Mark Simpson answers some of the many questions he has been asked by the international media over the last couple of years about his “Frankenstein monster with perfect skin, terrorizing & sashaying the globe.”
(Salon.com, 5 January 2004)
Why has your term, which you first used ten years ago, caught on so widely now?
When I first wrote about metrosexuality back in the dark days of 1994 most were in denial about this new social problem. Metrosexuals themselves didn’t want to confront who they really were. They were ashamed, not of their love for themselves, of course, but of what the world would think of it. They feared, probably correctly, that their partners and friends wouldn’t understand, didn’t want to understand. Although the media at that time was already full of metrosexual males, pretty much all of them were in the closet. There were no open, well-adjusted metrosexuals willing to be role models to young, isolated metros wrestling with their deep yearning for scruffing lotion and Lycra-rich underwear.
So, when I returned to the subject on Salon.com in 2002 I decided it was time to be ruthless and name names: I outed several leading metrosexuals, including David Beckham, Brad Pitt and Spider-Man. After the initial shock and protests subsided, it became apparent that my recklessness had shattered taboos and brought about, if I may say so myself, a seismic shift in social mores. Suddenly, decades of accumulated steam has been released. People now feel able to talk – endlessly – about a subject that couldn’t even be acknowledged before. A chain reaction ensued as hundreds of thousands of metrosexuals around the world who had been cowering in their walk-in closets felt empowered to out themselves – or maybe their friends and partners felt empowered to do so on their behalf….
How did you first come up with the term and what did you mean by it then?
When I first deployed the word in 1994 in the Independent, a British newspaper, I did so to describe a new, narcissistic, media-saturated, self-conscious kind of masculinity. This was the version of masculinity produced by Hollywood, advertising and glossy magazines to replace traditional, repressed, unreflexive, unmoisturized masculinity, which didn’t go shopping enough, and which thought – ha! – that it was enough to earn money for wives or girlfriends to spend. In the ’80s it had seemed as if this kind of man only really existed in ads. By the early ’90s, it was already alarmingly clear that life was imitating bad art. At least to someone like me, who had spent far too much time thinking about such things.
The concept grew out of my 1994 book Male Impersonators, which analyzed the effect an increasingly aestheticized and mediated world was having on masculinity. I meant “metrosexual” as cheeky satire, but also as sober social observation. As I’ve said before, I don’t think I was the first ever to utter the word, but it appears that I was the first in print and the first to elaborate a concept behind it.
Is there really such a thing as a metrosexual? Or is it just a convenient pigeonhole?
Well, “metrosexual” is a rather ludicrous category, but no more ludicrous perhaps than “heterosexual” or “homosexual.” I’d say he’s as real as either of those categories. Arguably more so. The metrosexual is a recognizable species; you can point to one. Pointing to a heterosexual or homosexual is generally not as easy, without following them home to check. Not least because of the proliferation of the metrosexual….
What do you think of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy?
Clearly it’s meant to be Metrosexuality: The Reality TV Show. In a makeover culture it’s the ultimate makeover show because what is being made over is masculinity itself. However, the basic premise is, it has to be said, a lie. I know this will come as a shock to millions, but gays are not necessarily more stylish than straight men. Exhibit A: the gay fashion “expert” on Queer Eye Carson Kressley, who dispenses sartorial advice while dressed like the Children Snatcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
And Exhibit B? Well, me. The queer daddy of the metrosexual, ladies and gents, is more of a lesbosexual – though this is probably a terrible slight on the stylishness of lesbians. I hate shopping and make one trip a year to a huge out-of-town sportswear warehouse to buy my year’s supply of manmade-fibre clothing. Yes, I go to the gym, but mostly because it’s the only club that will let me in, in my lesbianwear. Urban, fashion-conscious gays accessorizing masculinity and desirability may have provided the prototype for metrosexuality, but they’re the discarded, beta version.
Ironically, part of the reason for the popularity of Queer Eye may be that it reassures the audience that the “queer eye” belongs to queers, rather than to the millions of nongay men at whom metrosexual advertising is aimed.
In your original definition, the sexual orientation of a metrosexual is immaterial. Yet in most of the coverage and the marketing literature appropriating the term he is described as straight. Why is this?
Partly, as I say, because all gays are assumed to be stylish and well-presented. This is what “gay” means, apparently. However, describing the metrosexual as being straight is slightly silly. But then, advertising usually sells things as being the opposite of what they are. Yes, most metrosexuals go to bed with women, and probably will only ever go to bed with women, but there is nothing particularly “straight” about metrosexuality. It “queers” all the codes of official masculinity of the last hundred years or so: It’s passive where it should always be active, desired where it should always be desiring, looked at where it should always be looking.
