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Metrosexual, unlamented

The party is over for the metrosexual and Page 3 may never be the same again, predicts prashanth g.n.

If there's another happy truth that has emerged from the Ashes, it's that cricketers are the footballers now. Move over, David Beckham; welcome, Andrew Flintoff. Apparently everyone's tiring of the metrosexual and lusting after the retrosexual. Which Flintoff certainly is. Seemingly happily married with sound values. No ponytail, no bling, no cheating on wife and no kids with weird names. And, hallelujah, no sarong, pink nail polish, or wife confessing that the bloke likes to wear thongs.

Let's give a decent burial to the metrosexual, shall we?

The first sighting

But where in the first place did the idea of metrosexual come from? After Mark Simpson, freelance writer and author invented this term in 1994, it drifted slowly from one media source to another throughout the rest of 1990s. Simpson then wrote another article about metrosexuals in the online magazine Salon.com on July 22, 2002, and the term took off from there. Since then it has been picked up by any number of media outlets, has made numerous TV appearances, spawned books, and has been dropped in untold numbers of party conversations.

When we speak about the metrosexual, who are we speaking about? Heterosexual, it turns out, is the answer because people often talk about metrosexual not keeping in mind a homosexual or bisexual. Simpson has this to say in his "Here Come the Mirror Men" in The Independent, November 15, 1994: "The promotion of metrosexuality was left to the men's style press, magazines such as The Face, GQ, Esquire, Arena and FHM, the new media which took off in the Eighties and is still growing. They filled their magazines with images of narcissistic young men sporting fashionable clothes and accessories. And they persuaded other young men to study them with a mixture of envy and desire. Some people said unkind things. American GQ, for example, was popularly dubbed "Gay Quarterly". Little wonder all these magazines, with the possible exception of The Face, address their metrosexual readership as if none of them were homosexual or even bisexual."

Toned-down macho

"People seem to keep the heterosexual male in mind when speaking about metrosexual. And this is a heterosexual male who is sensitive, has feminine expressions and is macho, a toned down, expressive macho," says Vinaya, teacher and filmmaker.

Writer Alexa Hackbarth puts this in perspective in her November 17, 2003 piece, "Vanity, Thy Name Is Metrosexual," in The Washington Post: "... This city (Washington), unlike any other place I've lived, is a haven for the metrosexual. A metrosexual in case you didn't catch any of several newspaper articles about this developing phenomenon is a straight man who styles his hair using three different products loves clothes and the very act of shopping for them, and describes himself as sensitive and romantic. In other words, he is a man who seems stereotypically gay except when it comes to sexual orientation."

But does such a concept exist? "That is not the question. It is about how the concept is constructed and where it circulates.

It is present in the media, fashion world and advertising. The ads, for instance, create the image of the microwave male, not a detergent one. High-end appliances are where the man will be. The man is also seen as an equal partner in the household. And therefore sensitive."

One of the frequent definitions of the metrosexual you'll find anywhere is an urban male with a strong aesthetic sense who spends a great deal of time and money on his appearance and lifestyle, besides being sensitive. The typical metrosexual then is a young man with money to spend, living in or within easy reach of a metropolis — because that's where all the best shops, clubs, gyms and hairdressers are. He might be officially gay, straight or bisexual, but this is utterly immaterial because he has clearly taken himself as his own love object and pleasure as his sexual preference. Particular professions, such as modelling, waiting tables, media, pop music and nowadays sport seem to attract them but truth be told, like male vanity products and herpes, they're pretty much everywhere, says Mark Simpson in "Meet the Metrosexual."

Why "metro-sexual"? The metro prefix indicates a man's urban lifestyle, while the sexual suffix comes from "homosexual," meaning that this man, although straight, embodies the heightened aesthetic sense often associated with certain types of gay men.

Mostly about clothes

But Sushmita, a research student, alerts us to the idea of metrosexual, like other identities, moves between the real and the natural and the unreal and the artificial. "The question is not about its actuality. It is about representation of a certain kind of self-image via the cloth or the body. It is about people who seem to feel that they fit into or relate to the notion of a metrosexual — like particular ways of dressing, looking and imaging oneself. It seems to be a construct by the media. Even if it is not, we have to ask how and from where such representations, of an urban male experimenting with his self-image, are possible in the first place?"

But there were many who were not plagued by such doubts. The media, ad industry, haute couturiers and lifestyle creators came together for a decade-long party to cash in on the metrosexual to plug anything from diamond-encrusted shaving systems to clothes that would fund a small studio apartment.

Now, hallelujah again, the party thankfully seems to be over.

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