Will the Real Metrosexual Please Stand Up? A Phone Call One of my childhood buds is a Red Sox fan, but being an adopted New Yorker, I’m a Yankees fan. Two hours after the Yankees inevitably beat the Red Sox in Game 7 of the AL Championship, my friend called me up, obviously a little bit drunk: “Rooting for the Yankees is stupid.” “If by stupid you mean, being on the winning side, sure.” “You suck.” “You know, my heart goes out to you, bro. I mean, rooting for the Sox is like dating a hot girl with syphilis. Sure she’s hot, but it’s always going to wind up in you contracting a horrible wasting disease in the end.” “Like you even know anything about baseball. You’re gay.” “What does that have to do with anything?” “Please, you couldn’t even play tee ball, gay boy.” “I was on a baseball team and I don’t exactly remember you bringing home any trophies yourself.” His roommate shouts from the background, “Just because the Yankees uniforms are prettier doesn’t mean you should root for them.” I answer back, “No, the fact that they’re a better team is, though. Their uniforms really are pretty, though.” My friend laughs and tells me he has to go and hangs up on me. Now, I’m not exactly sure what just happened, but I’m a little hurt and pissed off that my friend would play the gay card like he did, especially in front of his roommates. My friend, on the whole, has been pretty cool about such things and has been really the only person from childhood I talk to that I’ve been able to share details of my personal life with. In the past few years, however, he has become increasingly boorish and dismissive towards me. Where we used to exchange pick-up tips he now tries to “beat me up” and shows little interest in talking to me, except to regale me with stories about his frat . Perhaps this is the inevitable growing apart that all childhood friends must come to terms with as they go their own separate paths, but it seems to me there’s something else at work here. I Blame The Metrosexual. The term “metrosexual” was coined by British author and self confessed “skinhead Oscar Wilde” Mark Simpson and it was coined to describe a new breed of man whose primary object of sexual desire was, well…himself. Whether straight or gay, Simpson’s Metrosexual was the ultimate consumer, who slept with people not out of any gender preference, but out of a desire to find someone whose skin matched the Prada sheets. Too complex a concept for the mainstream, the term metrosexual was soon appropriated by mass market publications (including MSN, Time, People and Business Week), but with a new more market friendly meaning: the new Metrosexual is simply a straight guy with gay tastes. I’ve watched this semiotic change with irritation. If there is a vast heteronormative conspiracy out there, they surely manufactured this change in meaning. It’s quite clever, really. The main point of Simpson’s definition is to transcend the straight/gay binary; meterosexuality has nothing to do with the type of gonads you get off on, but the attitude you have. The watered down version not only gets rid of any notion of sexual transgression but actually further perpetuates the straight/gay dichotomy by clearly defining things like manicures and mud masks as “gay” activities, while at the same time brilliantly encouraging straight men to engage in the kind of luxury spending indulgences gay men have been practicing for years. This isn’t just a semantical issue here; something really has been lost, or perhaps, more charitably, missed. The original definition of metrosexual could have helped out guys (and gals), straight and gay alike. Men Have PMS Too. Men have, in their own quiet way, been engaging in a liberation movement for the past decade and a half. The Male Liberation movement can be seen in guys lobbying for ending circumcision, guys devoting themselves to gyms and diets, the rise of Mark Walberg née Marky Mark and in the phenomenal success of Fight Club, which is my gender’s Stepford Wives. While women have self-consciously battled their gender stereotypes for more than a century, the men have quietly perfected theirs into this truth: In America a man drinks beer while watching football. If he doesn’t he’s probably a sissy. Guys are told that we’re supposed to be a pretty stoic bunch, so, excluding a brief foray into speedos and long hair in the sixties and seventies, we’ve silently endured our cast-iron macho man mold. The problem is that there is no man alive who could possibly fit within the mold, so we’ve