That most metrosexuals aren’t gay or bisexual only makes things even queerer. A hetero metro checks out 1) himself, 2) other metros – how else to know what’s “in” this season? – and 3) women that match his key colours. Not necessarily in that order, but then not unnecessarily in that order either.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about metrosexuality is that it represents the beginning of the end of “sexuality,” the 19th century pseudo-science of sexual preference that said that personality and identity are dictated by whether or not your partner’s genitals are the same shape as yours. In a hyperconsumerist, post-industrial age like ours, identity and personality are not permitted to be inherent – it would put most ad agencies out of business – and are instead based on lifestyle choices, consumption patterns, brands, social circles. As a measure of this, there are even glossy lifestyle magazines for same-sex and cross-sex couples. Love – and also reproduction – is a lifestyle. The sexual orientation of metrosexuals is obviously important to them and their partners, but their identity is not based on it, and from a cultural-commercial point of view it is almost immaterial.
From a marketing perspective, though, it makes perfect sense to maintain officially that metrosexuals are all straight – after all, advertising is trying to persuade as many men as possible to relax their sphincter muscles, cooing in their ear that there’s nothing gay about being fucked by corporate consumerism. Which, ironically, is kinda true.
Are hetero metrosexuals really latent homosexuals?
Certainly it would make life easier and less worrying for retrosexuals if this were true – and I notice that in certain slightly, shall we say, clenched circles, metrosexual has become another word for “homo” or “fag.” Unfortunately for these threatened types – and also for me – this is just wishful, over-tidy thinking: homophobic housework. Hetero metros are not “really” gay – they’re just really metrosexual. In point of fact, hetero metrosexuals are probably rather less “latent” than retrosexuals. They are, after all, rather blatant – in their flirtatiousness. Their identity is not based on a constant repudiation of homosexuality. What the retrosexual finds repugnant in the metrosexual is his invitation of the gaze – a gaze that is not and cannot be gendered or straightened out. They’re equal-opps narcissists.
Homoerotics, rather than homosexuality, is an inevitable and obvious part of male narcissism – just as it is for female narcissism, hence “lesbian chic.” Which is one of the reasons why it has been discouraged for so long. This isn’t to say that most metrosexuals want to go to bed with other men – not even so as to generously share their beauty with that half of the human race so far deprived of it. It’s just that they aren’t necessarily repulsed by the male body in the way that many retrosexuals like to assert, repeatedly, they are.
By extension, their interest in women is not necessarily driven by self-loathing or a need to prove their virility; it’s a matter of taste and pleasure. Which I suspect many women find something of a relief, not to mention a turn-on. Though admittedly some women may feel that the metrosexual is too much like competition.
Who best personifies the metrosexual, besides David Beckham?
Tom Cruise. He’s in his 40s now, but he uses all the technology of beauty and fashion to remain a desirable, smooth-skinned, buffed boy with a tarty grin. He’s still Maverick from the definitive ’80s movie Top Gun. Actually, he’s still the adolescent with no pants jumping up and down on the sofa in Risky Business. Hence the Missy Impossible movies are really all about his impossible quest to remain eternally youthful and desirable – and the sex object of his own movies. This is the narrative that all metrosexuals are destined to act out, though most with rather less help from Hollywood makeup artists, filters and CGI. Metrosexuality is just a ticking clock away from mutton-dressed-as-lamb-ness. I understand that in his latest film Tom’s finally grown a beard, but I’ll bet you ready money that it’s full of product.
Like the metrosexual, there is no “mystery” about his sexual preference – his stunningly successful film career is a testament to his passionate love affair with… Tom.
Is the metrosexual a product of Gen X? That is, having no heroes, does a man then turn inward and start adoring himself?
It’s more a case of having no father. Metrosexuals are all “bastards” inasmuch as they want to be their own special creation, though they perhaps end up being the offspring of corporate culture. They do have heroes, but usually only aesthetic ones. Men who are famous for their looks and style, rather than, say, their political or military achievements. They do admire sporting heroes, but generally only the ones with the best (media) profile and product endorsement deals.
Is Democratic Candidate Howard Dean, who briefly outed himself as a metrosexual, really metro?
Arguably all politicians operating in Western democracies have to be at least a little bit metro these days, to attract flattering media attention as well as female and male X’s. They’re all a little bit Mel Gibson in What Women Want: admen trying on women’s underwear and beauty products in the bathroom to “get inside” women’s minds.
