From Finland With Lust – By Mark Simpson (2008)

 

 

The teenage Tom of Finland’s gay fan­tasies from the 1940s of mus­cu­lar men have come to define a main­stream view of mas­culin­ity, says Mark Simp­son (The Lon­don Times, Nov 2008)

The first time I saw a Tom of Fin­land draw­ing was in a well-thumbed, seventh-hand issue of Fiesta, a top-shelf favourite of school­boys in the 1970s. The image, buried at the back, was in a small ad for more “spe­cialised” pub­li­ca­tions, prob­a­bly missed by most of my schoolchums who had thumbed the issue before me. But it jumped out at me like an out­sized erection.

It depicted a pair of mus­cu­lar butch young men with big chins and broad grins grab­bing each other’s bub­ble butts and strain­ing pack­ets while wink­ing at the reader. I imme­di­ately rushed out to the post office to buy as many postal orders as my pocket money would allow.

Although I was sorely dis­ap­pointed with the ‘Biker Boy’ lame leather fetish mag­a­zine — with no Tom of Fin­land draw­ings — that even­tu­ally turned up, I have spent much of my adult life and a for­tune on gym mem­ber­ship fairly ‘fruit­lessly’ try­ing to recre­ate that Tom of Fin­land image that I glimpsed as a teen.

I needn’t have both­ered, how­ever, because as it turned out the whole world was going to become a Tom of Fin­land draw­ing. His sen­su­alised, car­toon­ish über-male body and its end­less poten­tial for plea­sure and plea­sur­ing has become com­mon­place. Think of the rugby player Austin Healey pul­sat­ing on BBC One’s Strictly Come Danc­ing in tight pants and a sleeve­less top. Or all those foot­ballers keen to strip off and show us their assets on the sides of buses.

The notes for artist ret­ro­spec­tives usu­ally make extrav­a­gant claims, and those for a major ret­ro­spec­tive of Tom of Fin­land in Liv­er­pool, part of that city’s annual Homo­topia queer cul­ture fes­ti­val, make some very extrav­a­gant ones indeed: “Tom had an effect on global cul­ture unmatched by that of vir­tu­ally any other artist,” we are told. But for once, there’s some­thing to this hyper­bole, despite the artis­tic merit of his work being very debatable.

Tom was born Touko Laak­so­nen in Kaa­rina, Fin­land, in 1920 and his work is lit­er­ally the mas­tur­ba­tory fan­tasies of a lonely young homo­sex­ual Finnish boy — he began draw­ing in his locked bed­room in the 1940s, pen­cil in one hand, penis in the other. His fetishised, over­ob­served, long-distance gay appro­pri­a­tion of mas­culin­ity has in a medi­ated, long-distance world become… masculinity.

It’s often said that Tom’s great­est achieve­ment was in draw­ing gay men who were mas­cu­line, happy and proud at a time when they were sup­posed to be effem­i­nate, neu­rotic and shame­ful. This is cer­tainly the rea­son why so many gay men are Tom devo­tees, wit­tingly or not. Today’s gay porn is merely filthy foot­notes to Tom, end­lessly replay­ing the nar­ra­tive of “reg­u­lar guys” with very irregular-sized penises and pec­torals hav­ing spon­ta­neous, shame­less sex at the drop of a mon­key wrench.  (And it’s entirely apt that one of the spon­sors of this ret­ro­spec­tive is Gay­dar, the gay ‘dat­ing’ site where gay men post Tom-ish pic­tures of them­selves look­ing for other Tom-ish men to have Tom-ish sex with.)

How­ever, the out-and-proud gay biker look — iden­tity even — that Tom per­fected after see­ing Mar­lon Brando in The Wild One (Brando was a Tom draw­ing in 3D) and which became so pop­u­lar in the pre-Aids 1970s and early 1980s, reach­ing its peak with the cli­mac­tic suc­cess of the Liv­er­pool band Frankie Goes to Hol­ly­wood, has become a dated cliché. See, for exam­ple, the tan­go­ing, mus­ta­chioed leather men in the Blue Oys­ter base­ment bar in Police Acad­emy — and few if any young gay men today aspire to it.

But when you look at Tom’s draw­ings in this ret­ro­spec­tive, which fea­tures 25 of his works in the base­ment (pre­dictably) of the Con­tem­po­rary Urban Cen­tre in Liv­er­pool, it becomes appar­ent that his achieve­ment goes much fur­ther than just mak­ing gay men feel good about them­selves or love the snug­ness of leather har­nesses. Tom, who worked as an illus­tra­tor in the Finnish adver­tis­ing busi­ness until the early 1970s, when he became a full-time gay pro­pa­gan­dist, sold the male body as a pleased, plea­sur­ing and plea­sured thing sev­eral decades before Calvin Klein thought of it. In the mid­dle of the 20th cen­tury, Tom was effec­tively sketch­ing the blue­print of 21st-century man. And boy, was he blue.

Before Tom almost no one drew men like he did, mak­ing them such unabashed sex objects and sex sub­jects, giv­ing them such exag­ger­ated male sec­ondary — and pri­mary! — sex­ual char­ac­ter­is­tics: big chins, strong jaws, full lips. Mas­culin­ity, and viril­ity end up look­ing so… nur­tur­ing. Buxom.Busty. Tom’s men have round firm breasts, saucer-like aure­o­las and nip­ples you can adjust your ther­mo­stat with. One (from 1962) struts down the street, biceps bulging, chest lit­er­ally burst­ing out of his shirt, and dress­ing very much to the left: no won­der he’s being fol­lowed. His saucy cur­va­cious­ness a tes­ta­ment to the way in which aes­theti­cised hyper-masculinity is oddly androg­yne. And while Tom’s men may have had their tits out for the lads, the kind of Tom-ish male body he helped to invent is nowa­days get­ting them out for lads and lasses, gay or straight, online or in real time.

Like­wise Tom’s draw­ings also reveal the male der­rière as a sex­ual organ: not just in some of the more hard­core exam­ples, but the way that Tom-ish but­tocks are so spher­i­cal, so sen­sual, so invit­ing. One of the most strik­ing and pre­scient sketches, from 1981, is also one of the tamest: a row of beden­imed male bub­ble butts stick­ing out at a bar — await­ing per­haps the atten­tions of the hugely pow­er­ful Aber­crom­bie & Fitch pho­tog­ra­pher Bruce Weber (a big Tom fan), or per­haps the vase­lined, wide-angled lens of a Levi’s commercial.

Tom’s big break came in the 1950s from Physique Pic­to­r­ial, an under­ground, semi-legal gay Amer­i­can fanzine dis­guised as a straight men’s body­build­ing mag­a­zine, which fre­quently put Tom’s men on the cover. Half a cen­tury later, and 17 years after his death in 1991, the world is inverted: flesh-and-blood men who look like Tom’s draw­ings appear on the cover of best­selling cor­po­rate mags such as Men’s Health. Flick one open, and you’ll find it full of advice on how straight men can turn them­selves into some­thing Tom-ish.

