When Desirae Rieke’s roommates hear the swooshing sound of her toothbrush, they know she has finished primping and is ready to go out.

Rieke, Tonganoxie junior, has her “getting ready” routine so pinned that she can’t deviate from it.

After a hot shower, Rieke applies half of her makeup. She then blow dries her hair, gets dressed, and puts on the other half of her makeup. She finishes up her hair with a straightening iron, and then tops off her routine by brushing her teeth.

She doesn’t remember how or why she developed her primping habits, but she does admit that it bothers her if she does something out of order.

“I definitely notice it, and it throws me off,” she says.

Rieke’s not alone in her primping patterns. Beauty is a $231 billion industry, and whether high-maintenance or low-maintenance, most people engage in some sort of grooming.

Rieke considers herself high-maintenance, except when it comes to getting ready for class. She spends 30 minutes grooming herself before she comes to campus, but closer to an hour and a half to get ready for a date or a night out with the girls. But no matter how little time she has, she always finds a moment to prep so she feels presentable in public.

“Unless I absolutely have to go without makeup, then I don’t,” she says. “I make sure I have time, because I do enjoy getting ready.”

For some people, the grooming process is a relaxing ritual.

“In general, beauty has always been considered a luxurious experience,” says Danielle Romano, editor of DailyCandy.com, a free daily e-mail service that provides insider beauty and lifestyle information to registered members.

Both the availability of products via the Internet and word-of-mouth recommendations have skyrocketed online sales of spa-like treatments, according to research conducted by the LPK Beauty Group, an American market research firm.

Shelling out the dough

Though she considers herself low-maintenance, Ashley Pate goes high-end when she purchases new beauty products. Pate, 2007 graduate, makes a trek twice a year to department store beauty counters to gather up new eye shadows, concealers and other makeup for her growing collection of colors. Because she invests in name-brand makeup, Pate spends between $100 and $150 each time. “It’s expensive, but it’s good stuff,” she says. “You get what you pay for.”

What she’s paying for is MAC (Makeup Art Cosmetics) eye shadow, which runs at $14 a compact, and Benefit Cosmetics products.

What she’s also paying for is extensively-designed packaging that adds value to the name-brand products she uses, according to the LPK Beauty Group. Innovation in packaging blurs the lines between prestigious versus mass brands, the group says.

Where Pate’s money is not going, though, is to haircuts. She dodges this expense by either receiving a haircut as a gift or by handing over a pair of scissors to a trusted friend. Until this past January, Pate hadn’t visited a salon in ages. She got her first professional cut and color in years at a Los Angeles salon as a gift from her aunt. Because she did highlights and low-lights and is a natural blonde, Pate doesn’t worry much about visible roots growing in – meaning she doesn’t have to pay for color upkeep.

Pate is in the minority of consumers who pass on indulging in salon hair treatments. The professional beauty services market in the U.S. is a $62 billion industry, according to a 2006 study by Research and Markets. The professional services market is expected to grow at a rate of 4 percent through 2010.

Alyson Beach, Winfield senior, isn’t as relaxed about her hair as Pate. Beach visits a salon every three months for a trim and dishes out about $25 per visit to keep her mane maintained. In addition, she keeps her hair color vibrant with highlights every six months, which costs her $40 every time.

Over the course of a year, Beach spends close to $200 to keep her hair healthy and radiant. In addition to her regular maintenance fees, she spends an additional $30 a month keeping herself stocked up on personal care products such as makeup, skin care and hair spray. She opts for drugstore brands when purchasing these products to make her dollars stretch a little further.

Beach spends approximately $360 a year, nearly a dollar a day, to keep up her appearance.

“I don’t worry about what I’m spending too much because keeping up my look is just one of those things you have to do.”

Maintaining yourself

Girls aren’t the only ones who fret about their appearance. Guys like Kyle Kitson are proof that beauty isn’t just a woman’s worry.

Kitson, Hays senior, spends plenty of time keeping up his appearance through shaving and finding new colognes to wear on dates. But he’s not just gliding a four-blade razor across his face every day or spritzing on some Old Spice.

Kitson is a cologne junkie: he owns 27 different scents, and is constantly on the search to add more. He enjoys letting his sense of smell guide him through individual fragrance notes in his colognes, from spicy or sweet to fruity or aquatic. A self-described “connoisseur of cologne”, Kitson hunts for unusual scents that not every man on campus will be sporting. His latest discovery: L’ Artisan, a French line of fragrances.

“I’ve always been a very scent-oriented person. My sense of smell is stronger and more acute than my other senses,” he says.

Label him metrosexual, if you must, but Kitson knows his fine grooming habits now will pay off in the future, and already sees how male grooming is catching on in the corporate world.

“You see high-powered attorneys going out for manicures now. It’s all in the way you present yourself to people,” he says.

Romano, the DailyCandy.com editor, describes the metrosexual phenomenon as “men catching on to what women have known for years.” She says that in the New York City area, men have been flocking to manicurists in record numbers.

“Society is becoming more vocal about accepting relaxation and grooming,” she says.

Kitson also indulges in a classic style of shaving that provides him both a smooth face and a calming experience.

Kitson uses the old-fashioned “wet shaving” technique. He prefers to use a single blade safety razor, shaving brush and shaving soap to get the perfect shave. He whips his own shaving lather with a badger-hair shaving brush and creamy, round soap, and spends up to 20 minutes smoothing his face, a technique he learned from www.menessentials.com.

“Part of what I enjoy about traditional shaving is that it used to be part of the bonding experience between father and son,” he says. “It was this ‘you’re becoming a man’ moment and that doesn’t happen anymore.” Though Kitson’s own father uses an electric razor, he plans to teach the wet shaving process to his future sons to keep an old tradition alive.

The feel-good factor

The only place you’ll ever catch John Witt wearing sweatpants in public is in the gym.

Witt, Eagan, Minn., junior, refuses to leave the house dressed in anything less than his best and prefers to keep the sweatpants and muscle tees at home.

Witt says whether he’s going to class, running an errand or getting ready for a date, he always makes a conscious effort to look nice for whoever is going to see him that day. Though he’s not just doing it for himself, Witt says it’s a confidence booster to be dressed and showered when he’s in public.

“I think that first impressions are really important,” he says. “You might meet somebody, or you might have to go talk to a teacher — you never know what’s going to happen. It’s never bad to look halfway decent.”

Witt attributes his gentlemanly grooming habits to his father, who always had a neat and clean appearance every time he stepped out of the door, and to his mother, who gave him advice on how to look nice in public.

“They influenced me a lot. My dad was always in professional clothes that were laundered and pressed and he always looked very put together,” Witt says. “I just learned by observation.”

Witt also says that as he works his way through college, he is learning more about how to keep up his appearance and wardrobe. This makes him feel better about becoming an adult and dressing like an adult.

“In high school I was more of the sweatpants type of person,” he says. “Then one day my little brother made a comment about how I was in college now and needed to quit looking like a bum.”

Witt knew that the earlier he started taking care of himself, the easier it would be to transition into the working world.

“I definitely don’t want to be that person that you think, ‘wow, what happened there?’”