Metrosexuals II
July 31, 2003
by Bernard Chapin
On
Martin Luther King Day in 2002, I spent a snowy afternoon flipping
through a gazillion channels and watching 10 minutes of The Learning
Channel’s “A Dating Story.” I had heard of the baby and wedding versions
before but never one on dating. It began innocently enough with both
participants telling the camera about themselves. The guy was about
25 and appeared fairly normal. There was nothing physically unusual
about him. Yet when he was asked what his perfect girl would be like;
he laid out the interior decorator card. He failed to mention any
of the physical characteristics that are tantamount to men and instead
dwelled on the need for a “sense of style.” He said that any girl
he dated had to have a “sense of style in her dress and appearance.”
It then got even weirder. Apparently, his normal dates wore poor
quality clothes and rarely matched. I laughed aloud but hoped that
the lad would soon say “just kidding.” He never did. The guy couldn’t
have been more serious. He lectured the talk show host that he didn’t
want any girls whose fingernails were chipping. He announced, “No
chipping please.” I had never heard anything like that in my life.
Right after he made a catty face upon meeting the luscious young thing
he was hooked up with, I turned the television off.
My point in mentioning this guy is that he is not merely an isolated freak. He is yet another example of the metrosexuals who swim amongst us. I’m as resistant to adopting trendy categorizations of people as you are but I fear that this one is accurate. These metrosexuals are far more common than we realize. They’re all over the place. I decided to address this issue after one of my friends emailed me this article on the topic. Tom Purcell already has written a great column about metrosexuality but I believe more study is needed.
Cosmetics are an area where you can tell the men from the metrosexuals. When I signed up at my new gym about six months ago they tried to give me a free trip to the spa as part of the deal. I asked what the spa was. They said I could “get my fingernails and toenails done there” and also some sort of facial. I was wide eyed. “No way!” I told them. Before I left, I asked the sales rep if the spa had a lot of male clients. He said that they had quite a few.
The metrosexual cavorts in the area between men and women; specifically in what my friend D-ball calls “the dermal zone.” Whether or not one wants to waste precious months of one’s life worrying about hair, skin, and nail situations used to be a good indicator of whether or not one is a female. Not anymore, as the metrosexual is very comfortable in the dermal zone. These guys have as many pairs of shoes as the girls on “Sex in the City.” An obsession with designer names is also an indicator of metrosexuality.
On Thanksgiving night at my friend’s house, his girlfriend pointed one out on the television, when she said “that guy is really questionable.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Look at the shirt he’s wearing. It’s by [so and so designer].” She said.
“Who’s [so and so]?”
“Exactly. Just the fact that he knows the brand tells you all you need to know about him.”
Liposuction, according to the press, is becoming more and more popular among men.
Cures for baldness are also all the rage. I’ll admit to having a conflict of interest here on this question. I’ve been going bald since I was 25 and the progression will soon make me a permanent bronze domer. Indeed, a couple of female readers commented on the picture I have up and recommended that I buy a case of Rogaine. I declined their suggestion and I’ll explain why.
I sincerely believe that balding is part of being a man and is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a manly characteristic. I won’t lie, if I were given the choice I would choose to have hair, but the fact remains that most of us don’t have any choice. Besides, I think that if men wear their hair short it doesn’t look too bad. Only when a person combs their neck hair up to his eyes is when he strays into the humiliation zone. As for Rogaine in particular, in my mind it’s too much money and you have to commit to spraying it everyday. As for Propecia, the cash is at issue along with an unintended side effect of sometimes causing sexual dysfunction. If sexual dysfunction can be a side effect then why do it in the first place? This anti-baldness craze on the part of men is yet another symbol of the metrosexual as consumer.
I am sad to declare that the best man from my now annulled marriage is a metrosexual. His frivolousness and lust for shopping led to the end of our friendship. I just couldn’t take being around the guy anymore. I went to visit him in Washington, DC in 2000 and was baffled at the state he was in. It takes him two hours to get ready to go to a California Pizza Kitchen. I told him, “You’re married, what the heck do you care what you look like?” He answered me with more preparation. Then, when we went out to the Smithsonian, his wife got perturbed. She yelled up the stairs for him to get ready. She turned to me, “What’s his problem?” I shook my head. “Come on, Princess!” I yelled. “The museum is calling us.” His wife and I had a good laugh but the next day I wasted four hours on a bench while the two of them joyfully shopped at a nearby mall.
Behavior like my friend’s has little historical precedent outside of France.
Our friends at the New York Times have been supportive of the general rot and decay that is metrosexuality. Like the BBC, they have commented on the phenomena several times and specifically discussed the new program, “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” This show consists of “a team of gay men with expertise in designer clothing, food and wine, and in the arts [of] sav[ing] aesthetically challenged straight men from their own warped senses of fashion.”
