Narcissist, metrosexual, call us what you like, we're out and proud

Sydney Morning Herald ^ | August 29, 2003 | Matt Martyn-Jones

[presidio9]

The English Premier League soccer kicked off its 2003-04 season last week. I've been sneakily staying up late watching live games on pay TV and waiting for the replays on free-to-air. Not for the soccer, mind you. For the hairstyles.

As far as male hair fashions go these games are a veritable goldmine of cutting-edge dos. From neat short back and sides, which are apparently tres chic this year, to bleached tips, mohawks and yes, even, the mullet, English soccer has it all.

Now, even though the high prince of metrosexuals, David Beckham, has departed England for the Spanish club Real Madrid, I can assuage any fears that this phenomenon would peter out by reporting that his countrymen are not letting him down. Yep, it's still a sideline-to-sideline waxed, coiffed primped and preened metrosexual mecca. And I reckon it's great.

If a metrosexual is what The New York Times described as a "straight urban man willing to embrace his feminine side", and this means paying attention to how one presents themselves, then I'm a metrosexual and I'm not afraid to admit it.

We have had a lot of bad press lately, and it's time some of us stood up to be counted.

I like my shirt and tie to match. I keep up with fashion trends and I would like to think I'm quite well groomed. Is there anything wrong with this?

In June, during the long hiatus from the Premier League's global fashion deities, the marketing and advertising conglomerate Euro RSCG sparked a feeding frenzy in magazines and on opinion pages, not to mention weblogs, about metrosexuals.

Countless articles since have discussed grooming products like hair wax, moisturisers, toners, jewellery and even make-up, including nail polish.

On this page Peter FitzSimons demanded of us, "Choose, you bastards! Blancmange or BLOKE?", which one feels probably means he had his head neatly tucked under the bottom of a ruck instead of listening to his arts lecturer at Sydney University during that class on post-modernism.

Otherwise he would welcome diverse images of the Australian man, rather than pigeon-holing us into convenient boxes with labels on them. Fitzy, we metrosexuals are now denizens, so get used to us.

Nonetheless he raised a very salient point. Namely, he bemoaned the "marketing schtick" that is "all pervasive". Let me be so bold as to get in touch with my feminine side here and "bond" with Mr FitzSimons on this point by asking: is this all just a clever con by the marketers and advertisers?

The short answer is - probably. There have always been men who care about their appearance and who were willing to use products to enhance their looks.

Why else would we be subject to those ridiculous ads on hair replacement, or the lopsided, patchily matched toupee that looks like a well-directed sneeze could hilariously but devastatingly dislodge it?

In Elizabethan times aristocratic men wore wigs and make-up along with the women. Were these men Elizabetho-sexuals?

In the 1980s Warwick Capper redefined what it meant for an Aussie bloke to "care about his appearance" with the world's tightest shorts and bleached blond locks. Were the men who copied him Capper-sexuals? I happen to think Bob Carr and Peter Costello are among the better dressed politicians. Does that make me a Bobo-sexual, or worse a Costello-sexual?

It is true - it is "marketing schtick". Why else would they have AFL players in a new ad campaign selling shampoo? But we like it!

What's wrong with putting moisturiser on after a day in the surf, or packing the face cleanser when you 4WD to the top of Mt Stirling on a camping trip to see where they filmed The Man From Snowy River? Does this make me a metrosexual miscreant?

No. It makes me a modern late-20s Aussie male and I've got lots of friends just like me. They're straight, they dress well and they care about their appearance.

Recently I heard how a young urban professional male was shocked because a male colleague had applied face cream and hand moisturiser in the office. It happened in the news bureau of a major national newspaper in Canberra.

I wasn't surprised. I've lived through a Canberra winter. It's brutal on your skin. You'd be silly not to look after it.

None of this is really much of a surprise. It makes sense to me. It's not weird and it's certainly not somehow un-Australian.

Even the PM had a makeover before getting to The Lodge to deal with those eyebrows, which was, like most of this stuff, common sense. Which is an attribute most Aussie men would claim to have in abundance.

[CanadianLibertarian]

Guys who hate "metrosexuals" are a bunch of ugly, envious, washed up, short, old, fat, hairy disgusting unhygienic males who can't goom themselves and are extremely jealous of gorgeous, sexy, well groomed, interesting men so they attack their masculinity or call them gay. I see it all the time.