POSTSCRIPT Feb 2011

Com­pare the 1960s Tom of Fin­land sketch of the pneu­matic young man swaggering/sashaying down the street, with the one of 21st Cen­tury Jer­sey Shore star Mikey ‘The Sit­u­a­tion’ Sor­rentino (Mikey’s face isn’t quite the Tom-ish ideal, but boy, his tits and abs are):

 

http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2008/11/04/from-finland-with-lust-homotopias-tom-of-finland-retrospective/

This essay is from Metrosexy (2011)!

Beckham The Virus by Mark Simpson (2003)

He’s one of the most famous humans who has ever lived — even though he’s not that cute, not that smart and not that great a soc­cer player.

By Mark Simpson

[Orig­i­nally appeared Salon, June 28, 2003]

It hasn’t been like this since the death of Diana. Britain has been suf­fer­ing from a national ner­vous break­down ever since David Beck­ham, hand­some icon of the Man­ches­ter United soc­cer team, announced last week that he was leav­ing to play for Real Madrid.

The Sun, the best-selling UK tabloid, set up a Beck­ham “grief helpline” and claims it has been swamped with calls from dis­tressed fans. One caller said he was con­sid­er­ing sui­cide, while sev­eral con­fessed that they were so upset they couldn’t per­form in bed. A man who has “Beck­ham” tat­tooed on his arm threat­ened to cut if off. “I cried myself to sleep after hear­ing the awful news,” said grand­mother Mary Richards, age 85. A Lon­don cabby, ever the voice of rea­son, asked, “Has the world gone mad? He’s only a foot­baller!” But he was mis­taken. A foot­baller is now the least of what David Beck­ham is.

In the era of soc­cer that will come to be known as B.B. — Before Beck­ham — the sport was a team game. What mat­tered was the club, the team and the player in that order. Then in the mid-1990s, David Beck­ham — or “Becks” as he is known in that famil­iar, affec­tion­ately fore­short­ened form with which the British like to address their work­ing class heroes — came along, flicked his (then) Diana-style blond fringe and changed the face of soc­cer. It wasn’t his leg­endary right foot that altered the game, but his pho­to­genic face — and the fact that he used it to become one of the most rec­og­niz­able, rich­est and valu­able ath­letes in the world, receiv­ing a salary of $8 mil­lion per year, earn­ing at least $17 mil­lion more in endorse­ments and com­mand­ing a record trans­fer fee for his move to Real Madrid of $41.6 million.

Beckham’s great­est value is his crossover appeal — he inter­ests not only those who have no inter­est in the club for which he plays, but those who have no inter­est in soc­cer. He is the most rec­og­nized sports­man in Asia, where soc­cer is still rel­a­tively new. Pos­si­bly only Bud­dha him­self is bet­ter known — though Beck­ham is catch­ing up there too: In Thai­land some­one has already fash­ioned a golden “Becks” Bud­dha. He’s even man­aged to inter­est Amer­i­cans, for God’s sakes. The 27-year-old, tongue-tied, sur­pris­ingly shy working-class boy from London’s East End has suc­ceeded in turn­ing the mass, global sport of soc­cer into a mass, global pro­mo­tional vehi­cle for him­self, repro­duc­ing his image in count­less coun­tries. He has turned him­self into a soc­cer virus, one that has infected the media, repli­cat­ing him every­where, all over the world, end­lessly, mak­ing him one of the most famous men that has ever lived.

David Beck­ham, in other words, is a superbrand.

In recog­ni­tion of this, Becks was the first foot­baller ever to receive “image rights” — pay­ment for the earn­ing poten­tial his image pro­vided his club — and got them, to the tune of $33,300 a week. In fact, image rights were the main issue at stake in the record-busting six weeks of con­tract rene­go­ti­a­tions he had with Man­ches­ter United last year; his worth as a player was agreed at $116,500 a week almost imme­di­ately. Then there’s that $17 mil­lion a year for endors­ing such brands as Cas­trol, Bryl­creem, Coca Cola, Voda­fone, Marks & Spencer and Adi­das. And Becks just keeps get­ting big­ger. His trusty lawyers have already reg­is­tered his name for prod­ucts as var­i­ous as per­fumes, deodor­ants, jew­elry, purses, dolls and, oh yes, soc­cer jer­seys. Such is the power of the Beck­ham brand that it’s hoped it can res­cue the for­tunes of Marks & Spencer’s cloth­ing (a high-end British chain that has become a byword for “dowdy”).

But alas, the brand couldn’t save mur­dered Suf­folk girls Holly and Jes­sica, poignantly pic­tured last year in police posters in match­ing repli­cas of his No. 7 red shirt. When it was still hoped that they might be run­aways, the man him­self made a broad­cast appeal for their return. There was the Becks, eerily right at the heart of the nation’s hopes and fears again.

Beck­ham has even man­aged to brand a numeral — 7 — the num­ber on his soc­cer jer­sey. A clause in his Man­ches­ter United con­tract guar­an­teed him No. 7, he has 7 tat­tooed in Roman numer­als on his right fore­arm, his black Ferrari’s reg­is­tra­tion plate is “D7 DVB,” and his Marks and Spencer’s cloth­ing line is branded “DB07.” He even queues at No. 7 check­out when he goes shop­ping. This is often inter­preted as a sign of his super­sti­tious­ness, but is more an indi­ca­tion of his very ratio­nal grasp of the magic of brand­ing. (He may, how­ever, have to set­tle for the num­ber 77 when he moves to Real Madrid, as the cov­eted 7 is already taken by Span­ish super­star Raul.)

But some­how, Beck­ham has not yet become a vic­tim of his own suc­cess and has man­aged to remain offi­cially “cool.” Europe’s largest sur­vey into “cool” recently found that Beck­ham was the “coolest” male, accord­ing to both young women and men. Beckham’s sta­tus can be attrib­uted to his diva-esque ver­sa­til­ity and his super­brand power: “Like Madonna he is very ver­sa­tile and able to rad­i­cally change his image but not alien­ate his audi­ence,” says pro­fes­sor Carl Rohde, head of the Dutch “cool hunt­ing” firm Signs of the Time. “He remains authen­tic.” Each time he goes to the hairdresser’s and has a restyle — which is alarm­ingly often — he ends up on the cover of every tabloid in Britain. In other words, what­ever Becks does, how­ever he wears his hair or his clothes — or, cru­cially, what­ever prod­uct he endorses — he is say­ing, as Rohde puts it, “this is just another aspect of me, David Beck­ham. Please love me.” And, it goes with­out say­ing, buy me. And mil­lions do.

Becks’ great­est sales suc­cess, how­ever, was actu­ally on the foot­ball field — though less with the ball than with the cam­era. He’s the most famous foot­baller in the world, and con­sid­ered by mil­lions to be one of the great­est foot­ballers of all time, but arguably he’s not even a world-class player. A very fine one, to be sure, but not nearly the foot­baller we are sup­posed to think he is — not nearly the foot­baller we want to think he is. Sport, you might imag­ine, is the one area of con­tem­po­rary life where hype can’t win, where results, at the end of the day, are every­thing. But Beck­ham has dis­proved that, has van­quished that, and rep­re­sents the tri­umph of P.R. over … well, every­thing. His con­tri­bu­tion to Man­ches­ter United was debat­able. On foot­balling skills alone, he is arguably not wor­thy of play­ing for the Eng­lish national team, let alone being its cap­tain. How­ever, in the last decade soc­cer has become part of show busi­ness and advertising.

