The Rise of the Modern Metrosexual

Oh good golly, who on earth came up with the term “metrosexual?”  As if we don’t have enough gender stereotypes?  Do we really need a whole new name to refer to heterosexual men who don’t conform to the masculine ideal?  Well, here’s a little info about where this gosh darn idea came from.

The term “metrosexual” appears to have been coined in 1994, when an article by Mark Simpson was published in a British newspaper entitled The Independent.  The article was called “Here Come The Mirror Men.”  In this article, Simpson first discussed the meaning of the term “metrosexual.”  The term increased in popularity after Simpson wrote an article in 2002 that identified David Beckham as the quintessential “metrosexual.”  Simpson defined the term as follows.

The typical metrosexual 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 modeling, 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…For some time now, old-fashioned (re)productive, repressed, unmoisturized heterosexuality has been given the pink slip by consumer capitalism. The stoic, self-denying, modest straight male didn’t shop enough (his role was to earn money for his wife to spend), and so he had to be replaced by a new kind of man, one less certain of his identity and much more interested in his image – that’s to say, one who was much more interested in being looked at (because that’s the only way you can be certain you actually exist). A man, in other words, who is an advertiser’s walking wet dream.

(Ouch!  He just compared metrosexuals to herpes.)

The original metrosexual was wealthy and conceited, wasteful with money and promiscuous in his sexuality.  The term has evolved since then to be commonly understood to refer to heterosexual men who focus on their appearance or whose lifestyles display aspects typically attributed to gay men’s lifestyles.

The term “metrosexual” may in fact represent a change in masculinity.  Whereas masculinity might have once been defined by homophobia, avoidance of femininity, self-reliance, physical strength, aggression, and restriction of emotion, perhaps the rise of the metrosexual marks an increase in the broadening of the confines of gender roles.

But doesn’t the term just once again lump us into categories?  The term doesn’t really stretch the breadth of socially acceptable gendered behavior when ideal masculinity still is defined in much the same way as before.  The term implies that heterosexual men who don’t adhere to gender roles are not really heterosexual, but are a group unto themselves.  ”Metrosexual” implies a straying from stereotypes of heterosexuality and a movement toward stereotypes of homosexuality.  The term also reeks of class privilege and whiteness.  ”Metrosexuals” shop a lot because they have money to shop.  They are decidedly an urban phenomenon, and are usually thought of as white men.  And in some ways, the term reinforces homophobia.  It seems as if the term screams “I may seem gay but I promise I’m not!”

While in ways, “metrosexual” may open up new possibilities of acceptable gendered behavior in heterosexual men, the term is highly problematic.  The idea is a reflection of this budding “Will and Grace” society that we live in, in which homosexuality and straying from traditional gender norms may have become more visible in men, but are consistently stereotyped, mocked, and sensationalized.  If a straight man who acts “like a gay man,” is called a “metrosexual,” what is a gay man who acts “like a straight man?”  Unacknowledged and invisible?  Where do trans people fit in?  What about intersex people?  Who decides what a straight person or an LGBT person should act like?  Shouldn’t the individual decide for themselves?  Why should a term lump us all into neat little boxes of behavior?  Aren’t we just perpetuating stereotypes by trying to make everyone’s gender identity fall into a properly labeled category? 

We should not have to necessarily assign names and categories to gendered behaviors.  People should base their behavior on personal choice, not on socially reinforced gender roles.  When we finally don’t feel pressured to fulfill any type of gender role (masculine, feminine, “butch,” “metrosexual,” “ubersexual” or otherwise), perhaps then we will have truly made progress.

“Young women artists are revolutionary”

In December 20, 2008 Emma Bee Bernstein committed suicide. She was only 23 at the time. She was from the upper west side of Manhattan and graduated from the University of Chicago in 2007 with a degree in Visual Arts and Art History. She focused on art theory and media studies and completed her senior thesis on how feminism manifests in contemporary photography. She and her best friend Nona Aronowitz embarked on a road trip where they photographed and interviewed young women across the nation about their relationship with feminism.

This is how her photographs were meant to be installed and displayed:

Here are some other photographs that Emma took:

For the full collection click here.

In a panel at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Museum for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, she wrote the following about intergenerational feminism (bold emphasis mine):

There is good news: young women artists are revolutionary. They are making works that deal fervently with gender and sexuality, that deconstruct beauty standards, that unveil the veiled. They revel in the grotesque, the cosmetic, celebrity culture. They poke fun at themselves. They show us their obsession with the “feminine”, but it is pop essentialism, deadpan gender. They do not care if you think they are vapid sluts, clad in designer trends. They look with a female gaze, they have autonomy, they are not marionettes. They are, indeed, artists who are feminists. Young women thinkers will say they are gender revolutionary before they are feminist-identified, and just as they seek to explode the binaries of sex, they mix-media and ideology, creating a patchwork of consciousness that is as thoroughly contemporary as it is politically feminist.

This is such a beautiful and poetic paragraph and it truly speaks to the aliveness of feminism today. It speaks to how despite the oversaturation of unrealistic standards of beauty, misogyny, overly sexed up women, double standards, etc. in our society, young women are not duped. They do not all passively sit there accepting and obeying ridiculous imposed definitions of femininity, but they find some way to rebel.

As International Women’s Day approaches us it’s important to remember the strong, visionary women who came before us and it’s important to be hopeful and think of the strong, visionary women of today – women in our lives that we know and may be friends with, may be related to, may have classes with, etc.