August 31st, 2006
Faux-retrosexual Backlash: Letter To ‘business Week’
![\0636covdv Faux-Retrosexual Backlash: Letter to Business Week\](http://marksimpson.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/0636covdv.gif "\0636covdv Photo\")
The Editor
Business Week
Sir,
As the ‘father’ of the metrosexual (and also apparently of his antithetical brother the retrosexual) my attention was drawn to your cover article ‘Secrets of the male shopper’ by Nanette Byrnes.
Since she talked so much about my offspring, it would have been nice if Ms Byrnes had contacted me to check some of her metro family history.
When I first wrote about him in a UK newspaper in 1994 (‘Here come the mirror men’, Independent), I was not being insulting. Amused yes, but fondly so. Ambivalence was to come later.
Nor did the metrosexual somehow ‘surface’ in the US ten years later - he was introduced Stateside by his father in 2002 (‘Meet the metrosexual’, Salon.com). If I’d known what was coming I’d have grounded him in the UK.
US marketers abducted him with false flattery and did their best to turn him into an annoying fad, talking incessantly about the metrosexual as ‘sensitive’ and ‘in touch with his feminine side’. In fact, metrosexuality is only ‘feminine’ if you believe vanity’s name is (forever) Woman.
Ironically, the final proof that men are now as self-conscious as women is the so-called retrosexual backlash against metrosexuality. As your figures for booming male consumerism show, it’s not really retrosexual at all. It’s faux-retrosexual. It’s Calvin Klein model Brad 6-pack Pitt leading the rebellion against consumerism in Fight Club all over again.
‘Regular guys’, whatever they are/were, are fast becoming just another annoying fad.
Sincerely,
Mark Simpson
September 7th, 2006 at 10:53 pm
[...] Mark Simpson has a different take on last week’s Business Week article about the metrosexual. And as usual, he makes some excellent points. I said before, I was particularly content with the sentence “Oh yes, and he acquired the feminine persona we’ve become familiar with,? as I understand that he acquired this persona because of marketers such as Marian Salzman. Other readers might not have gotten the same point. Mark justly points out that “metrosexuality is only ‘feminine’ if you believe vanity’s name is (forever) Woman.? [...]
August 28th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
[...] all been mediated and accessorised - and turned into another way of making men even more self-conscious and consumerist. Retrosexuals are now just the latest, faddiest version of metrosexuals - metrosexuals with [...]