Beck­ham is a hybrid of pop music and foot­ball, the Spice Girl of soc­cer — hence his mar­riage to one. He is — indis­putably — the cap­tain of a new gen­er­a­tion of pho­to­genic, pop-tastic young foot­balling lad­dies that added boy-band value to the mer­chan­dis­ing and media pro­file of soc­cer clubs in the 1990s.

Beckham’s foot­balling forte is free kicks. This is entirely appro­pri­ate, since these are, after all, among the most indi­vid­u­al­is­tic — and aes­thetic — moments in soc­cer. Unlike a goal, with a free kick there’s no one pass­ing to you, no one to share the glory with. Instead there’s prac­ti­cally a spot­light and a drum roll. And how he kicks! “Gold­en­balls” (as his wife, Vic­to­ria, aka Posh Spice, report­edly likes to call him) has impres­sive accu­racy and his range is breath­tak­ing — along with his famous “bend­ing” tra­jec­tory, his kicks also have style and grace. Long arms out­stretched à la Fred Astaire, wrists bent del­i­cately upward, for­ward leg angled, and then — con­tact — and a pow­er­ful, pre­cise, ele­gant thwump! and follow-through. An Eng­lish­man shouldn’t kick a ball like this. This is the way that Latins kick the ball. Beck­ham doesn’t just rep­re­sent the aes­theti­ciza­tion of soc­cer that has occurred in a media-tised world — he is the aes­theti­ciza­tion of it. Like his silly hair­dos, like his “arty” tat­toos, like the extra­or­di­nar­ily elab­o­rate post-goal cel­e­bra­tions he prac­tices with the crowd, almost every­thing he does on the field is designed to remind you that No. 7 is any­thing but a number.

Off the soc­cer field Becks is able to use clothes and acces­sories to draw atten­tion to him­self. And does he. The Ver­sace suits, the sarong, and the sequined track suit that opened the Com­mon­wealth Games daz­zled TV audi­ences and con­fused some for­eign view­ers who still thought the queen of Eng­land was a middle-aged woman. Essen­tially, Beckham’s visual style is “glam” — more Suede than Oasis (with a bit of con­tem­po­rary R&B pop promo thrown in). And like glam rock, which was a British working-class style run­ning riot in the decade of his birth, the 1970s, Beck­ham, the son of Ley­ton­stone pro­le­tar­i­ans, has a clear image of him­self as working-class roy­alty, the new People’s Princess (though his “super­brand” power has as yet been unable to sell us his wife, who, post-Spice Girls, remains unpop­u­lar and unsuc­cess­ful). Hence his wed­ding took place in a cas­tle; at the recep­tion after­ward Posh and Becks were ensconced in match­ing His ‘n’ Hers thrones, and their Hert­ford­shire home was dubbed “Beck­ing­ham Palace” by the tabloids.

Soc­cer, like pop music, is one of the few ways the British are per­mit­ted any suc­cess — it is, after all, some­thing both man­ual and aris­to­cratic at the same time. Becks the foot­ball pop star rep­re­sents and adver­tises a mate­ri­al­is­tic aspi­ra­tional­ism that doesn’t appear bourgeois.

Beckham’s tat­toos — a lit­eral form of brand­ing — seem to epit­o­mize this. What were once badges of male working-class iden­tity are now ways of adver­tis­ing the unique Becks brand. “Although it hurts to have them done, they’re there for­ever and so are the feel­ings behind them,” Becks has explained. But these are not the kind of “Mum & Dad Always” tat­toos his plumber dad and his mates might have had. The huge, shaven-headed, open-armed, “guardian angel” with an alarm­ingly well-packed loin­cloth on his back looks more than a lit­tle like him­self with a Jesus com­plex. Beneath, in gothic let­ter­ing, is his son’s name: Brook­lyn. Once his uni­form comes off at the end of a match — as it usu­ally does, and before any­one else’s — the tat­toos help him to stand out instantly, and mean that he is never naked: He’s always wear­ing some­thing designer.

Becks clearly enjoys get­ting his tits out for the lads and lasses — and oil­ing them up for the cover of Esquire and other lad­die mags. While he may look strangely under­nour­ished and frag­ile in a soc­cer uni­form, as if his ghoul­ishly skinny wife has been tak­ing away his fries, and all those injuries sug­gest he’s some­what brit­tle, stripped down he looks as lithe and strong as a pan­ther. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t do drugs. His body is a tem­ple — to his own self-image — which he never ceases worshipping.

There is how­ever a sub­mis­sive pho­tophilia to Becks. A cer­tain pas­siv­ity or even masochism about his dis­plays for the cam­era, which seem to say “I’m here for you.” Hence per­haps the fond­ness for those Christ-like/James Dean-like poses with arms out­stretched (the cover of Esquire had him “cru­ci­fied” on the Cross of St. George). Even those free kicks seem to have the lop­ing iconog­ra­phy of “Giant” or Cal­vary about them.  Truth be told, Becks is there for him, but it’s a nice thought nonetheless.

To some he is already a god — lit­er­ally. In addi­tion to the Thai Becks Bud­dha, a pair of Indian artists have painted him as Shiva, the Hindu god of destruc­tion. In the Far East, androg­yny is seen as a fea­ture of god­head — and so it has here in the West as well since the Rolling Stones. As Becks tells us him­self: “I’m not scared of my fem­i­nine side and I think quite a lot of the things I do come from that side of my char­ac­ter. Peo­ple have pointed that out as if it’s a crit­i­cism, but it doesn’t bother me.” It’s as if when he was a teenager he looked at those grainy black-and-white ‘80s girl­ish bed­room shrine posters of smooth-skinned doe-ish male mod­els hold­ing babies and thought: I’d like to be like that when I grow up. Becks is the poster boy of what I have termed else­where met­ro­sex­u­al­ity. His hero/role-model sta­tus com­bined with his out-of-the-closet nar­cis­sism and love of shop­ping and fash­ion and appar­ent indif­fer­ence to being thought of as “fag­goty” means that for cor­po­ra­tions he is a price­lessly potent vec­tor for per­suad­ing mil­lions, if not bil­lions, of young men around the world to express them­selves “fear­lessly,” to be “indi­vid­u­als” — by wear­ing exactly what he wears. Beck­ham is the über-metrosexual, not just because he rams met­ro­sex­u­al­ity down the throats of those men churl­ish enough to remain ret­ro­sex­ual and refuse to pluck their eye­brows, but also because he is a sports­man, a man of sub­stance — a “real” man — who wishes to dis­ap­pear into sur­face­ness in order to become ubiq­ui­tous — to become me-dia. Becks is The One, and slightly bet­ter look­ing than Keanu — but, be warned, he’s work­ing for the Matrix.

