Origins and common usage
Metrosexual was coined in 1994 (as was its noun, metrosexuality) by British journalist Mark Simpson, who used it to refer to an urban male of any sexual orientation who has a strong aesthetic sense and spends a great deal of time and money on his appearance and lifestyle. He is the fashion-conscious target audience of men's magazines:
- 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 1980s and is still growing (GQ gains 10,000 new readers every month). 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 that all these magazines - with the possible exception of The Face - address their metrosexual readership as if none of them was homosexual or even bisexual.
Outside Britain, in its soundbite diffusion through the popular media, metrosexual has congealed into something more digestible: a heterosexual male who is in touch with his feminine side. Who color coordinates, listens to Kylie Minogue, goes to independent movies, cares deeply about exfoliation, and has perhaps even resorted to manscaping.
(Gay men, while included in the original definition, are not "metrosexual" in common usage, since in popular stereotype, such interests are already an inherent part of being gay.)
Evolution
After a period of decreased American usage (the term was still known in the UK), metrosexual re-entered use in the early 2000s following an increased integration of gays into mainstream society and a correspondingly decreased taboo towards homosexuality (and, by extension, the appearance of homosexuality or effeminacy). Over a short span, Canada introduced same-sex marriage legislation, the US Supreme Court struck down anti-sodomy statutes as unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas, and gay characters and themes, long present on TV shows like Will & Grace, made further inroads. In particular, the Bravo network introduced Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, a show in which stereotypically style- and culture-conscious gay men gave advice to their heterosexual counterparts.
The fuel was set; the spark was Simpson's 2002 Salon.com article lampooning soccer megastar David Beckham, "Meet the metrosexual". The firm Euro RCSG Worldwide adopted the term shortly thereafter for a marketing study, and the New York Times made it a Sunday feature, "Metrosexuals Come Out"; the story trickled into local news outlets across North America.
Semantics
Simpson's original definition is distinct from metrosexual 's common use today. His article was detached, wittily ironic, with more than a dash of anti-corporate disdain, and his definition exists outside the gay-straight style spectrum that defines the boundaries of fashion for many Americans –
- 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.
It includes a Sex and the City definition for females, and touches on the queer angle only in passing –
- Gay men did, after all, provide the early prototype for metrosexuality. Decidedly single, definitely urban, dreadfully uncertain of their identity (hence the emphasis on pride and the susceptibility to the latest label) and socially emasculated, gay men had pioneered the business of accessorizing masculinity in the '70s with the clone look enthusiastically taken up by the mainstream in the form of the Village People. Difficult to believe, I know, but only one of them was gay and 99 percent of their fans were straight.
(The Queer Eye guys, nicknamed the "Fab Five", have since dubbed Duran Duran (the original "Fab Five" from 1980s) "the first metrosexuals".)
The term "metrosexual" refers to the sense of style or fashion of the individual and not to his sexual orientation, of course, so at first glance the word is somewhat misleading. It may help to remember that, in a british accent, the word Heterosexual is pronounced with 5 syllables rather than 6—Het'rosexual -- and thus rhymes with Metrosexual. With this in mind, the multilayered british humor comes into focus.
Clearer descriptions of the class of people labeled "metrosexuals" may be "metrostylists" or even "male divas".
See also