Some are less openly metro than others. When Air National Guard absentee George W. Bush dressed up in Cruise’s Top Gun costume and used the USS Abraham Lincoln as a giant, nuclear-powered strap-on, that was as brazen an exhibition of cross-dressing as there’s ever been. But it was represented by Bush’s P.R. machine as evidence of his “real,” “down-home,” “all-guy” masculinity.
What about Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has been called metrosexual?
Yes, definitely, but not, as has been suggested, because he wears Prada shoes. As a multimillionaire film star, what else is he supposed to wear?
Rather, Arnie is an example of (early) metrosexuality, proto-metro if you will, because, after watching too many Steve Reeves movies as a boy, he became devoted to his physique, turning himself into a spectacle, a sign, a commodity, one that was eventually noticed and bought by Hollywood – and used to seduce hundreds of millions of other boys around the world into turning themselves into commodities. This is the new American Dream: Don’t live it, become it. Arnie was a new kind of working-class hero, one who works on himself, not on his boss’ property – labouring for aesthetics.
As we now know, beefcake can now become the most powerful man in the wealthiest – and most metrosexual – state in the U.S. Arnie may have been famously accused of groping women in real life, but it was mostly men’s bodies that he assaulted and aroused at the movies, which, because these were early days for metrosexuality, had to be “action” movies which frantically disavowed the passivity – and redundancy – of his aestheticized body.
How different is a metrosexual from a yuppie?
A metrosexual would never wear padded shoulders. He’d be wearing a sleeveless shirt to show off his deliciously developed deltoids and designer tattoos. Yuppies, anyway, are now a defunct and meaningless category because since the ’80s everyone in the Western world has become one or wants to be one. Give or take a few anti-capitalist protesters in balaclavas.
What’s the relationship between metrosexuals and bourgeois bohemians, known as bobos?
A bobo would rather go to a gallery opening than the gym. A metrosexual would probably rather read the Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue, or Wallpaper, than David Brooks’ Bobos in Paradise.
So, really, what’s the difference between a metrosexual and a homosexual?
Metrosexuals are better dressed. Homosexuals are so last season.
What role will the homosexual play in the future?
Gooseberry.
Do metrosexuals have to be wealthy or middle class?
This is a common fallacy, partly based on the idea that working-class equals authentic and middle-class equals inauthentic. It’s actually a matter of spending priorities. Most metrosexuals in Britain, for example, are probably working class. David Beckham, like most of his male fans, is from a working-class family; he may have rather more money than most and get his togs for free, but this just means that he’s been able to continue his metrosexuality longer and on a larger, more frightening scale than most working-class men. Who, until recently, have had to give up these tendencies when they take on a family.
Partly as a legacy of the now-expired British aesthetic youth movements of teddy boys, mods and glam rockers, since the 1950s and rising wages working-class men in the U.K. have tended to have a strong interest in their appearance. They also tend to live with their dear old mums longer than middle-class boys, so much of their income is disposable; and because of their status they tend to be more keen to advertise. They also tend to have a more direct – and historical – relationship to the male body than middle-class boys. Though now they go to the gym instead of doon tha pit, if I can go all D.H. Lawrence on you.
Are metrosexuals really such a modern phenomenon? What about dandies?
A metrosexual wouldn’t be caught dead in a powdered wig – though he might be tempted by the stockings and buckled shoes. Sorry to be pedantic, but dandies were an 18th century phenomenon. Metrosexuals belong to the 21st century. Dandyism was the pursuit of an elite, aristocratic, or wannabe aristo group of men and was largely a way of advertising their wealth, idleness and refined taste. Metrosexuality is a mainstream, mass-consumer phenomenon involving the complete commodification of the male body. It takes Hollywood, ads, sports and glossy magazines as its inspirational gallery, rather than high classicism. The metrosexual desires to be desired. The dandy aimed to be admired. Or at least bitched about.
That said, there are continuities. Oscar Wilde, probably the most famous and most populist dandy of the last century, would have understood metrosexuality and might even have approved of it – he did once declare: “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” Even if he could never have lived up to its exacting, athletic standards himself.
It was Wilde’s trial and imprisonment for “gross indecency” at the end of the 19th century that popularized the Homosexual: the word was coined in 1860 – and, like “metrosexual,” is a forbidden conjugation of Greek with Latin. It also symbolized the triumph of the Industrial Age notion that male sensuality, aestheticism and narcissism were pathological, perverted and criminal. At least when you did them right. It was the decidedly middle-class concept of “sexuality” that killed the dandy. Now, fittingly enough, the metrosexual is killing sexuality.