Ulti­mately, though, it is his desire that makes him the super­brand that he is. Beck­ham has suc­ceeded where pre­vi­ous British soc­cer heroes you’ve never heard of, such as George Best, Alan Shearer and Eric Can­tona — a French­man who played for Man­ches­ter United and is John the Bap­tist to Beck’s Christ — have failed, and has become a truly global star. Partly because the world has changed but mostly because they didn’t want it as much as he did. Becks is trans­par­ently so much more needy — more needy than almost any of us is. The pub­lic, quite rightly, only lets itself love com­pletely those who clearly depend on that love, because they don’t want to be rejected. Beckham’s need­i­ness is lit­er­ally bot­tom­less. Like his image, it grows with what it feeds on. He’ll never reject our gaze.

It’s there in his hun­gry face. He isn’t actu­ally that attrac­tive. Blas­phemy! No really, his face doesn’t have a proper sym­me­try. His mouth is frog­like and bash­fully off-center. But what is attrac­tive, or at least hyp­no­tiz­ing in a demo­c­ra­tic kinda way, which is to say medi­a­genic, is his neurotic-but-ordinary desire to be beau­ti­ful, and to use all the tech­nol­ogy and voodoo of con­sumer cul­ture and fame to achieve this. His appar­ent lack of an inner life, his sub­mis­sive, high-pitched 14-year-old-boy voice that no one lis­tens to, his beguil­ing blank­ness, only empha­size his suc­cess, his pow­er­ful­ness in a world of super­fi­cial­ity. That oddly flat-but-friendly gaze that peers out from bill­boards and behind Police sun­glasses looks to mil­lions like the near­est thing to god­li­ness in a god­less world. Peo­ple fall in love not with him — who knows what Beck­ham is really like, or cares — but with his mul­ti­me­dia need­i­ness, his trans­mit­ted “viral” desire, which seems to spread and repli­cate itself every­where, endors­ing mul­ti­ple prod­ucts. Becks’ desire, via the giant shared toi­let han­dle of adver­tis­ing, infects us, inhab­its us and becomes our own.

The British for their part, even those call­ing tabloid papers in tears to declare their lives ruined now that Beck­ham is mov­ing to Real Madrid, will sur­vive shar­ing him with the Span­ish for a few years. After all, they’re already proudly shar­ing him with most of the rest of the world — and bask­ing in his reflected, if some­what syn­thetic glory. No one buys our pop music any­more; our “Brit­pop” prime min­is­ter, Tony Blair, post-Iraq, is widely regarded abroad as a scoundrel; our roy­als, post Diana, are a dreary bunch of sods (even her sainted son William is begin­ning to lose some of his Spencer spark and glow to the tired, horsey blood of his “Ger­man” dad and grand­mama); and our national soc­cer squad has dif­fi­culty beat­ing coun­tries with a pop­u­la­tion smaller than Southampton.

But “our Becks” on the other, per­fectly man­i­cured hand, is some­thing British the world seems to actu­ally want, badly.

This and other tarty essays can be found in Simpson’s 2011 book,  Metrosexy

Meet The Metrosexual by Mark Simpson (2002)

This is another article from Metrosexy by Mark Simpson to mark its first birthday. Meet The Metrosexual…

The Nineties wasn’t ready to acknowledge what had happened to the modern male and why he was spending so long in the bathroom. So eight years after ‘Here Come the Mirror Men’, in a shiny new century – surrounded by even shinier metros – I decided to try outing him again. This time naming names.

(Salon.com, 22 July 2002)

David Beckham, the captain of the England soccer team at this year’s World Cup in Korea and Japan — quite possibly the most famous and photogenic soccer player in the world — recently posed for a glossy gay magazine in the U.K., just before leaving for battle in the Far East. Well, you can imagine the outcry. The leader ofEngland’s courageous lads tarting around in a pooftah magazine? Handing our enemies such an embarrassing pink stick to hit us with when the nation is girding its manly loins? Well, actually, apart from a few predictable but strangely muted snickers in the tabloid press, the sensation was that there wasn’t a sensation. It was entirely what the British public has come to expect. You see, “Becks” is almost as famous for wearing sarongs and pink nail polish and panties belonging to his wife, Victoria(aka Posh from the Spice Girls), having a different, tricky haircut every week and posing naked and oiled up on the cover of Esquire, as he is for his impressive ball skills. He may or may not be the best footballer in the world, but he’s definitely an international-standard narcissist, what would once have just been called, in the Anglo world at least, “a sissy.” Hence in that World Cup game againstBrazil that kicked England out of the tournament, Becks was the only English player not to be upstaged aesthetically as well as athletically by the Latins.

In the interview with the Brit gay mag Attitude, this married father of two confirmed that he’s straight, but as he admits, he’s quite happy to be a gay icon; he likes to be admired, he says, and doesn’t care whether the admiring is done by women or by men. All of this is very modern and progressive, I’m sure, and Beckham’s open-mindedness and “equal ops” narcissism has undoubtedly helped to change some — how shall we say? — unsophisticated attitudes in this very male, tough, still largely working-class sport. However, I feel it is my duty to inform you that Mr. Beckham, candid to the point of blatant exhibitionism as he is, is not being entirely honest with us about his sexuality. Outing someone is not a thing to be contemplated lightly, but I feel it is my duty to let the world know that David Beckham, role model to hundreds of millions of impressionable boys around the world, heartthrob for equal numbers of young girls, is not heterosexual after all.

No, ladies and gents, the captain of the Englandfootball squad is actually a screaming, shrieking, flaming, freaking metrosexual. (He’ll thank me for doing this one day, if only because he didn’t have to tell his mother himself.) How do I know? Well, perhaps it takes one to know one, but to determine a metrosexual, all you have to do is look at them. In fact, if you’re looking at them, they’re almost certainly metrosexual. The typical metrosexual is 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. Particular professions, such as modelling, waiting tables, media, pop music and, nowadays, sport, seem to attract them but, truth be told, like male vanity products and herpes, they’re pretty much everywhere. For some time now, old-fashioned (re)productive, repressed, unmoisturized heterosexuality has been given the pink slip by consumer capitalism.

The stoic, self-denying, modest straight male didn’t shop enough (his role was to earn money for his wife to spend), and so he had to be replaced by a new kind of man, one less certain of his identity and much more interested in his image — that’s to say, one who was much more interested in being looked at (because that’s the only way you can be certain you actually exist). A man, in other words, who is an advertiser’s walking wet dream. Beckham is the biggest metrosexual inBritainbecause he loves being looked at and because so many men and women love to look at him: He’s the future, but also a way of adapting other, less advanced specimens to that future. More to the point, he sucks corporate cock with no gag reflex. A staple of newspapers, men’s magazines, TV advertising and billboards, last year he earned around $8 million for sponsoring various male fashion accessories, such as Police sunglasses. The Beckham advertising phenomenon, however, goes beyond the usual cash-in, slightly wooden product endorsements of sporting stars.

