The holidays are coming up, and men’s gifts can be difficult to find. What if the man in your life doesn’t care about electronics, or you can’t afford to buy him an expensive gadget, or he already has everything, or you don’t feel yourself qualified to shop for personal electronics because you are practically a Luddite?  Should you buy your man a tie or a boring dress shirt? How about stretch mark cream?

What?

Surprisingly enough, stretch marks do not only affect women. Sure, about 75-90% of pregnant women will develop stretch marks, as well as about 70% teenage women. However, consider this: in America, 40% of adolescent males are afflicted with this unsightly condition, as well. Indeed, although stretch marks are commonly associated with pregnancy and weight gain (such as many women experience during puberty), they will affect anyone whose skin is made to stretch out quickly in a small span of time. Teenage boys growing taller or athletes getting muscular can fall victim to the physical (and sometimes emotional) scarring of stretch marks almost as easily as pregnant women.

Plus, men and women who take cortecosteroids for medical purposes are likely to develop stretch marks as well, even if they don’t experience any major weight gain. That is because corticosteroids stimulate the activity of glucocorticoid hormones. These are hormones that prevent the skin from creating enough collagen or elastin, materials that make the skin stretchable and give it structure.

Remember that stretch marks are not just “the aftereffects of pregnancy,” or “the aftereffects of weight gain.” They are what happens when your parts of your skin rip and tears because your skin’s collagen and elastin are not enough to hold your skin together anymore.