If you've come to this page straight from Google or another part of the Xavier T site, it probably won't make much sense.  If you came here from the 'Male Waxing' section of Reef Beauty, it will.

Any guy who's ever had me treat them in the rooms knows I have the gift of the gab.  I meet some amazing people in the rooms.  So that's what I'm doing on this page - having a joyous little ramble about perceptions.  Of people, of clients, of the beauty industry as a whole.

If you just came for the pictures, scroll down a bit, otherwise make a coffee, put up your feet for five, and have a read.  I hope it entertains you :)

Art, Cars, and Sex

People ask me why I happily work an eighty hour week and never take time off, and I'm sure most see me as a model capitalist.  They're dead wrong though. 

My accountant said once that I do well in business because I'm not motivated by money.  He's right.  Business for the sake of business bores me to tears.  I don't own a suit and if you ask me to a business lunch I'll run a mile.

The truest adage in business is that to love your work, you must work at what you love.  And I do.  The real reason I love running Reef is because every day I get to indulge my five favourite passions - fast cars, art, nature, technology, and the naked human form. 

I'm busy but I'm indulged.  Aside from Reef, I own a web and graphics design business (Keppel Net), a range of natural skin care products (Angel Beach), a sign writing firm (Emu Signs), and a continent of simulators on the Second Life grid (Irukandji Virtual Worlds). 

On any given day, I work for all of these businesses in one way or another, and the great thing is that I can draw upon all their combined resources for Reef's marketing.

In the physical world, it shows most visually in the only material object I care about - my car.  It's a screamingly bright blue FPV F6 310 Ute, or Effie as it's known to friends.  

Effie's the Reef show pony and turns heads wherever it goes.  Even the Highway Patrol guy who booked me the other day was impressed.  After the obligatory ticket-giving, he went kind of shy and self conscious then asked me for a business card. 

It might sound weird to someone outside the industry, but every time something like that happens, it touches me deeply. 

If that country copper hadn't pulled me over, he never would have dreamed about getting hair removal done.  He's probably wanted to do it for years but never had the courage to look into it.  He sure as hell wouldn't ask his mates about it. 

But he asked me, a bloke he'd just booked for speeding.

It wasn't me who gave him courage though.  It was Effie.  I see the car's effect on guys every day.  It's fast and sexy and drips with testosterone - It pokes fun at the feminised world of beauty - It normalises the suppressed desire in men to look good at a time when society still hasn't really accepted the idea of a guy exploring his beauty.

Check out other websites.  Their marketing to men is almost apologetic in its approach - They couldn't upset the female clients, could they?

As a gay man, that niggles me a lot.  I imagine that the suppression of a straight guy's desire to be the person he wants to be is not too different from the self-torment and loathing experienced by a gay guy stuck in the closet.

Suppression of men in the beauty industry motivates me a lot, and creating a sense of normalcy is what I set out to achieve.  I like to push everything to its limit in this otherwise stodgy industry in order to break down the walls. 

I clash with its inherently ridiculous culture daily, especially online and roadside billboards (haha they get the puritans really stirred up), and I receive a lot of positive feedback on our approach - from women as well as men. 

I'm seeing the culture change with a reluctance akin to getting root canal.  It is changing though.  It has no choice.  Reef is singlehandedly forcing the industry to follow its lead.

Male beauty is very political and because of that our online posters - as controversial as they are at times - enjoy a cult following which I find extremely gratifying. 

"Return to Nature", probably my most in-your-face poster to date, was downloaded so many times when I uploaded it that it maxed out my server's bandwidth allocation. 

The posters set in Irukandji are popular too.  Because the models are computer simulated, they aren't classified as real people (even though I assure you they are) and this allows me to go way over the top. 

I use more virtual guys in my marketing than real ones.  The "Summer Never Ends" series from earlier in the year, particular the poster with the guy dancing in a camo loin cloth, was wild.

I held a photo shoot for "Summer Never Ends" at Lava, my night club in Irukandji, and put an invitation link on the Reef site.  About thirty Reef clients came in-world and watched the shoot in action while a UK radio station - complete with virtual DJ - pumped great dance tracks through the speakers. 

The night peaked at about 150 people from around the world.  Afterwards, they sat around talking to the models and then we held a boat charter tour to explore the islands.  Reef held a great event at Lava, and Irukandji sold a heap of property on its sims.

I now have Reef clients building homes and living lives on Irukandji's sims.  Surreal is an understatement.  Life's brilliant, and reality just a state of mind.

So, I work in a lot of mediums with guys.  My female promotions on the other hand are quite tame.  I find this a great societal irony and it amuses me no end.  I could only get away with our sort of marketing with male models.  To replace them with females would cause a hell-stink of outcries of sexual exploitation, but because the models are guys, not a whisper :)

So, finally I get to the point of this page.  Essentially, I've decided to build an archive.  Probably half of my eighty hour week is spent creating graphics and posters for the websites and magazines, only to have them superceded a few weeks later and disappear forever. 

As an artist, I find that sad, so I'm loaded them all on a separate page called Posters in the 2D Visual Art tab up top.

So there we have it.  These are exciting times in the male beauty industry.  One day it will be normal and I'll no longer have an excuse to be so overt in my marketing any more. 

I'll have to find a new crusade :)

Enjoy, Andrew/Xavier T