Becks gives the impression that he’d do it for nothing (except the attention); he’s a sporting star who wants to be a model. Oddly, while Beckham is now officially a gay icon, he’s probably someone that gays would rather be than fuck — all that money, all those free designer clothes, living with a Spice Girl and all those straight men in love with you. Of course, they also like him because imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Gay men did, after all, provide the early prototype for metrosexuality. Decidedly single, definitely urban, dreadfully uncertain of their identity (hence the emphasis on pride and the susceptibility to the latest label) and socially emasculated, gay men had pioneered the business of accessorizing masculinity in the ’70s with the clone look enthusiastically taken up by the mainstream in the form of the Village People.

Difficult to believe, I know, but only one of them was gay and 99 percent of their fans were straight. In the Eighties, the moustaches were shaved off and the male body became more smoothly, invitingly aestheticized and commodified by media regents such as Bruce Weber, Herb Ritts and Calvin Klein. Two decades on, and the hairless — perpetually adolescent and available — dazzlingly toothy, muscular, masculine template is still with us, simultaneously a cliché and de rigueur in an Abercrombie & Fitch world. A&F may be looked down upon as middlebrow and middle American by the most refined metrosexuals, but its alarming popularity with straight, beer-drinking frat boys is proof of how metrosexuality has gone mainstream — while its lusciously produced, semi pornographic quarterly catalogues deliver conclusive proof that male narcissism (in photographic shorthand: Weber-ism), is only ever a post-workout shower away from homoeroticism. Perhaps this is because nowadays straight men are also emasculated. Female “Sex and the City” metrosexuality has seen to that. Female metrosexuality is the complement of male metrosexuality, except that it’s active where male metrosexuality is passive. No longer is a straight man’s sense of self and manhood delivered by his relationship to women; instead it’s challenged by it.

Women are still monarchs of the private world, but increasingly assertive in the public world too. Series like “Oz,” set in a male prison and featuring story lines that revolve around violent buggery, probably look like a kind of sanctuary for some men from the female voraciousness of “Sex and the City.” And, as the pages of the celeb mags reveal, the more independent, wealthy, self-centred and powerful women become, the more they are likely to want attractive, well-groomed, well-dressed men around them. Though not for very long. By the same token, the less men can rely on women, the more likely they are to take care of themselves. Narcissism becomes a survival strategy; apparently, some men actually buy their own underwear and deodorant these days. Beckham, unlike most metrosexuals, is happily married, though he seems to wear his marriage and even his children as accessories: The name of his first child,Brooklyn, is tastefully tattooed across his back. Many years ago, Norman Mailer described homosexual men as narcissists who occasionally bump into one another. Which was true, of course. But now that everyone’s gone metrosexual it’s also true of straights. Perhaps this is why straights are almost as promiscuous as gays these days: All those TV dating shows where marriage or even sending each other Christmas cards is the last thing on anyone’s mind; all those youth holidays that appear to have become fortnight-long rum-soaked orgies, while Mum and Dad back home are taking part in wife-swapping parties in the suburbs.

Sometimes it seems as if the only thing holding straights back from full equality with gays is the fact that most restroom facilities are not yet co-ed. Perhaps this is also why hetero sodomy has become such a hot topic of late: These days my straight male friends talk of no other kind of intercourse (though maybe it’s because they think I’m an expert on it). According to the same straight men, the vagina was made not for their penis but for another female’s tongue. Perhaps because it represents the definition of recreational sex and doesn’t remind them of their heterosexual responsibilities but rather of their homosexual possibilities (the exhibitionism of male metrosexuality is literally asking to be fucked), or maybe because it’s seen as a kind of extreme sport, anal sex has become the unholy grail of metrosexual sex. The booty has become the pervey focus of so much fashion lately, including those Engineered Levi’s ads featuring men and women with their jeans on back-to-front, zippers over ass cracks. Kylie Minogue’s career was recently successfully and spectacularly relaunched as a global brand by her bending over and offering her pert, almost boyish ass literally to the world. A front-page headline onBritain’s most popular national newspaper drooled: “Has Kylie Had a Bum Job?” (One of the most popular taunts used by opposing fans against Beckham used to be “Posh takes it up the arse!!” Now it just sounds like flattery.)

Metrosexuality has also convertedHollywoodto its persuasion. Films like “Fight Club” and “American Psycho” and “Spider-Man” exploit and/or negotiate the anxiety created by metrosexuality’s impact on masculinity while of course employing all the advertising techniques that have been used to convert young men to metrosexuality in the first place. This can lead to an irony that loops back on itself: auto-fellatio with arched, plucked eyebrows. In “Fight Club,” a film that looks like a feature-length glossy men’s magazine fashion shoot, Brad “six-pack” Pitt, smooth Calvin Klein model turned Hollywood pretty boy, and one of America’s most famous metrosexual males, leads an all-boys-together rebellion against … Calvin Klein, or rather emasculating consumerism. In “American Psycho,” the antihero serial killer’s problem is presented as his failure to recognize the woman that could civilize him: “Have you ever wanted to make someone happy?” she asks innocently. He doesn’t hear her: He’s too busy getting out his giant nail gun. Making someone else happy is of course an even more impossible quest than making yourself happy — our parents taught us that. But in this case it is rather less likely to stain your white silk sofa. The “Spider-Man” movie meanwhile offers us the kinky, fetishistic spectacle of a geeky ordinary young man whom no one notices transformed into a raving metrosexual before our very eyes. Apparently injected with steroids and ecstasy by a gay spider, he admires his new buffed body with widening eyes in the mirror, dresses up in a tight lycra gimp suit and runs around a lot on all fours with his arse in the air, after having setting up (Web?) cameras to record his (s)exploits. Peter Parker/Tobey Maguire employs designer drugs, clothes, perverse sexuality and multimedia technology to get people to look at him as he swings between the billboards and skyscrapers from what appears to be his own hardening jism. In one memorable bondage/mummification-resonant scene he hangs upside down in his gimp suit while Kirsten Dunst peels off the lower part of his mask to kiss him, before replacing it: a perfect example of the new power dynamic between metrosexual men and women and how metrosexual men have to be the centre of attention. We’re supposed to believe that Tobey is motivated by old-fashioned virtues of social concern and love for Kirsten but we don’t believe it for a moment. Nor does, in the end, the movie: Kirsten finally offers herself but Tobey declines, realizing that she would come between him and his real love: his metrosexual alter ego in the Day-Glo gimp suit. American publishing meanwhile is effectively repeating the ironic formula of “Fight Club” and the Brit lad-mags (Maxim, FHM) exported to the U.S.from the U.K.. In the editorial these magazines perform a kind of hysterical heterosexuality of tits, beer, sports, cars, and fart-lighting — but the real money shot is the pages and pages of glossy, straight-faced fashion spreads and ads featuring glossy male models selling male vanity; that, after all, is what these magazines exist to deliver. Which is to say, the lad-mags are actually raving metrosexual but still in denial, which is the place that most men are at right now.