Now isn’t this the gayest thing you’ve ever heard of? Who in their right mind is going to ask a homosexual for fashion advice?
Until February, I used to live in close proximity to the gay ghetto of Chicago (one should remember it’s the only “ghetto” that I’ve ever heard of where one chooses to live). One day in 1998, shortly after I moved there, I wandered into one of their stores. I noticed immediately that no XXL shirts were in the shop. At the urgings of a clerk, I went into a changing booth and tried on a collared shirt. I walked outside and looked in the mirror. I looked ridiculous. The fabric was sticking to my chest and ever-expanding stomach; although, Mr. Queer Eye passed a favorable judgment. I asked him if he had any shirts that people don’t “nip out in.” He said that he didn’t so I left the store.
Any straight guy that wore a shirt like that out in public would face the derisive glare of any woman within his ten-mile radius. Straight women would wait in line from here to Taiwan to make fun of a heterosexual man in tight-fitting clothes. The gays have a special out clause from their ridicule. If they do it, it’s okay and women are supporting “diversity” through their approval. For us, the handgun is aimed and ready to fire.
The moral of this story is that only a metrosexual who is desirous of being named Mr. Speedo 2003 should take advice from gay guys about fashion.
One of my best moments, and there’ve been a lot of bad ones, came at our old hang’s tenth anniversary party. It concerned a byproduct of metrosexuality, which is the female dominatrix. I believe she is fed and clothed by metrosexual contributions. I was standing with my friends Johnny and D-ball when we began chatting with the couple next to us. She was dressed as a dominatrix and told us that she did it on the side for extra money, but her real job was as a university professor. A university professor! Now I had to f--- with her. So throughout the rest of the night I slouched over and whispered, “You’ve been very, very bad. You’re a very naughty little girl. Soon you will be disciplined.”
She appeared to be very irritated by me and would say things like, “No, soon you’ll be disciplined.”
“I don’t think so!” I’d shout back.
After a few exchanges like this with her date paying absolutely no attention to us I realized that the guy she was with wasn’t a guy at all, he was a slave or a submissive. He even went and asked for her permission to go to the bathroom. With this in mind I raised the stakes and said, “I may have to spank you later if your attitude doesn’t improve. You’ll improve or my belt will come off.” Yes, it was great fun and also provided tremendous entertainment for my friends, which is an end in itself.
About three hours later, she came up to me and told me how much fun she had talking to me and that we should do it again. I nodded before leaving but I wanted to yell, “You freak!”
Ultimately, the people who will decide on whether or not metrosexuals will take over the male species are women as they are the ones who sexually select. In my mind, the future will be quite confusing in America for the female gender. In the past, a man was a symbol of wealth and status, but now, more and more, women are obsessed with a man’s physical appearance. I’m not sure how this conveys any particular advantage to them over time but it is a reality today and may be the reason why metrosexuals mutated in the first place.
Sadly for women, their biological wiring remains intact so they continue to be obsessed with status and wealth while also searching for hard and beautiful physical specimens. I say, “good luck” to them because they’re going to need it. The whole package almost never exists. Logic can easily tell us why. Millionaires don’t become millionaires by worrying about nails, shoes, and hair. Men with rank and status usually must constantly fight to keep it which automatically decreases the amount of time they can spend wading through sales at Saks or Nordstrom’s.
The mating strategies of a man are idyllic in comparison. Wealth and status mean practically nothing to us. Here’s a man’s dream exchange and it’s one I’ve fantasized about many times (many times!). “So…you say that since you won Miss Hawaiian Tropic you’ve been short of cash? Well, take some of mine. Need a place to stay? Your back looks awfully dry. How about some lotion? Can I see your first place picture again? Oh Lord! Are those…forget it.”
The old evolutionary study about women selecting pictures of more boyish/androgynous looking males during the times of the month when they weren’t ovulating, and then selecting pictures of the more hardened, masculine males when they were ovulating, suggests to me that we will defeat the metrosexuals. I believe there is great truth in such studies, as ovulation, to put it in the lingo of “Bull Durham,” is the show. That’s when the game means something, and that’s when women truly care about men and sex. To me this is reason enough never to buy trendy shoes or to frost your hair.
Unfortunately, this idea of men acting like women and women acting like men is central to radical feminist ideology and denotes the success they’ve had in poisoning our society. Yet I believe that merely by being ourselves we can take back some of their ground. Even if we have to do it argument by argument, house by house, street by street and cave by cave. In summation, let’s trash some hair products and win this war in the name of our fathers.
Bernard Chapin is a writer in Chicago.
