The Decline of Men - Making Way for the Metrosexuals

Posted on June 14th, 2007 by Christine.
Categories: Sex and Relationships.

What’s happening? Am I in the Twilight Zone?

Today I, with great enthusiasm, logged on to see who had made People Magazine’s List of the Hottest Bachelors of 2007 (not because I’m looking for someone else, babe, I’m just tired of us lying in bed and having to peruse the pages of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue over and over). The first image I saw was one of dreamboat Matthew McConaughey wearing only swim trunks and carrying a surfboard. Yes, yes, I thought. We’re off to a great start… Excited, I clicked to the next picture.

My excitement quickly waned as I clicked through photo after photo of celebrity men that have about as much sex appeal as… well, women. People Magazine couldn’t have chosen men any more “metrosexual” than they did– Jake Gyllenhaal, Blake Lewis (from American Idol), Apolo Ohno (Dancing with the Stars), Justin Timberlake…

Where are the “real” men? I thought… you know, the ones who weigh more than 130 pounds and couldn’t fit into women’s clothes if their lives depended on it? The only one I saw that even came close to competing with Mr. McConaughey was Chris Evans (who made my list of the top 10 sexiest boys a couple years back).

Maybe this is what women now find sexy. If that’s the case, I just don’t get it. As a long time devotee to the male body, I wonder what happened to men that look and dress like men. The kind that just look really hot in t-shirts and a baseball cap and jeans, the kind that drink beer instead of Cosmos, the kind that still think it’s perfectly fine to wash your hair with body soap. Where are they???

To avoid a misunderstanding, let me clarify: Yes, taking care of how you look is important. Good hygiene is important. Being able to assemble clothes that match is a great skill to have. But that can all be done without sacrificing the the qualities that set men apart from women. The original meaning of metrosexual (at least according to Wikipedia) was a heterosexual man who appeared or acted as if here were homosexual or bisexual). Now I don’t personally know any straight guys who would look at that definition and say, “You know… that’s what I really want to go for… how far can I go in becoming feminine, but still fuck women?”

So where did this metrosexual craze come from? It, like many other ills, sprouted from consumerism. At some point, the manufacturers of products that women would typically go overboard paying for– perfumes, clothing, accessories, make up, skin care, hair care products, all decided that there’s a huge group of the population they aren’t targeting: men. How can we get men to care enough about how they look to start spending the kind of money women spend on all these things– many of which they don’t need. Thus, the metrosexual movement was born. And somewhere along the line, women jumped on board and told the guys to go for it. The notion of metrosexuality also obliterated many of the traditionally male qualities that we as a society have out grown in many ways– sex disconnected from emotion, the inability for masculine men to show emotion, inability to engage in monogamous intimacy, a lack of self-sufficiency because they don’t want to do tasks they consider traditionally feminine (cooking, ironing clothes, decorating their apartments to look like something better than a dorm room). So, along with allowing themselves to shed some of the stigmas that went along with being male, they somehow opened the door to androgyny. And the women all said okay, that’s cool with us.

Maybe they were just impressed that the guys were trying harder to look good and smell good. Maybe they were happy that they could finally have discussions with their men over the latest fashion styles and hair care products instead of hockey. Maybe they wanted to be able to switch from ESPN to “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” without having the man get up and leave. I don’t know. What I do know, is that it’s possible for men to look hot, smell good, take care of themselves, and achieve a level of social couth without losing their masculinity. They don’t need to slim down to a mere 130 pounds and sport the same amount of muscle mass they had at the start of puberty.

Maybe some women think that look is sexy. And if that floats their boat, then I say go for it.

But I miss seeing all the men who look like men. The kind that care about being sexy but put in time at the gym rather than at the Clinique counter.

My advice to guys who are just too masculine to identify with the metrosexual lifestyle: Don’t worry about it. If the idea of walking into Banana Republic and trying to match the right shirt, pants, tie, belt, and socks leaves you feeling a little overwhelmed, it’s okay. If you find it ridiculous to spend more than $15 on a hair cut for yourself, that’s okay too. If you can’t tell the difference between Davidoff’s Cool Water and Gautlier’s Le Male with a blindfold on, that’s also okay.

We don’t need you to be able to do that.

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