Mind you, denial has something to be said for it. It can take some interesting and creative forms — such as Eminem, for example. The “faggot” boy bands that Mr. Mathers hates are definitely metrosexual. And yet Em, who like Beckham can’t resist a big fat shiny lens, who loves to pose half-naked (and drag it up in his videos), and who also wears his children as accessories, is clearly and alarmingly metrosexual himself; we’re all looking at him and he’s meeting our gaze with his pretty, hooded baby-blue eyes. He bitches and moans about all the attention he gets, but succeeds in turning that bitching and moaning into… another album. Eminem poses dreamily for the cover of glossy magazines, but then has a hissy fit when they Photoshop his shirt pink and demands that they pulp their entire print run. The real “Eminem Show” is exhibitionism and passivity masquerading, very attractively, very seductively, as rap-ismo activity — and is probably why most of his songs contain references to being “fucked in the ass.” (And perhaps why his former bodyguard has alleged that Eminem’s wife regularly beat up Slim Shady and not the other way around.) By way of contrast, the relaxed, ‘faggoty’, apparently submissive metrosexuality of David Beckham, posing for gay magazines and more than happy to wear pink shirts – and pink nail varnish – is much less pathological, and probably represents a more benign or successful adaptation of masculinity to the future, but can be a trifle distasteful, not to say occasionally downright nauseating.

The final irony of male metrosexuality may be that, given all its obsession with attractiveness, vanity for vanity’s sake turns out to be not very sexy after all. But then, it’s much too late for second thoughts. Metrosexuality is heading out of the closet, and learning to love itself. Even more.

Buy Metrosexy at Amazon!

http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2011/05/31/metrosexy-hits-the-streets-and-struts-its-stuff/

Beckham The Covergirl

Forget Brad Pitt, Becks is still ‘raising the bar’ for metrosexuality, even at the grand old age of 37. Here he poses as the first solo man cover girl for Elle Magazine. And his ‘come to bed eyes’ are just as convincing as Elle McPhereson’s, Kate Moss’s, or …er…Brad Pitt’s.

http://groomingguru.co.uk/2012/05/29/david-beckham-provides-one-elle-of-a-magazine-cover/

Here Come The Mirror Men by Mark Simpson 1994

To celebrate Metrosexy’s 1st Birthday I am posting some essays from Mark Simpson’s tarty tome. This one, Here Come The Mirror Men, originally appeared in the Independent Newspaper in 1994. According to Simpson, he was promoting his first book Male Impersonators published earlier that year, and he used the term ‘metrosexual’ as a short hand for some of the more complex ideas in the book about men’s narcissism in consumer culture. Here come the mirror men!

————————————-

According to several dictionaries this piece marks the first appearance of the word ‘metrosexual’ in print.

(The Independent, 15 November 1994)

‘IT’S BEEN KEPT underground for too long,’ observes one sharply dressed ‘metrosexual’ in his early twenties. He has a perfect complexion and precisely gelled hair, and is inspecting a display of costly aftershaves. ‘This exhibition shows that male vanity’s finally coming out of the closet.’

And it’s busy filling the new-found space in there with expensive clothes and accessories. ‘It’s a Man’s World -Britain’s first style exhibition for men’, organised by GQ magazine inLondonlast weekend, proves that male narcissism is here and we’d better get used to it.

With pavilions representing top men’s fashion designers such as Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Giorgio Armani and all the latest ‘grooming’ products, It’s a Man’s World is, as Peter Stuart, GQ publisher, describes it, ‘a terrific shopping experience.’

Metrosexual man, the single young man with a high disposable income, living or working in the city (because that’s where all the best shops are), is perhaps the most promising consumer market of the decade. In the Eighties he was only to be found inside fashion magazines such as GQ, in television advertisements forLevisjeans or in gay bars. In the Nineties, he’s everywhere and he’s going shopping.

Metrosexual man wears Davidoff ‘Cool Water’ aftershave (the one with the naked bodybuilder on the beach), Paul Smith jackets (Ryan Giggs wears them), corduroy shirts (Elvis wore them), chinos (Steve McQueen wore them), motorcycle boots (Marlon Brando wore them), Calvin Klein underwear (Marky Mark wears nothing else). Metrosexual man is a commodity fetishist: a collector of fantasies about the male sold to him by advertising.

Even the title of the exhibition reveals how much times have changed. Not so long ago the expression conveyed the idea that the world belonged to that half which shaved. Nowadays it seems to mean that you have to have the right après-rasage face cream.

On one of the stands at It’s a Mans World men lie supine while attractive women in white coats rub luxurious moisturisers into their faces; cameras display the beauty treatment in close-up on banks of screens. Behold the metrosexual pampered by women, technology and capitalism; behold the metrosexual as star.

‘It feels nice. Basically you get a free facial out of it,’ says James, a nineteen-year-old in natty jeans and an Italian designer shirt, face aglow. ‘This stuff is a bit out of my price range, I’m a student,’ he confesses. ‘But if I had the money I might well buy the stuff.’

Is all this attention to appearance a good thing? ‘Yes,’ says another young man, casually-but-carefully dressed in Caterpillar boots, pristine Levi’s, T-shirt, sweatshirt and bomber jacket. ‘If women take so much trouble over their appearance it’s only fair that men should take a bit more themselves. My girlfriend would certainly agree!’

But is it really about fairness? Or about what you see when you look in the mirror? ‘I suppose it’s mostly the way you feel,’ he admits.

A twenty-one-year-old stock manager in Gap agrees. ‘Men are just as vain as women and it’s a good thing that we’re able to show it these days.’

One of the major interests behind metrosexual pride, as the impressive list of sponsors of this event (Dunhill to Porsche, Timberland to Simpson’s of Piccadilly) shows, is big business. Metrosexuals are the creation of capitalism’s voracious appetite for new markets.

Traditionally heterosexual men were the world’s worst consumers. All they bought was beer, fags and the occasional Durex, the Wife or ‘Mum’ bought everything else. In a consumerist world, heterosexual men had no future. So they were replaced by the metrosexual.

The promotion of metrosexuality was left to the men’s style press, magazines such as The Face, GQ, Esquire, Arena and FHM, the new media which took off in the Eighties and is still growing (GQ gains 10,000 new readers every month). They filled their magazines with images of narcissistic young men sporting fashionable clothes and accessories. And they persuaded other young men to study them with a mixture of envy and desire.

Some people said unkind things. American GQ, for example, was popularly dubbed ‘Gay Quarterly’. Little wonder that all these magazines – with the possible exception of The Face – address their readership as if none of them was homosexual or even bisexual. Little wonder that It’s a Man’s World organiser Peter Stuart found it necessary to tell me that ‘all the men will bring their girlfriends.’

The ‘heterosexual’ address of these magazines is a convention. There to reassure the readership and their advertisers that their ‘unmanly’ passions are in fact manly. Nevertheless, the metrosexual man contradicts the basic premise of traditional heterosexuality – that only women are looked at and only men do the looking. Metrosexual man might prefer women, he might prefer men, but when all’s said and done nothing comes between him and his reflection.

Metrosexuality was of course, test-marketed on gay men – with enormous success. It’s a Man’s World is billed as the first men’s style exhibition – but the Gay Lifestyles Exhibition, which features fashion shows and a whole range of ‘men’s products’, is already in its third year. It was in the style-obsessed Eighties that the ‘gay lifestyle’ – the single man living in the metropolis and taking himself as his own love-object – became an aspiration for non-homosexuals.