BINGO! I get called "gay" all the time - usually when I'm in a bar and just taken away the interest of some woman from some average -looking macho joe. What is it about being well-dressed, slim, fit and with good hair that defines a man as allegedly gay? Often this slur is followed up by further agressive treatment and I'm pretty sick of it.

Guys need to get with the picture: the prettier, better-dressed guy is going to get the woman while the rest of you gather round for a circle jerk. So who's gay? :-)

[mlmr]

They were called dandies right up til the 60's and there were plain dandies and dandies that were light in the loafers.

[mlmr]

Is that hair on his body real??

[mlmr]

Not anymore I wouldnt

[George W. Bush]

Heterosodomites.

Even if they sleep with women, they have the classic attitudes of sodomites toward superficial cultural distinctions and beauty and taste. Well, such fads come and go. Once this bunch goes far enough, the females instinctively avoid them and they can't breed. Just like real sodomites.

For all the complaining on these issues, females don't want men who actually cry. They want men who act like they could cry but never do. And serious women don't want to compete with their mate on interior decoration and fashion. They want a male who isn't too dainty to take out the garbage when told to. Or better, can be trained to do it like a dog.

I read a few recent articles on the big push for the feminizing of the once-rugged Aussie male. Well, once they taken your guns, you might as well obsess over the latest fashion tips and 'dos.

[George W. Bush]

Two can play that silly game. I bet most women would take this man over your metrosexuals.

Bad choice. I'm afraid that Connery was the original metrosexual, the prototype. Because he was quite masculine, he got away with even more of it than his successors as Bond could.

[upchuck]

I'll stick with calling them faggots.

I'm with you Gill. May as well call them queers too.

[CanadianLibertarian]

I'm afraid that Connery was the original metrosexual, the prototype. Because he was quite masculine, he got away with even more of it than his successors as Bond could.

I was waiting for someone to point that out! OF COURSE Connery was a dandy ( I hate stupid liberal media neologisms like "metrosexual", I'm not going to use the lingo of those morons). But the bigger point you made was, what does being a dandy have to do with being effeminate or gay? NOTHING. Connery is a dandy and a man's man too. Quite an ideal worth emulating. Casanova was a dandy. Are the macho men here going to call him gay too??

[Bob J]

>

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[hellinahandcart]

Man, you've been on a roll for the past 24 hours!

[George W. Bush]

I was waiting for someone to point that out! OF COURSE Connery was a dandy

Look at the photo. It was carefully posed and the makeup done in the style associated with female fashion models of the Sixties. In particular, the slightly pouting vacant motionless lips and the tweaked and plucked eyebrows/lashes, the eyes posed widely open to accent the cheekbones and underlying skull shape (observe the lines in the forehead the show the effort in the pose). Well, at any rate, they groomed Connery superbly for the posing. He also modeled the metrosexual by being knowledgable in wines and other matters of taste and fussing over his clothes and tailor. A British metrosexual but still within that group. Connery also modeled some rather daring male fashion/attire for the period. His native charm and masculinity covered it all adequately for movie fare.

Though he might not have gotten away with it in real life in a blue-collar bar in a working-class town, in either Britain or America. But those movies, like many others, weren't about wanting to know or be friends with James Bond. They were about wanting to be James Bond, the sophisticated man about town and spy and ladykiller.

Still, there is a bit of difference between a Hollywood man about town and a flaming metrosexual.

[presidio9]

...name could be Anna Rodham Clinton and it would still be allllll goood.

Whoa, let's not go overboard.

[dennisw]

Also it's a languid pose for Sean Connery where he is the object rather than the initiator, the agent of doing.

[steve-b]

What's this "metrosexual" nonsense? We already have perfectly good words for it: "fop" and "dandy".

[Revolting cat!]

Metrosexual? I don't get it! Does this have something to do with screwing in the metro?

[B-Chan]

I beg your pardon. A Preppie and a Dandy are about as far apart as cheese aand chalk. The Dandy dresses up in the latest fashions in order to be seen; we Preppies dress in the same plain, practical clothes our grandfathers wore and prefer to remain anonymous.

[Dan from Michigan]

Metros...WEAK!

[Revolting cat!]

Metrosexual, first from the right.

[richtig_faust]

Guys who hate "metrosexuals" are a bunch of ugly, envious, washed up, short, old, fat, hairy disgusting unhygienic males who can't goom themselves and are extremely jealous of gorgeous, sexy, well groomed, interesting men so they attack their masculinity or call them gay.


I take it then that you are coming out of the closet ??