all turned on each other. Look, in this country, the only way a straight guy can show affection to another guy is if they are both on their third beer and Bob Costas is on the TV. Guys who are into music are cool as long as the music involves an electric guitar. Being knowledgeable about a subject that doesn’t involve canyons, automobiles or drill saws is a guaranteed way to be labeled a geek. I’d weep for the state of my gender if it weren’t for the fact that it would make me a wimp. It’s not much better for the gay guys, who not only engage in macho Aberfag posturing and competitiveness, but also extend it to the bedroom. For many gay men, it seems bedding as much of the disco dance floor as possible has replaced winning the touch football game. On the surface it seems oh-so-out there, but it’s just as rigid a hierarchy as the straight paradigm. In other words, being able to sleep with a lot of people does not make you sexually liberated- oh, that needs to be repeated, I think: Being Able To Sleep With A Lot of People Does Not Make You Sexually Liberated What this puritanical “Oh My God Look at J.Lo’s Booty!” nation needs is a new kind of sexuality. This isn’t a call for a post-gay America, it’s a call for a post-straight America as well. Why divide sexuality along the lines of what kind of loins you rub up against at night? All the people who want to drink beer and talk sports or be alpha males who backslap or bareback each other can all move over to one corner and make room for a new breed: The Metrosexual. The Metrosexual is not a guy who likes to do gay things, nor is he, apologies to Mark Simpson, just a guy who’s into himself. The Metrosexual is the man or woman who, as the name implies, has abandoned the rural (or seemingly rural) sexual stereotypes that have dominated American culture, politics and lore for two centuries and embraces—no, gropes, a sexuality which is as unique as personality. Unlike the dippy flower children our parents used to be, the Metrosexual does not consider himself a sexual rebel. The heart of the Metrosexual credo is “As long as it’s between two consenting adults, who cares?” Unlike the Act Up Crowd or other grand-dame’s of the queer movement like John Epperson aka Lypsinka who bemoans the “Gay boys with strollers on Eighth Avenue”, the Metrosexual is not about “subverting the straight establishment”. The Metrosexual realizes that all along she has been the establishment. Men don’t do it like Brad Pitt does and real women are more creative than Madonna when it comes to bedroom antics. What’s even hotter is that in the morning, they put on a suit, grab some Starbucks and head off to work. The Metrosexual is Sex Getting Real. Rather than defining what’s ‘hot’ by the pages of Vogue or Details, the Metrosexual instinctively knows you make something hot by owning it. Have a collection of snails? Don’t stash them under your bed when you’re first bringing a girl home. Show those gastropods off passionately enough and seductively enough and you’ll soon have your lady turned on far more than a bottle of Drakar ever could. What makes something sexy? It’s obvious: It’s the passion you imbue it with. The Metrosexual lives in a world where women gather together for sex toy parties instead of Tupperware parties, where the local Fraternity holds a monthly bondage party (Come on- if there was ever a group better suited…) and the High School Sex Ed teacher says to his students, “Each of you are incredibly sexy if you believe you are.” Low self-esteem, that perennial social malady, would evaporate like afterglow sweat. The g-spot is not a place on the body, but a place in the mind. The Metrosexual realizes this instinctively. The Metrosexual is The Self-Actualized Libido. If men and women create their own definitions of sexuality and gender role, rather than being slaves to what they’ve been told, the world will be a much better place. We don’t let anyone tell us what to think, why should we let anyone tell us who or how we can get it on? Hey Geeky Guy with the Pimples!: The next time you’re at the family barbecue and Uncle Ralph starts bugging you about the pennant race, ask him what he thinks about the latest release of Red Hat…and treat yourself to a facial. Hey Confused Kinda Lesbian Girl!: Solve your dilemma by dating both a girl and a guy at the same time. Go on dates as a group. Save money on cabs! It’s not radical, it’s reality. Be your damned self. Every last one of you turns me on.

posted by Japhy at 11/12/2003 02:55:00 PM || #