Perhaps this is why Attitude, a style magazine launched earlier this year felt able to break with convention and address itself openly to gay men and ‘strays’ (gay acting straight men).

The New Lad bible ‘Loaded’, for all its features on sport, babes and sport, is (closeted) metrosexual. Just as its anti-style is a style (last month it carried a supplement for ‘no nonsense’ clothes, such as jeans and boots), it’s heterosexuality is so self-conscious, so studied, that it’s actually rather camp. New Lads, for all their burping blokeishness, are just as much in love with their own image as any metrosexual, they just haven’t come to terms yet.

Nor is metrosexuality a vice restricted to the poncey Southern middle-classes. Working class boys are, if anything, even more susceptible to it. For example,Newcastlemen between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five, apparently spend more money per head on clothes than any other men inEurope. If you live with your mother, as do many working class boys until they marry, and, crucially, you have a job – your disposable income and your metrosexual tendencies are likely to be high.

And metrosexuals have an amazing sense of solidarity. Back at It’s a Man’s World, Steve and Paul, two fashionably dressed men-about-London in their late twenties, admit to spending ‘a substantial amount’ of their income on male cosmetics and clothes, and think that the exhibition is ‘great’. But they’re worried they might be letting the side down.

Says Steve: ‘It’s a shame you picked us to talk to because we’re gay and people might think that a show like this is just for gays and wouldn’t come. The thing is, straight men are just beginning to discover the joys of shopping and we wouldn’t want to scare them off.’

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you can buy Metrosexy at Amazon

Happy 1st Birthday, Metrosexy!

A year ago this week, Mark Simpson’s tour de force, Metrosexy was published!

How are you going to celebrate this tarty publication’s first birthday?

By going to the gym and pumping some iron? Or buying yourself a new tight pink t shirt to show off that hot bod of yours? Perhaps you will enjoy a celebratory back, sack and crack?

Whatever you do make sure it is metrotastic.

As for me, the original ardent Simpsonista, I shall be posting essays from the book over the coming days, and telling everyone who hasn’t done so to buy it and read it!

For as my amazon review of Metrosexy says:

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the shower, the shopping mall, the cinema, the sports arena, the bedroom…

The metrosexual revolution has changed men (and women) forever.

I am biased, as I helped Mark Simpson edit and publish Metrosexy. But I still know it is brilliant.

This latest book by Mark Simpson, who coined the term ‘metrosexual’ back in 1994, gives the low-down on that most familiar, but in many ways, unacknowledged of characters, metroman.

“Contrary to what you have been told,” says Simpson, “metrosexuality is not about flip-flops and facials, `man-bags’ or `manscara’. Or about men becoming `girlie’ or `gay’. It’s about men becoming everything. To themselves. In much the way that women have been for some time. It’s the end of the sexual division of bathroom and bedroom labour. It’s the end of sexuality as we’ve known it.”

This entertaining book takes us on a romp through contemporary culture- film, reality TV, wrestling, boy bands, strip clubs, and uncovers men’s ‘desire to be desired’ so that by the time you have finished it, you will have no doubt just how ‘tarty’ masculinity is becoming.

Under the witty observations and lively prose there is a deeper message about changing gender roles, the blurring of sexual identities and the subversive aspects of men’s newfound, or newly mediated and commodified, ‘self-love’.

I am a fan of all Simpson’s work but this is my favourite of his books because it so clearly maps the unstoppable march of metrosexuality through (post)modern life.

A must read!

 

 

Metrosexual Rom Coms – A Note For Chloe Angyal

http://www.dailylife.com.au/news-and-views/dl-opinion/may-contain-male-nudity-20120523-1z4vp.html

Chloe Angyal is doing a PhD on romantic comedies. The main finding from her research so far is something I already knew – more men take their kit off in films these days, and their bodies are pretty buff! Whoda thunk it? Angyal writes:

‘Romantic comedies are largely made for women. While there certainly are men out there who watch and enjoy rom coms – more than will own to it, I suspect – they’re not the majority or the target audience. According to Nielson Ratings, women account for about 77% of the audience for romantic comedies.

Producers know this. They know who their audience is, and they spend a great deal of time and energy thinking about exactly what their audience wants to see, because movies are expensive to make, and if no one watches them, that money goes to waste. And right now, it seems, what women want is Chris Evans with very little clothing on.

It comes as news to absolutely no one that the straight women viewers at whom rom coms are aimed enjoy looking at men in a state of undress. That’s not a headline, and hasn’t been since the good Dr. Kinsey wrote it decades ago. What the recent uptick in male nudity suggests, however, is that now, we’re allowed to enjoy looking at men in a state of undress. We’re allowed to enjoy it in public, at the movies. There’s a big difference between acknowledging that of course, women have these desires – and actually catering to them. It signals a shift from acknowledging to allowing, and even encouraging, those desires, that I think demands further discussion.

What’s fascinating is that there doesn’t seem to be an accompanying uptick in female nudity in the genre. With the exception of The Proposal, in which Reynolds’s co-star Sandra Bullock also appears nearly nude, there is a nudity imbalance in all of these movies. So it’s not simply hat the genre is becoming more raunchy across the board: this is just about men.

…

We already live in a culture that constrains our ideas about what a beautiful woman is. We mustn’t start treating men the same way. That is not the kind of gender equality we were hoping for.’

Well unsurprisingly I have a few problems with her thesis. She has not managed to do enough research to realise that the phenomenon she has been looking into, has a name – metrosexuality. And it has a key theorist who has been working on it and writing books on the subject since 1994 – Mark Simpson.

Also she is only able to see men getting their kit off through a ‘feminist’ lens, and an anti-objectification lens. She makes some valid points about ideal body type standards in men. But she is also being very heteronormative, and ignoring not only gay/bisexual men’s desires and their ‘gayze’, but also metrosexual hetero men’s.

Who is she speaking for when she says ‘this is not the kind of gender equality we were hoping for’?

It was exactly the kind of gender equality I was hoping for! And I know I am not alone.

http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2012/02/08/channing-tatum-the-modern-male-stripped-bare/

http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2011/05/31/metrosexy-hits-the-streets-and-struts-its-stuff/

The 43 Most Metrosexual Presidents Of All Time

Following the right wing blogosphere using the term ‘metrosexual’ to describe Obama in the negative, there has been some pushback in his defence.

Charles M Blow wrote an interesting (but flawed in my view) piece on the ‘feminine’ connotations of metrosexuality that seem to offend macho Americans a great deal.

I will return to that some other time.

Meanwhile at Mother Jones they have found some ‘metrosexual’ presidents through history.

http://metrosexy.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/are-you-fagsome-tonight-ft-grooming_guru-marksimpsonist/

Grooming Guru has also suggested metrosexuality has been going on a long time:

‘Did men in Tudor times not wear drop-pearl earrings and fiddle endlessly with their codpieces? Did Georgian men not wear wigs and powder their cheeks? And did Duran Duran keyboardist Nick Rhodes not wear more make up on his wedding day than his model wife Julie Anne?’

