Thanks to my Japanese metrosexuality correspondent Daniela K for informing me that, in addition to the popularity of skirts and dresses with Japanese men I blogged about last week, brassieres are catching on too. Yes, brassieres made for men. Brassieres made for men to wear rather than gawp at.
Apparently the male bras, unlike the female variety, have no practical function — not even to make men’s pecs look bigger or offer support to sagging ones — their value is entirely psychological. Particularly for male office workers unwinding after a stressful day at the office:
“One customer said when he wears a bra he feels he can ‘reset’ his feelings. If something bad happens he puts on a bra and feels he can come back and fight another day,” he continued.
It’s almost as if Japanese men’s wearing of bras is the equivalent of feminists supposed burning of them in the 1970s. Reportedly even America is waking up to the commercial potential of this undoubtedly brand new male product:
“We get a lot of inquiries from Americans who are interested in selling the bras,” Tsuchiya reported.
And why not? After all, Madison Avenue is currently bombarding American males with very expensive propaganda to get them to use ‘girly’ Dove body wash and buff-puffs.
However, us Brits are less understanding.
“… the British are different — they tend to be shocked by what we’re doing.”
Well, we would. We know that bras on men are just wrong. Unless you’re standing on a stage in a badly fitting wig making off-colour jokes.
Male bras are still a niche within a niche even in Japan, but the fact that they exists at all does show that metrosexuality will stop at nothing in its appropriation of anything ‘feminine’ — in order to look or feel fabulous.
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Some Drag is an art form, in the city it’s a way of making money, some times it’s just a proclivity. Often it’s a way of partially making a change by adding something without the full commitment of cutting something else off. Thankfully gender is not usually as clearcut as politics and medical practice would have you believe.
maybe h&m can start selling bras to go with their skirts for men?
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/blogs/the-thread/HM-Offers-Skirts-for-Men-This-Spring-73761552.html
mmmmmmmm, a move of which i would most highly approve.
Mark W., There’s a difference between transgender people and drag queens. Certainly, there have been trans drag queens, just as there have been hetero conservative politicians, but that does not mean they the norm. Drag is an art form. Transitioning one’s gender is a whole different cookie. You shouldn’t confuse the two.
boyabout(oak)town: You’ve been hanging around different drag queens than I have. All it takes is the right kind of hormones.
Mark W.: I haven’t the foggiest idea what your first paragraph means. Seriously. Also, drag queens don’t generally have breasts.
boyabout(oak)town ; you’d broaden your horizons re blindi fucking reading “Slow Man” by J.M. Coetzee; also the movie “Crash”. Straight guys kissing in a bar get attention too. Straight people just can’t get that right, somehow! Better noyt to waste time kissing, eh!
Nonetheless, what occured to me about this phenomenon, is that bras are a health necessity, keeping tits from becming-too low slung and saggy, or tangled. Our drag queens have worn them for ages.; I think , usually, with tits. These are not necessarily trannies, which reflect a whole different sensability, The bras there are only a necessity.
This lead us to think of bras with no tits as being a fetish of sorts, since thier major role is not decorative, but utilitarian. Which leads us to the question of how they could serve as plumage in the spirit of the meterosexual.
Mark W., you run into a lot of blind straight girls in bars? Or more likely, they run into you? If you could let me know where that is, I’ve got some homely straight guy friends who’d happily pay for the information.
Also, straight girls kissing in bars is more about attention than affection.
In my experience, two women smoching in a bar who aren’t lesbians are either blind or are very , very despirate for affection.
I think this is a far cry from transvestism. Is it a bit of a gender-fuck? Sure, but transvestism is certainly about more than that. This is a laugh and a wink at convention while never stepping over the bounds to actually wearing women’s apparel. This is to transvestism what two straight women kissing in a bar are to lesbianism.
Assuredly, if one was to treck about the gym in a leatherette bra, I think that the general take would be that we were trannys showing off. or that we were weight lifters with a bad case of “bitch tits.” looking to support the fall from grace (the grace of high riding tits).
Mark S. : It surely is a commercial diversion & compromise along the lines of metrosexuality. What really is the difference though between tranvestism and metrosexuality: one of degree or form, quantitative or qualitative. These waters seem a bit murky. No?
I suddenly became self-conscious about my cup size. Calvin Klein first made me worry that my package would protrude enough in briefs. I draw the line with this one, though. I’ve embraced quite a bit in the areas of male grooming and dress without a whimper, but there comes a time when a man has to take a stand and say, “Enough! You can bleach my asshole, but you’ll never harness my pecs!”
I don’t really see what this has to do with metrosexuality. It’s good old fashioned transvestitism.
I’m not entirely sure that it is good old fashioned transvestism, alas. Good old fashioned transvestism would wear women’s bras. Not ones made for men.
Don’t you mean brassieres?
Yes, thanks for pointing that highly Freudian misspelling of mine. I suppose I was thinking of burning brassieres in a brazier. Or perhaps containers for hot coals. Have corrected.