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Abstract
In this essay, I explore the historical moment of metrosexuality in popular culture that, I argue, rather than simply a fad, constituted a logical premise vital to assuaging the “crisis” in masculinity engendered by the phenomenon of commercial masculinity. I trace the ways in which the fleeting trend of metrosexuality was articulated rhetorically in US popular culture in such a way as to rationalise commercial masculinity in targeted, explicit ways. I argue that metrosexuality served a crucial rhetorical function for the reconciliation of commercial masculinity with normative masculinity by organising homosociality in strategic ways. Accordingly, I suggest that apparently transient popular cultural trends might best be understood in terms of their location in—and strategic rhetorical function for—broader cultural discourses.
Notes
1. E.g., G. Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1995); John Beynon, Masculinities and Culture (Buckingham, UK: Open University Press, 2002); A. Clare, On men: Masculinity in Crisis (London: Chatto & Windus, 2000); Susan Faludi, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1999); S. Robinson, Marked Men: White Masculinity in Crisis (New York: Columbia, 2000); E. A. Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic, 1993).
2. E.g., R. Coward, Sacred Cows: Is Feminism Relevant to the New Millennium? (London: HarperCollins, 1999); Faludi, Stiffed; J. MacInnes, The End of Masculinity (Buckingham, UK: Open University Press, 1998); Bederman, Manliness; H. Brod, ed., The Making of Masculinities: The New Men's Studies (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1987); J. Jensen, E. Hagen, and C. Reddy, ed., The Feminisation of the Labour Force: Paradoxes and Promises (Cambridge: Polity, 1998); Rotundo, American.
3. E.g., Karen L. Ashcraft and Brenda J. Allen, “The Racial Foundation of Organizational Communication,” Communication Theory, 13 (2003): 5–38; Karen L. Ashcraft and Lisa A. Flores, “‘Slaves with White Collars’: Persistent Performances of Masculinity in Crisis,” Text and Performance Quarterly, 23 (2003): 1–29.
4. Beynon, Masculinities; MacInnes, The End, Coward, Sacred, Faludi, Stiffed; Jensen, Hagen, and Reddy, Feminisation; F. Henwood and I. Miles, “The Experience of Unemployment and the Sexual Division of Labour,” in Unemployed People: Social and Psychological Perspectives, ed. D. Fryer and P. Ullah (Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press, 1987); L. McKee and C. Bell, “ His Unemployment, Her Problem: The Domestic and Marital Consequences of Male Unemployment,” in The Experience of Being Unemployed, ed. S. Allen, A. Watson, K. Purcell, and S. Woods (London: Macmillan, 1986); M. Roper, “ Yesterday's Model: Product Fetishism and the British Company Man, 1945–1985,” in Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800, ed. M. Roper and J. Tosh (London: Routledge, 1991); S. Willott and C. Griffin, “Men, Masculinity and the Challenge of Long-term Unemployment, in Understanding Masculinities, ed. M. Macanghaill (Buckingham, UK: Open University Press, 1996).
5. E.g., Susan Bordo, The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1999); Clare, On Men.
6. M. Mangan, “Shakespeare's First Action Heroes: Critical Masculinities in Culture both Popular and Unpopular” (unpublished paper, 1997), cited in Beynon, Masculinities, 4; also C. Baddiel, “Come on, You Lads, It's Cool to Grow Up,” The Times Weekend Supplement (1999, 6 November): 1; Beynon, Masculinities; S. Jeffords, The Remasculinisation of America: Gender and the Vietnam War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989); L. Segal, “Looking Back in Anger: Men in the Fifties,” in Male order: Unwrapping Masculinity, ed. R. Chapman and J. Rutherford (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1988); S. Nixon, Hard looks: Masculinities, Spectatorship and Contemporary Consumption (London: UCL Press, 1996).
7. A. Fletcher, Gender, Sex, and Subordination in England, 1500–1800 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995); L. Hunt, British Low Culture: From Safari Suits to Sexploitation (London: Routledge, 1998); Jeffords, Remasculinisation; Michael S. Kimmel, Changing Men: New Directions in Research on Men and Masculinity (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1987); G. I. Mosse, The image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); M. Roper and J. Tosh, Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800 (London: Routledge, 1991).
8. Beynon, Masculinities; T. Edwards, Men in the Mirror: Men's Fashions, Masculinity, and Consumer Society (London: Cassell, 1997).