But as I explained previously  this goes against Simpson’s concept of metrosexuality being a contemporary phenomenon, and one that is linked directly to consumer capitalism. Nick Rhodes was indeed a metro pioneer. But consumer capitalism was well under way in the 1980s. In Tudor times working class men were walking round in sack cloths. Pearl earrings were a sign of wealth.

Still I am glad to see some exposure for tarty metrosexuals!

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/05/most-metrosexual-presidents

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/opinion/blow-metrosexual-black-abe-lincoln.html

http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2012/05/15/the-perfect-mandate-obama-and-becks-and-the-media/

Metrosexual India #3

From Mark Simpson dot com:

It’s always fascinating to see and hear about the ways in which metrosexuality is interpreted/expressed/appropriated/completely rewritten in different parts of the world, particularly the parts that I and most Westerners tend to overlook.

The parts in other words that actually make up most of the world.

India for instance, with its pre-colonial traditions of ‘pagan’ androgyny — and emerging consumerism as it begins to assert itself as one of the economies likely to shape the 21st Century — has both eagerly taken up metrosexuality and adeptly reinterpreted it to its own needs.

So I was very glad when I was recently contacted by an artist in Delhi called Pallavi Singh.

From Ms Singh’s artist statement:

While growing up and during my formative years in art, I was intrigued by changes occurring with age in men both in terms of behaviour and psyche and also the struggles against it and measures taken to reverse it. I have created characters based on observations and insights drawn from life experiences in and around my immediate surroundings. Through these characters I try to depict the longing for youthful appearances, the veiled fantasies and the hidden desires which are now becoming more visible and observable in the background of changes in the society and growing accessibilities to new avenues.

The longing for youthful appearances, the veiled fantasies and the hidden desires which are now becoming more visible and observable.

Quite.

—————–

http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2012/05/21/pallavi-singh-metrosexy-delhi/

Under MetroDad’s post someone (Bill Wakefield) left an interesting comment. He said:

‘This became appar­ent in India esp with rise of inter­net and “glob­al­ism” in the 90’s and eas­ier con­tact with expat rel­a­tives liv­ing in the West. They primp & preen unabashedly in sassy, tight fit­ting jeans and short sleeve shirts with dec­o­ra­tive pock­ets and con­trast­ing stitch­ing… Some­times in cities I think I’m near a twink bar in the Cas­tro — only these are not twinks. And as with males every­where, allure is inversely pro­por­tional to the degree of their own self-conscious aware­ness of it: The Indi­ans were hot­ter when they didn’t know they are and weren’t try­ing to be, when their bod­ies were only sug­gested by the way their home­spun kur­tas, paja­mas, and dho­tis draped them… Even their pos­ture and gait was dis­tinc­tive, ele­gant, dig­ni­fied: No more. You hardly see Indian clothes there any more. Even seem to have traded in all their cool, region­ally dis­tinc­tive san­dals for ugly plim­solls — shipped in from China, no doubt. Such a pity. The great global cap­i­tal­ist cul­ture fuck found in India a vast pool of eager bottoms.’

Simpson has not responded as yet.

Metrosexual Gap ref @Marksimpsonist

 

http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2008/11/13/twinsome-devils-and-the-narcissus-complex/

What, then, is D&G Time? What is the era, the epoch it her­alds and meters and so accu­rately, so taste­fully acces­sorizes? Well, a cloned, dig­i­tal world in which the dri­ving force, the coiled spring at the heart of the jew­elled mech­a­nism, is not het­ero­sex­ual repro­duc­tion, or even homo­sex­ual cou­pling, but rather, nar­cis­sis­tic per­fec­tion. Nar­cis­sis­tic per­fec­tion achieved through fash­ion, con­sump­tion, cos­met­ics, tech­nol­ogy, surgery and really good light­ing. A utopian-dystopian, twin­some future in which men and women date them­selves instead of each other that has already arrived. Dance music for peo­ple who want to lis­ten to tomorrow’s music today.

…

Con­trary to what you may have heard, met­ro­sex­u­al­ity is not about ‘fem­i­nized’ males — or even about straight men ‘act­ing gay’. To talk in such terms is merely to reveal your­self as a hope­less nos­tal­gic. As the ‘father’ of met­ro­sex­u­al­ity, I can tell you that met­ro­sex­u­al­ity isn’t about men becom­ing women, or becom­ing gay — it’s about men becom­ing every­thing. To them­selves. In much the same way that women have been for some time.

In the early Noughties I defined the met­ro­sex­ual as some­one who ‘might be offi­cially gay, straight, or even bisex­ual, but this is utterly imma­te­r­ial as he has taken him­self as his own love-object and plea­sure as his sex­ual pref­er­ence.’ The met­ro­sex­ual announced the begin­ning of the end of ‘sex­u­al­ity’, the 19th Cen­tury pseudo-science that claimed that your per­son­al­ity and psy­chol­ogy and taste in home fur­nish­ings was dic­tated by whether or not your bed-partner’s gen­i­talia were the same shape as yours.

As we approach the Tee­nies (what else should we call what comes after the Noughties?) this process, with a flush of hor­mones, has been speeded up. D&G Time is nei­ther homo, het­ero, bi — or even metro. It’s sim­ply same-sexuality. Clono­sex­ual. In D&G Time, all gen­i­talia are the same shape: fashion-shaped. In place of the Oedi­pal military-industrial com­plex of the 20th Cen­tury we have… the all-consuming Nar­cis­sus Com­plex of the 21st.’

We live, you can hardly failed to have noticed, in an age of Dori­ans, male and female, admir­ing them­selves in web­cams, phone cams, digi­cams, online pro­files and the two-way mir­rors of the global Big Brother House. There may or may not be a por­trait in the attic, but if there is you can be sure that it’s been Pho­to­shopped. Back in the 20th Cen­tury — which seems much, much longer than just a decade ago — I thought that the def­i­n­i­tion of a trans­sex­ual was some­one who behaved as if they were being pho­tographed 24 hours a day. Now, of course, this is how every­one under the age of 25 behaves. Because they are.

As the young Quentin Crisp, a real­ity TV win­ner long before there was such a thing as real­ity TV, or even TV, responded prophet­i­cally to his starchy father’s angry accu­sa­tion: Do you intend to spend the rest of your life admir­ing your­self in the mirror??

‘If I pos­si­bly can.’

What­ever you or I may think of nar­cis­sism — and Gore Vidal famously described a nar­cis­sist as ‘some­one bet­ter look­ing than you’ — it’s far, far too late for an opin­ion. After a cen­tury of very bad press indeed, nar­cis­sism now holds the (nicely turned) whip-handle over the cul­ture. Even pol­i­tics, always the last to know, has noticed: in the UK the ‘Nasty’ Tory Party is now led by a nice, dash­ing, mois­turised young man who wants very much to be liked, while the Amer­i­can Demo­c­ra­tic Party ear­lier this year chose a gym-going, preen­ing youth­ful male over a tougher, older, more expe­ri­enced female can­di­date in large part because he was much pret­tier than her and reflected back, in his charm­ingly, delib­er­ately vague way, a more flat­ter­ing image of themselves.