Metrosexmania
or, "How to tell mister from myth"
By
James Whittall
MenEssentials President
Published September 2003
Metrosexual.
If you haven't already seen this word flogged half to death in your local newspaper or favorite men's magazine, you will soon.
The media are literally tripping over themselves these days to present the definitive view of this new global men's movement — even though they don't quite understand what that movement is or where it comes from.
But they have a buzzword. The media love buzzwords. Buzzwords sound important. They're essentially meaningless, but they're great hooks to hang a story on.
"Metrosexual" is a truly outstanding buzzword. It sounds deviant, the sort of thing that elicits gasps when someone lobs it, grenade-like, into the middle of polite conversation. It smacks of subversive culture, perhaps even of fetishes and bum paddles and leather masks with zippers over the mouths. Quentin Tarantino is probably making a film about it, right now.
In truth, "metrosexual" describes an individual with whom you're already familiar. New York Times says he's a straight urban male who's willing, even eager, to embrace his feminine side. He's unafraid to be complimented on his clothing or mistaken for being gay. He stocks his medicine cabinet with prestige grooming products, maintains an impressive up-to-date wardrobe, and visits chic salons for a variety of men's esthetic services that include hairstyling, facials, manicures, and body hair removal.
So why is this important?
It isn't. But if you're like me, it's mildly offensive to think we have to invent a new gender to explain why today's man concerns himself with such things.
Metrosexual, Then and Now
Back in the Sixties — I'm barely old enough to remember —
it was considered unthinkable for a man to appear in public without proper
attire and a fastidiously groomed appearance. Browse through your parents'
earliest yearbooks. Men, from janitorial staff to the student body and
faculty, have that oddly vacant NASA scientist look going for them: clean-shaven,
short-sleeved white shirts with ties, and enough Brylcreem to lubricate
a lunar module.
Then the Me Generation made its influence known with a weird yet no less formal esthetic. Jowl length hair, mutton-chop sideburns and bushy moustaches, polyester leisure suits in bizarre kaleidoscopic colors. I recall very clearly my father's favorite work outfit: a purple sport jacket with matching slacks, canary-yellow tie, green mystery-fabric dress shirt, and black loafers. Sure, it was chic for its day. But my god!
From the late Seventies, punk's anarchic influence pretty much held sway and that's when men's grooming and fashion went straight to Hell.
Always in the shadow of our Baby Boomer predecessors, my age group tried to define itself by experimenting with a variety of related styles, the ultimate commercialized expression of which was Grunge. Long, greasy hair. Two-week-old beard. Lumber jacket and torn jeans. Shoes optional.
British satirist Mark Simpson coined the term "metrosexual" in 1994 to describe a new and exotic species of young man featured in Calvin Klein underwear ads — not handsome but beautiful, chiseled yet shapely, in many ways the ancient Greek ideal of masculine perfection.
Simpson's thesis was that such men didn't exist in real life, that they were a fabrication of glossy magazine advertisers who sold their expensive designer clothing and fragrances by exploiting modern male insecurities.
By his own admission, Simpson was only half serious when he wrote (and continues to write) about the metrosexual male. But in an age of irony, satire is a lost art. Perhaps it's appropriately ironic that the term "metrosexual" is now used to market the very lifestyle obsession Simpson lampooned a decade ago.
Enter the word in Google and you'll receive 226,000 results for "metrosexual" ranging from ABC, BBC, and CBS News. There are sites that instruct marketers on how to sell to "peacocks," others that discuss "metrosexual chic," and syndicated columnists who wonder if this isn't some sort of terrorist plot to undermine traditional male values. It's quite an industry.
As with any overused media buzzword, it's also quickly become boring and commercialized and without significance. But that assumes metrosexmania was anything else. It probably wasn't.
What Makes the Metrosexual?
Amid the hype, it's easy to lose sight of the influences that
drive this movement forward. I have read metrosexist articles a-plenty
that blame the supposed feminization of men on everything from wider acceptance
of the gay lifestyle to not enough Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. Yawn.
In my experience, the whole metrosexual craze appears to be simple economics.
"Three years ago, you got the job if you could fog up a mirror," says Stephane, a 32-year-old systems analyst in Ottawa's Silicon Valley North. "Today, the market's so hypercompetitive that good grooming and nice clothes are your edge. The last thing anyone wants, especially in tech, is to be seen as a dotcom throwback."
A valid point, to be sure. But what of university students, the second largest market for men's high end products and services? Surely, these 20-somethings aren't career fetishists like us older blokes. What makes them tick?
A recent article in The Daily Californian, a student-run newspaper published at UC Berkeley, provides a clue. "I now see guys setting their alarm clocks for 9 a.m. on Saturdays so that they can make their hair salon appointments," writes Adam Guthrie of his fraternity brothers. "Shower caddies left in the bathroom can be observed to contain apricot-scented body scrubs and moisturizing body wash. One dude even travels to an aesthetician in Santa Clara to have facials every few weekends. Why do we go through all of this? Because we like what all guys do — hooking up with lots of girls."
So, money and sex make the metrosexual. How strange and unmanly.
I doubt anyone will know for sure why today's male chooses moisturizer over, say, sand-blasting equipment. In an era when so much around us is going wrong so completely, perhaps it's the small affordable luxuries that keep us sane. If these include a $50 haircut, custom tailored clothing, or peppermint shampoo with wheat protein and sage extract, what of it?
Such things don't define who I am. But they do tell me what I can afford. And if the traditional male role is to provide, then I choose to provide as well for myself as I do for my family.
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