During the 18th century in France, Italy and England, aristocrats (including men and sometimes children) used on daily basis make-up to powder their faces, darken their eyebrows or wore rouge on their cheeks. They wore wigs, and glued fake beauty marks. And also used too much perfume, to conceal the fact they washed once in a blue moon and pissed on the palace curtains. It soon spread to the middle classes as well. https://i.pinimg.com/564x/14/2d/8c/142d8cfb248f3c591a2252273474993c.jpg
But, by the end of the 18th century, that fashion was deemed too extravagant, frivolous and effeminate, and started to be abandoned. Actually they went to the opposite extreme, and by the middle of the19th century men's clothes were dead boring! from 1870 to the1970s men were allowed only neutrals, preferably dark (black, grey, dark blue etc), without any decorations. Yawn!
To come back to your tentative theory, the fact that once men's makeup was fashionable doesn't make it less ridiculous for us Europeans to see a man looking like this today.
The trend is changing, though, with the empowerment of homosexuals, the reign of gay clothes designers and style gurus, and the appearance of the so-called "metrosexuals"... Here are some articles:
Why more men are wearing makeup than ever before.
And here one with statistics from Huffington post.
America isn't ready for men in makeup
Makeup for Men: Fad or Future?
3 million men in UK wear make-up
But I still find male makeup a major turn-off.
