contestants were judged according to workplace-appropriate traits such as charisma, wisdom and crisis management. "We don't want a feminine character," insists Ip Ka-pao, vice president of variety, public relations and promotions at ATV. "We wanted contestants to have the characteristics of a real man."

TVB took a few more risks—but still hedged its bets. It divided 16 gladiators into two camps, a "macho" team and a "debonair" team. Contestants were introduced to the all-female contest judges and the all-female studio audience with videos showing them leaping out of army jeeps and firing weapons while clad in camouflage fatigues and war paint. During the talent competition, some performed martial arts and chin-ups. But one debonair lad roller-skated around the stage singing a French love song, while another contestant made a dress onstage using nothing but a black cloth. Ko, the winner—he of the lime green pants—played a dreamy ballad on the piano.

In the end, the real arbiters of what makes a man beautiful will be those tyrants, the people who moved the goalposts in the first place: wives and girlfriends. Some women say they can tell when men have gone too soft. "I think men should spend one-third of their time and attention on their looks," says Phoenix Lau, a Hong Kong college student. "But Hong Kong guys spend too much time this way," she protests, "more than one third!" Japanese flight attendant Motomi Asano has a higher threshold. "50 to 60% is O.K.," she says matter-of-factly. Asano has learned to accept her fashion-crazed boyfriend as he is, even though he spends twice as much money on clothing as she does. But Asano, too, has her limits. "When I go shopping with him, he is all over the place looking at everything," she says. "I sometimes think, 'For goodness sake!'"

Make no mistake. Once you've exfoliated, there's no going back. "We are living in a day and age when men are supposed to look more attractive," says Park, the Seoul clothing designer. He makes no excuses for paying attention to his appearance. "I've got nothing to hide," he says. "The fact is, women today want men with good skin and good bodies." Guys, remember the old locker-room adage: No vain, no gain.