9. John M. Sloop, Disciplining Gender: Rhetorics of Sex Identity in Contemporary US Culture (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004), 144.
10. T. Allen, K. Douglas, T. Filicia, C. Kressley, and J. Rodriguez, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: The Fab 5's Guide to Looking Better, Cooking Better, Dressing Better, Behaving Better, and Living Better (New York: Clarkson Potter, 2004).
11. Michael Flocker, The Metrosexual Guide to Style: A Handbook for the Modern Man (Cambridge, MA: DaCapo, 2003).
12. R. Chapman, “The Great Pretender: Variation on the ‘New Man’ Theme,” in Male Order: Unwrapping Masculinity, ed. R. Chapman and J. Rutherford (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988); Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (New York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1983).
13. See, e.g., Edwards, Men; F. Mort, Cultures of Consumption: Masculinities and Social Space in Late Twentieth Century Britain (London: Routledge, 1996); Nixon, Hard Looks.
14. E.g., Beynon, Masculinities; Chapman, “Pretender”; Edwards, Men; Ehrenreich, Hearts; Mort, Cultures; Nixon, Hard Looks.
15. “Real men get waxed,” The Economist 368 (2003, 5 July): 57.
16. Edwards, Men, vii.
17. Beynon, Masculinities, 104; also Nixon, Hard Looks.
18. Beynon, Masculinities, 117.
19. Mort, Cultures, 18.
20. Edwards, Men, 51.
21. E.g., Beynon, Masculinities; Edwards, Men; Mort, Cultures.
22. Beynon, Masculinities, 105.
23. J. Bing, “The Metrosexual Mogul,” Variety, 392 (2003): 68.
24. Bing, “Metrosexual,” 68–69.
25. L. Pauli, “Metrosexuality: It's All about ‘Me,’” 29 December 2003, http://www.vibewire.net/articles.php?id = 2212 (accessed 3 March 2005); Mark Simpson, “Meet the Metrosexual,” 22 July 2002, http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/07/22/metrosexual/print.html (accessed 3 March 2005).
26. N. Danford, “DaCapo Embraces Metrosexuality,” Publisher's Weekly 251 (2004): 107.
27. Simpson, “Meet”; Danford, “DaCapo.”
28. Allen et al., Queer Eye.
29. E. Florian, “Queer Eye Makes Over the Economy!” Fortune, 9 February 2004: 38.
30. E.g., C. Kelly, “Gay TV Comes Out, But Who's Proud?” Fort Worth Star Telegram, 17 August 2003: D1; E. M. Ramsey and G. Santiago, “The Conflation of Male Homosexuality and Femininity in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” Feminist Media Studies 4 (2004), 353–55; Linda Stasi, “Flame Out! Linda Isn't Happy with How Gay TV Turned Out,” New York Post, 26 August 2003: 84.
31. Kelly, “Gay TV,” D1.
32. E.g., Joshua Gamson, “The Intersection of Gay Street and Straight Street: Shopping, Social Class, and the New Gay Visibility,” Social Thought and Research, 26 (2005): 2–18; D. Heller, “Taking the Nation ‘from Drab to Fab’: Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” Feminist Media Studies 4 (2004): 347–50; Katherine Sender, “Queens for a Day: Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and the Neoliberal Project,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 23 (2006): 131–51.
33. Sender, “Queens,” 136–37.
34. Sender, “Queens,” 148.
35. Beynon, Masculinities, 103
36. Faludi, Stiffed; Sender, “Queens.”
37. E.g., Bing, “Metrosexual”; Robert Frick, “The Manly Man's Guide to Makeup and Metrosexuality,” Kiplinger's Personal Finance 58 (2004): 38; Ramsey and Santiago, “Conflation”; Sender, “Queens.”
