Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Metrosexual" in English language version.
While media representations often present the metrosexual as a 'stylish heterosexual man', the term can also be seen in use in popular discourse, often pejoratively, to denote homosexuality or effeminacy (Hall, 2014a: 329), making a connection between an overinvestment in grooming and appearance and compromised masculinity, or at least illustrating a rather ambivalent attitude to modern masculinities. This is often evidenced in media reportage on the growth of the male grooming consumer sector, a development that is more often than not directly linked to the emergence of the metrosexual.
While it is often regarded as commonsensical to identify the central role of the media in the cultural construction of femininity in its many guises, it is equally important to note that the media have played an equally vital role in identifying and extoling masculine archetypes, values and their variants, or by calling the same values into question. Indeed, the 'crisis of masculinity' – a term that has been used routinely to describe everything from representations of male angst in 1950s Hollywood cinema to the plight of working-class youth in contemporary urban settings – was first coined by the political commentator Arthur Schlessinger Jr in an article of the same name in Esquire magazine in 1958. It is in this process of identifying what it means to be a man and consequently giving a name to new iterations of masculinity that the media can be seen as being in the business of 'producing' masculinity, and this is an activity that has gathered pace in recent years. [...] Indeed, this debate, in its contemporary sense, is at least as old as 1958, when Schlessinger argued that the crisis of 1950s masculinity was in fact to be attributed to the growing emancipation of women, and has been a fairly constant way in which reportage has tended to account for the evolution or shift in masculinities – and especially masculine representations – ever since. So when Mark Simpson (2002) writes, with a witty and altogether knowingly polemical turn, that the metrosexual represents the 'emasculation' of straight men, his argument, designed to provoke, is referencing a popular journalistic tradition of writing about masculinity as a site not of fixity and stability but instead of flux and uncertainty, which, at the time he wrote those words, was already half a century old
I elucidate my arguments with one historical case of trend journalism—the coverage of metrosexuality in the New York Times in June 2003.
The occasion for Warren St. John's piece was that marketers had come to embrace the term "metrosexual," which had been floating around queer culture since the 1990s. Originally, the word was used derisively to describe what happened when marketers attempted to get men to shop more: they used "sensitive" (read: gay or gay-seeming) men in their pitches, since they assumed "real" (read: straight) men didn't invest in their appearance (St. John 2003). [...] St. John declares that "America may be on the verge of a metrosexual moment." To prove this, St. John relies heavily on marketers, who serve as experts on the existence and viability of the metrosexual demographic.
Yet by the early 2000s, metrosexuality had been defanged of its critique, less a commentary on capitalism and gender than a full-on embrace of masculine consumerism. Metrosexuality also began to refer to men who embraced what until that point had been known as stereotypically feminine activities, including hair and skin care regimens, fashion, and wearing bright colors (St. John 2003; Paskin 2020). St. John's article is a commentary on these shifts but, as noted above, it also played a decisive role in normalizing and promoting them.
In this chapter we focus in particular on one of these media-generated models of masculinity: the figure of the metrosexual, and his place in a succession of figures of masculinity and male sexuality. The 'metrosexual' – a term coined by journalist and cultural commentator Mark Simpson (1994, 2002, 2005) – can be seen as a contemporary development related to the earlier figure of the 'sensitive, nurturing, caring' 'new man', alongside fashion and grooming-related representations of men which use a 'vocabulary of "style"' to present the male body as an object of desire and looking (Nixon, 1996: 164). The metrosexual, therefore, is not without precedent. Indeed, the construction of media and commercial spaces for 'the display of masculine sensuality' (Nixon, 1996: 202) and the sexualisation of men's bodies have been the subjects of a degree of academic attention since the 1990s (MacKinnon, 1997; Bordo, 1999).
I elucidate my arguments with one historical case of trend journalism—the coverage of metrosexuality in the New York Times in June 2003.
The occasion for Warren St. John's piece was that marketers had come to embrace the term "metrosexual," which had been floating around queer culture since the 1990s. Originally, the word was used derisively to describe what happened when marketers attempted to get men to shop more: they used "sensitive" (read: gay or gay-seeming) men in their pitches, since they assumed "real" (read: straight) men didn't invest in their appearance (St. John 2003). [...] St. John declares that "America may be on the verge of a metrosexual moment." To prove this, St. John relies heavily on marketers, who serve as experts on the existence and viability of the metrosexual demographic.
Yet by the early 2000s, metrosexuality had been defanged of its critique, less a commentary on capitalism and gender than a full-on embrace of masculine consumerism. Metrosexuality also began to refer to men who embraced what until that point had been known as stereotypically feminine activities, including hair and skin care regimens, fashion, and wearing bright colors (St. John 2003; Paskin 2020). St. John's article is a commentary on these shifts but, as noted above, it also played a decisive role in normalizing and promoting them.
While media representations often present the metrosexual as a 'stylish heterosexual man', the term can also be seen in use in popular discourse, often pejoratively, to denote homosexuality or effeminacy (Hall, 2014a: 329), making a connection between an overinvestment in grooming and appearance and compromised masculinity, or at least illustrating a rather ambivalent attitude to modern masculinities. This is often evidenced in media reportage on the growth of the male grooming consumer sector, a development that is more often than not directly linked to the emergence of the metrosexual.
While it is often regarded as commonsensical to identify the central role of the media in the cultural construction of femininity in its many guises, it is equally important to note that the media have played an equally vital role in identifying and extoling masculine archetypes, values and their variants, or by calling the same values into question. Indeed, the 'crisis of masculinity' – a term that has been used routinely to describe everything from representations of male angst in 1950s Hollywood cinema to the plight of working-class youth in contemporary urban settings – was first coined by the political commentator Arthur Schlessinger Jr in an article of the same name in Esquire magazine in 1958. It is in this process of identifying what it means to be a man and consequently giving a name to new iterations of masculinity that the media can be seen as being in the business of 'producing' masculinity, and this is an activity that has gathered pace in recent years. [...] Indeed, this debate, in its contemporary sense, is at least as old as 1958, when Schlessinger argued that the crisis of 1950s masculinity was in fact to be attributed to the growing emancipation of women, and has been a fairly constant way in which reportage has tended to account for the evolution or shift in masculinities – and especially masculine representations – ever since. So when Mark Simpson (2002) writes, with a witty and altogether knowingly polemical turn, that the metrosexual represents the 'emasculation' of straight men, his argument, designed to provoke, is referencing a popular journalistic tradition of writing about masculinity as a site not of fixity and stability but instead of flux and uncertainty, which, at the time he wrote those words, was already half a century old
In this chapter we focus in particular on one of these media-generated models of masculinity: the figure of the metrosexual, and his place in a succession of figures of masculinity and male sexuality. The 'metrosexual' – a term coined by journalist and cultural commentator Mark Simpson (1994, 2002, 2005) – can be seen as a contemporary development related to the earlier figure of the 'sensitive, nurturing, caring' 'new man', alongside fashion and grooming-related representations of men which use a 'vocabulary of "style"' to present the male body as an object of desire and looking (Nixon, 1996: 164). The metrosexual, therefore, is not without precedent. Indeed, the construction of media and commercial spaces for 'the display of masculine sensuality' (Nixon, 1996: 202) and the sexualisation of men's bodies have been the subjects of a degree of academic attention since the 1990s (MacKinnon, 1997; Bordo, 1999).
These habits and inclinations toward presenting health and wealth have hardened with the passing of time, like a particularly sculpted torso. To put this in more Shakespearean terms: Metrosexuality by any other name (say, a looksmaxxing alpha male, or muscle gay) smells just as strongly of whatever scent we're being marketed that day.
