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Eng­lish (unedited) ver­sion of Q&A with Mark Simp­son by Michele Mas­neri for Ital­ian cul­tural  mag­a­zine Stu­dio in which he talks about the Ital­ian roots of sporno, the next stage of met­ro­sex­u­al­ity – and the Silviosexual

What do you mean by the word “sporno”?

The place where sport and porn get into bed while Mr Armani takes pic­tures. Beck­ham and Ronaldo’s bulging pack­ets rammed down our throat on the sides of buses. Dolce & Gab­bana hang­ing around the Ital­ian foot­ball team’s locker room. That kind of thing. So once again we mostly have Italia to thank.

Met­ro­sex­u­al­ity, the male desire to be desired, has become so nor­mal now that it’s pretty much taken for granted. So in order to get noticed you have to go hard­core – and promise the view­ing pub­lic a gang-bang in the show­ers. Hence sporno.

Is Italy the most met­ro­sex­ual country?

In a sense the wave of met­ro­sex­u­al­ity that swept the globe in the last decade or so was really just the rest of the world catch­ing up with Italia and becom­ing a lit­tle bit more Italian.

Male nar­cis­sism is at the heart of met­ro­sex­u­al­ity – and in Italy unlike in the Anglo world this has never really been prop­erly repressed. Italy, home of Michelan­gelo, Mar­cello Mas­troianni and Dolce & Gab­bana, never seri­ously pre­tended that ‘beauty’ was a word that couldn’t sit along­side ‘male’, and pat its well-formed knee.

In Italy, par­tic­u­larly South­ern Italy, young men often have an almost swishy but entirely assured way of walk­ing that few Ang­los can ever hope to match. And if we try, it just ends up a silly sashay.

Nonethe­less, I think full-throated met­ro­sex­u­al­ity does break down tra­di­tional or offi­cial ideas about the sex­ual divi­sion of lov­ing and look­ing even in Italy by under­min­ing machismo and ‘out­ing’ the queer­ness of it all. The way that women look at men and men look at other men – and how men get very turned on by all the attention.

Do you know the Fiat-Chrysler CEO, Ser­gio Marchionne? 

Mark Simp­son: I’m afraid I had to look him up. Are you sure he’s Ital­ian? He looks like Jeremy Clarkson’s dad. Do you think he has a wardrobe at home with 365 iden­ti­cal shape­less jumpers and shirts?

Hum­mer­sex­u­als are guys who over-emphasise their mas­culin­ity with ‘manly’ acces­sories in a way that makes you won­der what they’re cov­er­ing up. Ret­ro­sex­u­als are merely pre-metrosexual.

Ser­gio seems more ret­ro­sex­ual than hum­mer­sex­ual. Partly because Fiat cars aren’t ter­ri­bly pop­u­lar with the US mil­i­tary or Hol­ly­wood action heroes  – too small and ‘faggy’, I expect – but mostly because he reminds me of my old chem­istry teacher.

And how about for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Berlusconi?

He’s quite some­thing, that Berlus­coni! But at least, as he keeps remind­ing us, he’s not queer. Even if he does look like a drag queen.

I don’t think any of the cat­e­gories really fit Sil­vio. He’s far too spe­cial. He’s in a cat­e­gory all of his own. Sil­vio­sex­ual.

Mind you, his old chum Tony Blair, our for­mer PM and rock star man­qué, shared the same drag queen smile. But ulti­mately Sil­vio is a reminder to an Anglo like me of the mys­ter­ies of ‘machismo’. How some­thing so camp can imag­ine itself some­thing so butch.

Per­haps we need to go way back in time to locate Berlusconi’s painted, dyed, stretched, ter­ri­fy­ingly cos­metic look. Back to the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt.…

Is David Beck­ham still the epit­ome of the metrosexual?

Yes, albeit the age­ing met­ro­sex­ual. In Eng­lish we have an expres­sion, ‘mut­ton dressed as lamb’.… But then there are lots of men his age and older who also don’t want to give up their sex-object sta­tus – so they look to him for inspi­ra­tion. Though he’ll have to offer them some­thing a lot sex­ier than those daggy H&M pants and vests he came up with recently.

Beckham’s met­ro­sex­ual crown has of course been usurped by younger, pret­tier play­ers such as Cris­tiano Ronaldo – who also famously stole his Armani undies. At the same time you have a new gen­er­a­tion of tarty male real­ity TV stars, such as Mike ‘The Sit­u­a­tion’ Sor­rentino and his ‘gym tan laun­dry’ metro mantra from Jer­sey Shore. And at the movies you have stars like Tom Hardy, with those pouty, Brando-esque lips, mus­cles and his openly admit­ted bi-curious past telling us ‘Don’t be a afraid to dream a lit­tle big­ger, darling.’