Would the metrosexual still exist if the media didn’t pay attention to him?
No, but then he’s a product of the media, so it’s a trick question. You can’t have metrosexuals without the media; you can’t have a global media without metrosexuals. Metrosexuality is one of the most flagrant symptoms of a mediated world: The male body was the last frontier and it’s now being thoroughly explored and mapped. Though admittedly, the media’s recent gangbang of the metrosexual, their own love child, is slightly incestuous.
Have glossy women’s magazines helped create metrosexuality? Do the magazines influence the woman, so that the woman influences the man?
Possibly, though again I think men’s relationship to consumerism and temptation is more direct and not something that we can blame on Eve’s shamelessness. Metrosexual men are the way they are because they like what they see in the mirror. Women’s glossy magazines have had an influence on men mostly via men’s magazines, which have become, like women’s magazines, gender manuals, maps and bibles.
Is metrosexuality related to transvestism or transsexuality?
I suspect the rise of metrosexuality may actually lead to a decline in male transvestism. Or at least, it will no longer be noticed. Beckham, after all, likes to wear sarongs and his wife’s knickers but is not seriously accused of being a transvestite. In a metrosexual world it will no longer be necessary for men to change sex surgically or sartorially in order to indulge their narcissistic and exhibitionistic tendencies.
Is metrosexuality a sign of male confidence or a sign of weakness?
Very good question. I’m rather conflicted on this one. But then, so is the metrosexual. The answer is: both.
Metrosexuality depends on a certain kind of anxiety about identity – as a creation of advertising, the metrosexual couldn’t be anything else. Metrosexuality also represents a switch in the power relations between the sexes and, in traditional terms, an “emasculation” of the male. On the other hand, metrosexuality is a sign of a certain kind of sexual confidence or “liberation” on the part of men – they can express “unmanly” desires they have always harboured but have had to repress for generations. It can also be a way of asserting a new, aesthetic power in an aestheticized world. A wealthy, successful male like Beckham can enhance his success and wealth via a “submissive” metrosexuality, and even be perceived as a better athlete as a result. Someone who looks like a male masseur at a Palm Springs spa can become governor of California.
Did you know that “metrosexual” means “motherfucker” in Greek?
No, but thank you for pointing it out. It does make a certain kind of sense. Metrosexuality is the sensibility of the New Matriarchy. It’s post-Oedipal. Dad is largely out of the picture, replaced by Nike and Playstation. The metrosexual family romance, the cradle of male narcissism, is just Junior and an adoring Mom. It’s why, from a certain perspective, Italians have been metrosexuals for years.
Is a metrosexual a straight man in touch with his feminine side?
This common definition is a more polite version of the “straight men who act gay” line. Implicit in it is the laughably mistaken notion that gay men are by definition in touch with their feminine sides. Actually, male homosexuality could be characterized as less an attraction to men and more of lifelong flight from the feminine – a terror of the womb-tomb and suffocating domesticity. Arguably a straight man is the one who really gets in touch with his “feminine side” – when he gets married. Admittedly, though, gay men – all of them, without exception, even lesbosexuals like me – are no stranger to the phenomenon of male narcissism. And narcissism has been seen as the feminine quality par excellence – even though Narcissus was in fact a bloke.
Again, it was the hallmark of the sublimating 19th century and its division of labour that all desire, beauty, sensuality and “weakness” had to be projected onto the female. It’s why the female nude replaced the male nude in art (the male nude had been dominant since ancient times) and why women became so pathologised. It is the hallmark of a metrosexual world, where the male nude sometimes seems to have replaced the female again, that what is masculine and what is feminine are no longer quite so self-evident – perhaps because they never were.
Is the metrosexual a good or a bad thing? You have made fun of him quite a bit.
I have to confess I’ve been something of a deadbeat dad. I’ve been very hard on the metrosexual. I’ve taken some cheap shots and didn’t defend him enough from the marketers keen to exploit and misrepresent him.
I’d like to think I was just trying to toughen him up, but probably it was reverse-Oedipal: I’m just jealous of his complexion and all the attention he gets. He isn’t without some redeeming and naturally attractive features, which I’ve tended to overlook. But as for whether the metrosexual is, in the long run, all things considered, a good or bad thing, I can’t say. It might be said that metrosexuality represents a certain kind of liberation of the male, but I suspect it may be another kind of enslavement, albeit a better-dressed variety.
The only thing that’s certain about the metrosexual is that he’s the kind of man that the modern world deserves.
This interview is collected in ‘Metrosexy: a 21st Century Self-Love Story’