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How many obit­u­ar­ies will the press write for the met­ro­sex­ual before they finally accept that he’s immor­tal? Or at least, undead? That every time they cut off his head and pro­nounce him ‘deceased’ they replace him with even more metrosexuality?

I was recently asked some ques­tions by Maria Paz Lopez for the Span­ish national news­pa­per La Van­guardia about the sup­posed ‘decline’ of the met­ro­sex­ual in response to a piece in food and drink retail­ing mag­a­zine The Gro­cer called ‘Rise of the Ret­ro­sex­ual’, also widely-publicised in the UK — though no jour­nal­ists here took the trou­ble to ask for Metrodaddy’s opinion.

It wasn’t really nec­es­sary since this twad­dle was any­way com­i­cally rebutted a cou­ple of weeks later by the this report about how a ‘new wave of met­ro­sex­u­als’ prompted by real­ity TV shows like ‘Geordie Shore’ and ‘The Only Way is Essex’ appar­ently can’t go on hol­i­day with­out hair straight­en­ers and travel irons.

My Span­ish is very poor and I’m not sure what con­clu­sion Paz Lopez comes to, or even how much of me she quotes. But below is the main ques­tion she asked, and my unedited response, incor­po­rat­ing some sub­sidiary questions.

Do you agree that the met­ro­sex­ual man in West­ern soci­eties is now in decline in favour of the ret­ro­sex­ual one? If so, why? If not so, why? Or are both mod­els coex­ist­ing, and this hap­pens to be a tran­si­tional period to God knows what kind of manliness?

 Mark Simp­son: I see no evi­dence of the ‘decline’ of met­ro­sex­ual man. What­so­ever. Quite the con­trary. I just see more mar­ket­ing men­dac­ity to sell us even more male beauty products.

Since the early Noughties, when peo­ple around the world began writ­ing and talk­ing about the met­ro­sex­ual in a big way, the met­ro­sex­ual has reg­u­larly been declared ‘dead’ every few months – by mar­keters keen to sell even more prod­uct to men. The met­ro­sex­ual is dead! Real Men are back! And using our Real Man moisturiser!!

You can’t really blame them. It seems to be a fool­proof way to get lots of press atten­tion. No mat­ter how many times you do it.

The retail­ing jour­nal behind the lat­est announce­ment of the ‘death’ of the met­ro­sex­ual are even repeat­ing them­selves. In 2007 they pro­duced another widely-publicised ‘report’ that told us: ‘Move aside met­ro­sex­u­als, real men are back in action.’

If they were right four years ago, what’s news­wor­thy about their claim now? But of course, they were dead wrong four years ago and they’re dead wrong now. Or rather, they lied four years ago and they’re lying again now. But hey, that’s marketing.

Appar­ently I was the first to use the term ‘ret­ro­sex­ual’ to con­trast with ‘met­ro­sex­ual’, in an essay from 2003. Back then I just meant who weren’t metro – but a decade on ‘ret­ro­sex­ual’ seems now to mean middle-aged, middle-class met­ros with shaped chest hair, designer stub­ble and L’Oreal endorse­ment deals.

The fact that sales of male cos­met­ics may have reached a plateau in the last year is remark­able only for the fact that this is the first time that mar­ket hasn’t grown con­sid­er­ably in over a decade – despite reces­sion and eco­nomic hard­ship for the last few years. Male van­ity and its frip­peries has proved to be largely reces­sion proof.

But any­way met­ro­sex­u­al­ity isn’t about male beauty prod­ucts per se, or man­bags, or spas, it’s about the male’s desire to be desired in an increas­ingly medi­ated world. And there’s no sign that that is going away. Instead it has become increas­ingly ‘nor­mal’, espe­cially amongst young men, many of whom take a great deal of care over their bod­ies and their appear­ance – and the pic­tures of them­selves they post on their Face­book profile.

Of course, fash­ions come and go but met­ro­sex­u­al­ity isn’t a fash­ion – it’s an epoch. It rep­re­sents a fun­da­men­tal shift in what men are allowed to be and to want. Men are now per­mit­ted to be ‘pas­sive’ – invit­ing our gaze.

Met­ro­sex­u­al­ity rep­re­sents a totally aes­theti­cized, self-conscious mas­culin­ity. And gays have been aes­theti­ciz­ing and acces­soriz­ing mas­culin­ity for longer than any­one else. Hence the cur­rent sup­pos­edly ‘rugged’ and ‘ret­ro­sex­ual’ fash­ion for facial hair (as yet another male acces­sory) was actu­ally pio­neered by gays some years ago. ‘Ret­ro­sex­u­als’ are aping homosexuals.

Much has been made of L’Oreal’s adop­tion of stub­bly Hugh Lau­rie star of the US TV series ‘House’ as their poster boy. But no one men­tions that L’Oreal have for some time been tar­get­ing middle-aged men with ads that appeal in coded fash­ion to their anx­i­ety about get­ting old (Lau­rie is 52). Middle-aged men who, with their more tra­di­tional mind­sets, are prob­a­bly the last hold-outs against met­ro­sex­u­al­ity. Unlike their sons who just take it all for granted.

And any­way, their sons don’t know who Hugh Lau­rie is, or watch TV — or read news­pa­per arti­cles about alleged ‘ret­ro­sex­u­als’ — because they’re too busy updat­ing their top­less pho­tos on Facebook.