Is met­ro­sexy the “next stage” of met­ro­sex­u­al­ity? The word ‘met­ro­sex­ual’ was born in the Nineties. What hap­pened to male nar­cis­sism since then?

Fun­nily enough Justin Bieber was born the same year as the met­ro­sex­ual. They’re both sweet sev­en­teen. In other words, met­ro­sex­u­al­ity is still wait­ing for its voice to drop.

That said, men’s nar­cis­sism has become much so main­stream and accepted in the last decade or so, to the point where it is often taken for granted, espe­cially by the younger gen­er­a­tion who has grown up with it. Hence the word itself is likely to become defunct at some point in the not too dis­tant future. To some extent Met­ro­sexy is about a post met­ro­sex­ual world.

How­ever, there are still reaction-formations and kinky back­lashes against met­ro­sex­u­al­ity, par­tic­u­larly in the US which, because of a pas­sion­ately Protes­tant his­tory and an equally pas­sion­ate denial about its own scream­ing gay­ness, con­tin­ues to work out her issues. E.g. those hummersexuals.…

Essen­tially ‘met­ro­sexy’ is the tarty male sen­si­bil­ity that met­ro­sex­u­als have injected into the cul­ture. Met­ro­sex­u­al­ity has gone from being a ‘type’ – ‘the met­ro­sex­ual’ –  to be spot­ted and pointed at, to being a per­va­sive ‘feel­ing’. A way of see­ing and being seen.

Also, a glance at the news­stand, the bill­board, the TV, and the queue at the bus stop tells us that with many young men the desire to be desired and embody male beauty has taken an increas­ingly phys­i­cal, sen­sual form: their lov­ingly, painstak­ingly sculpted and shaved mus­cles and their elab­o­rate, expen­sive designer tattoos.

Fol­low­ing the cues of sporno, many seem to aspire to be sex­ual ath­letes. Hus­tlers. Porn stars.

What’s the rela­tion­ship between hip­ster­ism and metrosexuality?

Although most hip­sters would prob­a­bly rather die than admit it, hip­ster­ism is a form of met­ro­sex­u­al­ity. But a very middle-class and ener­vated – or ‘ironic’ – one. It’s patently nar­cis­sis­tic, but usu­ally regards the body and ‘sex­i­ness’ as ‘vul­gar’. Which it is of course – if you’re lucky.

What’s the “gay bomb”, Aber­crom­bie & Fitch or Amer­i­can Apparel or Apple?

Aber­crom­bie & Fitch were per­haps the det­o­na­tor – Apple and iPhones were the explo­sion. iPhones are of course the ulti­mate van­ity prod­uct – they’re really MEphones. The app that comes gratis with every smart­phone is dumb self-obsession. And they’re also a great way to take a pic­ture of your­self top­less in the gym chang­ing room mir­rors to upload to Face­book, or per­haps a more ‘dis­crete’ ‘social network’…

Are the social net­works, i.e. Face­book and espe­cially Twit­ter, a form of a sub­li­mated metrosexuality?

Inas­much as they’re all about MEEEEEE! yes. They’re where peo­ple com­pete for atten­tion and try to turn them­selves into brands and com­modi­ties and mar­ket them­selves, a hall­mark of metrosexuality.

In the case of Face­book, often the met­ro­sex­u­al­ity isn’t even very sub­li­mated. Young men can and do upload hun­dreds of top­less pic­tures of them­selves, appar­ently audi­tion­ing for that Men’s Health cover.

You’ve writ­ten that “in some ways Obama is the first US Pres­i­dent to be his own First Lady.” Is there any met­ro­sexy can­di­date in the Repub­li­can party?

Not in the cur­rent line-up of hope­fuls. Though Mitt Rom­ney does look like a man­nequin in the win­dow of a par­tic­u­larly bor­ing depart­ment store.

Aaron Schock on the other hand, the Repub­li­can Con­gress­man who stripped off for Men’s Health mag­a­zine pos­i­tively drips met­ro­sex­i­ness – for a politi­cian. He’ll prob­a­bly end up Pres­i­dent one day. Him or Justin Bieber.…

Mark Simpson’s Met­ro­sexy is avail­able for down­load from Amazon.