38. Bing, “Metrosexual,” 69.
39. E.g., Chapman, “Pretender”; Robinson, Marked.
40. E.g., Faludi Stiffed.
41. E.g., Eve Kofosky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia,University Press, 1985).
42. Bing, “Metrosexuality,” 68.
43. Beynon, Masculinities, 104.
44. Beynon, Masculinities, 104.
45. Davi Johnson (“Mapping the Meme: A Geographical Approach to Materialist Rhetorical Criticism,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 4 [2007]: 27–50) avers that metrosexuality functions as a “meme”—a replicating entity that becomes culturally embedded via humans’ discursive and material patterns and practices—that has engendered a pervasive cultural transformation including “changing views of masculinity, altered consumption patterns … and patterns of behavior” (41). I concur, but I would further locate metrosexuality in the broader discourse of commercial masculinity; metrosexuality was the handier mimetic—and, as I have argued, necessary logical—device that facilitated the widespread cultural acceptance and proliferation of commercial masculinity.
46. Sedgwick, Between; also Dana Britton, “Homophobia and Homosociality”: An Analysis of Boundary Maintenance,” Sociological Quarterly 31 (1990): 423–39; Jeff Hopkins, “Signs of Masculinism in an ‘Uneasy’ Place: Advertising for Big Brothers,” Gender, Place, and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 7 (2000): 31–56; Scott Fabius Kiesling, “Homosocial Desire in Men's Talk: Balancing and Recreating Cultural Discourses of Masculinity,” Language and Society 34 (2005): 695–726.
47. Kiesling, “Homosocial,” 720.
48. Sender, “Queens,” 140–41.
49. E.g., Hopkins, “Signs”; Sedgwick, Between.
50. In noting this, I do not mean to suggest that women's absence in this regard is de facto evidence for its illegitimacy or that, by the same token, “male-on-male” transformation is similarly illegitimate. What I am suggesting is that, viewing metrosexuality through the lens of assuaging the crisis in masculinity engendered by commercial masculinity, the literal removal of women was a required first step in “defeminising” the phenomenon.
51. “Book Review,” New York Times 153, 19 October 2003: 11.
52. S. Torres, “Why Can't Johnny Shave?” GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies 11 (2005): 96.
53. Sender, “Queens,” 141.
54. Flocker, Metrosexual, 11.
55. Flocker, Metrosexual, 42.
56. Flocker, Metrosexual, 140.
57. Sender, “Queens,” 139.
58. Flocker, Metrosexual, 135–36.
59. Hopkins, “Signs”; Kiesling, “Homosocial”; Sedgwick, Between.
60. E.g., Beynon, Masculinities; Edwards, Men; L. Morrish and K. O'Mara, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: Confirming and Confounding Masculinity,” Feminist Media Studies 4 (2004): 350–52; Mort, Cultures; Ramsey & Santiago, “Conflation.”
61. E.g., Simpson, “Meet”; Pauli, “Metrosexuality.”
62. Flocker Metrosexuality, xiii (italics mine).
63. “Real Men Get Waxed,” 57.
64. Gamson, “Intersection.”
65. Morrish and O'Mara, 2004, 350.
66. Sender, “Queens.”
67. E.g., Heller, “Taking”; Sender, “Queens.”
68. E.g., Frick, “Manly”; B. Lippert, “Boys Will Be Boys,” Adweek 46, 1 August 2005: 21; “Whispers and Proclamations,” Des Moines Business Record 23, 27 June 2005: 24.
69. Lippert, “Boys,” 21. The consistent and pervasive popularity of media fare devoted to the celebration of traditional masculinity even as commercial masculinity gains ground is noteworthy, but the two trends may be better understood as symbiotic rather than oppositional. The valorization of “manly men” in contemporary men's magazines is not only not absent of commercialization but arguably predicated on it, apparent in the articles, advertising, and visual aesthetics that “sell” a traditional masculinity. Furthermore, there is a significant ironic dimension to the representation of that masculinity—the unabashedly crude, unevolved man, entirely clueless about all things feminine or domestic, is affectionately rendered but simultaneously satirized in a way that suggests that while such (heterosexual) masculinity may be authentic, the demands of today's world require a more polished veneer, as provided by the advice, goods, and services proffered by the magazine. Thus, while the unapologetically “premakeover” man is the locus of such fare, its objective is far more similar to than different from the metrosexual project. In fact, the primary distinction is relevant to the invocation (or lack thereof) of the spectre of homosexuality, and as I have argued, this is the very “elephant in the room” that gave rise to metrosexuality—as a vital rhetorical device designed to manage the threat of homosexuality and feminisation attendant to commercial masculinity.
70. Frick, “Manly,” 38.
71. Sloop, Disciplining, 19.
72. Sloop, Disciplining, 19.