Hip hop has its own Andrej Pejic. The rapper DPhill Spanglish Man is rebelling against the rap-ismo dress code with something he dubs the ‘XY Movement’ which according to this report, ‘encourages men to get in touch with their feminine sides by donning lipstick and other items, like floral print tights, typically worn by women.’
“A lot of people feel like a lot of colors or tight clothes is homosexual. I feel like it’s more of an expression of me,” said Philips, adding, “The only obstacles are in your mind, that’s the way I feel. I had to break down those barriers in my mind to where I was just confident enough to do it.”
And Philips’s girlfriend, Joy Nguyn, is just as confident, even though she hears negative comments all the time.
“I get mostly negative comments, ‘Oh, he gay… That’s not cute. Guys shouldn’t wear lipstick or tights,’ but I really don’t care,” she said, adding, “It’s fine. I wear lipstick. He wears lipstick. We share lipstick.”
Or as Pejic put it:
“It’s not like, ‘Okay, today I want to look like a man, or today I want to look like a woman,’ ” he says. “I want to look like me. It just so happens that some of the things I like are feminine.”
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I’m not entirely convinced by the look, or the lipstick, myself but then I’m hardly the target demographic. Then again, he does have a fine pair of lips — and legs — so why shouldn’t he show them off?
What I do think links this to metrosexuality is the way that DPhill (like Andej Pejic) is keen to assert that he is going to wear what he damn well wants to wear and to hell with what’s ‘appropriate’ to his sex. Or genre.
Metrosexuality is not about men becoming girlie or gay — or sculpted muscle and designer tattoos. It’s about them becoming everything. Everything they want to be. It’s not about androgyny per sex but about accessorizing clothes and adopting products and practises previously considered ‘unmanly’. Just like the desire to be desired itself.
Perhaps it’s just attention-seeking, but that’s not such a great crime for a young person, especially one working in the music business. And in hip hop this look is really rather brave.
Men don’t look good with lipstick. Gay guys know this.
Everyone looks good with eyeliner. The Egyptians figured that out 5000 years ago.
We live in strange times.
This take exceeds the general sex turn about. Not metrosexual to my mind but rather drag. The difference being in that traditional rap music has been excessively heterosexist: overdone retrosexual.
The only wa to carry that off would probably be so violently masculine in other respects as to make the drag part seem a challenge: very over the top masculine “gay”.
One of my favorite lines in that article is: “Earlier this year straight rapper Lil B received death threats when he announced he was naming his next album ‘I’m Gay’…”
Say what? A *rapper*? The Onion is running out of things it can satirize on this subject…