David Beckham isn’t just the hottest soccer player around. He’s the new poster boy for the metrosexual.
Metrosexual? You haven’t heard of that word yet? You have no idea what I’m talking about?
Metrosexual. It’s today’s latest buzzword. Every heterosexual, clean-cut male with a good fashion sense on this campus has been declaring himself a metrosexual lately. Bruce Tinsley’s comic strip Mallard Fillmore had an ongoing storyline about metrosexual rights just a week ago. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is out to make metrosexuals out of straight men. And my computer doesn’t even recognize it as a word.
The word “metrosexual” might be making its appearance in the United States right now, but the word has been around for about ten years. British writer Mark Simpson first coined the term in 1994, but it wasn’t until his reuse of the word in a Salon.com article this past summer that it created such a sensation.
So what exactly is a metrosexual?
Simpson defines the typical metrosexual as “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.”
Simpson might have originally coined the term with no sexual orientation in mind, but the word has certainly come to be associated with heterosexual men. For example, wordspy.com defines a metrosexual as “a straight man who is in touch with his feminine side.” He’s well dressed, concerned with his hair and nails, and extremely well cultured.
The television show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is a concrete example of this definition of a metrosexual. Five gay men with fabulous fashion sense, who know how to decorate a house, who know what and how to cook, and know where to spend a night on the town try to teach these qualities to a straight man. The straight man obviously has no fashion sense, is a total mess (including his house) and doesn’t want to be pulled away from the sports game on TV. After extensive help from the Fab Five, the heterosexual is transformed into a metrosexual.
So, is a metrosexual essentially a stereotypically gay man that’s really straight?
With all due respect, I have been treating this word lightly and in a very joking manner. But truthfully, I really dislike the word. I dislike it exactly because of this last definition I shared with you: “a straight man who is in touch with his feminine side.” The problem with this definition and the way the word has come to be used is that it defines both the heterosexual and the homosexual man. It defines men based on stereotypes related to their sexualities.
In my opinion, the word “metrosexual” attempts to justify heterosexual men who exhibit what our society has coined as “feminine” or unmanly qualities, qualities related to the stereotypical gay man. By creating a new category and a name for this kind of man, we do harm to men in general in two ways. One-we define the straight man as messy with no fashion sense, essentially as not being in touch with his feminine side. And two-we are saying that there is something strange and different about a straight man who seemingly is in touch with his feminine side; that it is only “normal” for gay men to be feminine.
Basically our continued use of the word “metrosexual” perpetuates the gender role of men that we should be trying to break down. A man should be allowed to exhibit any quality he wants (no matter how “feminine” it is considered) without having to defend himself with a label. He should also be allowed to do and act how he chooses without it being a marker for his sexuality.
Metrosexuals themselves are helping to erase the stereotypical image of the man. Let’s just not label them.