The term 'metrosexual' is one of a number of new buzzwords that the English language has sprouted in recent years. As culture shifts and changes to respond to new political, technological and socio-economic influences it is inevitable that our vocabulary will respond in kind. New concepts require new words to describe them; but what exactly does metrosexual mean?
It's interesting to consider that a word so widely bandied about seems, at first glance, to have quite a direct meaning. It is certainly an evocative enough term, with its hints of urban sophistication and sexual frisson, that when first hearing it used one assumes to know, at least vaguely, what it refers to. By the same token it is a word that warns people off inquiring after its true meaning ?C how embarrassing to be caught not knowing the latest lingo, especially such a slick and sexy word!
So, what does it mean? Well frankly, I'm not sure; it seems to have some connotations of a more fluid sexuality, an acceptance perhaps of other sexualities than ones own, perhaps even a move away from the polarised positions of gay and straight. The UK TV series 'Metrosexuals' seemed to support this position and yet concerned itself mainly with a group of friends who lived in London and had lots of sex with lots of people of assorted gender; is this really such an 'out there' concept that it needs a whole new word of it's own? You might have a hard time finding many Londoners who saw this concept as shocking or even particularly new. Perhaps if the same sort of thing was happening openly in Stow-on-the-Wold or Abergavenny it might be mildly more surprising (or perhaps that's just my London-centric attitude causing me to patronise the provinces, I haven't been to either of these places in a long while and for all I know this could be the absolute norm) but then 'rurosexual' doesn't have quite the same pleasing ring to it, does it?
I have heard it said that metrosexual refers to those straight men who are comfortable enough with their sexuality not to need to prove it. You know the sort, those guys who carry hods around a building site all day and spend their breaks discussing Chelsea's chances against Arsenal and the novels of Andre Gide, then come home to a scented bubble bath and six different exfoliants and moisturisers before knocking up a tidy little meat free lasagne? No, I don't know them either but apparently they exist, there's a word for them don't you know!
Perhaps, at the bottom line, this is what worries people like Mark Latham so much about the encroachment of metrosexuality on daily life: no-one knows quite what it is! The word, and indeed it's cultural roots, have just enough sense of change and difference about them to set hardcore traditionalists all a flutter and yet no-one has yet 'come out' as metrosexual; not because they're ashamed to admit it but because to apply a label to yourself you generally need to know what it means. Applying it to a faceless mass of others, however, is apparently not so difficult. I understand your disquiet, Mr Latham, it's very hard to engage an enemy if you don't know who, what or where it is!
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