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My good friend the novelist Jake Arnott presents next Saturday’s instalment of BBC Radio Four’s antidote to grumpiness series ‘Reasons To Be Cheerful’.  He looks at the astonishing changes in attitudes towards sexuality and masculinity in the past few decades, arguing they offer men much greater freedom of choice and expression than in the past.

Because he’s a good friend and because he’s a very generous and charitable chap he invited me to contribute.  I tried my best to be grumpy, but Jake is so charming I couldn’t quite keep it up.  I think I may even have ended up talking about how much I liked Soho.

The world’s most populous country, and one of the most authoritarian, is fast becoming one of the most culturally avant-garde.  From the ever-interesting cool-hunt website Science of the Times‘ latest Top 15 trends:

An androgynous fashion style has begun to gain traction in China’s large cities. It’s classified as “Zhongxing Style” and is adopted by “tomboy” girls seeking to express both their coming of age and alternative lifestyle through their gender-blurring clothing and fashion sense. The style is typically associated with short and spiky hair, baggy clothing, and an overall “boy” like appearance.

Although Zhongxing style is not directly associated with homosexuality, the report suggests that the popularity of several gay-themed Tiawanese films with young people in China have fed into this style.  Further, it is likely to accelerate the growth of gender-defying male behaviour too:

If Japan and Korea are anything to go by, the following trend could see a new wave of super effeminate men as well. The pretty boy has long since been in the cultural sphere in Asia, but has regained steam in Korea with popular dramas like Boys Over Flowers and idols such as Kim Hyun Joong. Also, Japan has seen the growth of a group known as “Grass Eaters” — men set on improving their looks rather than starting a family.

(I think the usual English translation of ‘Grass Eaters’ is ‘Herbivores’, but no matter.)

Whilst China’s growing cities seem to be rushing towards a brave new androgyny, some in America are trying to work out ways of stamping it out – along with homosexuality and bisexuality – by giving potentially dangerous experimental drugs to pregnant mothers.

An endocrinologist at Florida International University is reportedly trying to prevent the births of girls who display ‘an “abnormal” disinterest in babies, don’t want to play with girls’ toys or become mothers, and whose “career preferences” are deemed too “masculine.”‘‘

That’s the problem with nature – it’s never nearly natural enough.  So let’s give it a helping hand by pathologising any and all gender non-conformity on the part of women!  The drug used in utero to nix any dykey or tomboy or perhaps just uppity tendencies is called ‘Dex’ – though maybe it should be called ‘Don’ as in ‘Draper’.  It must be a very remarkable drug indeed as it seems to promise a kind of time travel – back to 1952.  But without any dykes.  Or Doris Day, a feisty career woman. And definitely no Calamity Janes.

Though apparently in this drug-induced version of 1952 female endocrinologists are permitted.  The doctor behind this controversial treatment is herself a woman.

Tip: Quiet Riot Girl

Update: since The Stranger first reported this story about the use of Dex to prevent lesbianism and general lack of  conventional femininity a gap has opened up between what some feared Dex was being used for – or what it might be used for – and what it has actually been used for so far: preventing the birth of ‘intersexed’ babies.  Thanks to QRG for this link to a Newsweek article.  And also for this one: a rather entertaining but also alarming blog by P.Z. Myers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota, who argues that the people involved in using Dex to treat intersexed babies are just itching to use it to stamp out lesbianism and general female assertiveness. And warns that baby boys are next:

Before you less-than-hyper-macho men get all smug, though, let me warn you: prenatal hormone effects is a hot, hot topic in the heteronormative world of pediatrics. You’re going to be diagnosed as suffering from a prenatal androgen deficiency and shamed if you’re anything less than a man’s man with stereotypic masculine interests. Look for intrauterine testosterone treatments for women carrying boy children, just to make sure they grow up to like football (American, not that pansy soccer stuff) and follow macho careers!

By this standard probably most young men today would be deemed to be ‘suffering from a prenatal androgen deficiency’.  Which I guess is good news for whoever has shares in the male version of Dex.

Apparently Ken Doll is the preening scene-stealer of Toy Story 3 – and ‘makes metrosexuals cool‘.

I haven’t seen it yet, but the clips are fun.

By Mark Simpson

A bullet-pointed column in the NYT by Charles M. Blow examines a sea-change in attitudes towards homosexuality suggested by a recent Gallup poll which found that, for the first time, the percentage of Americans who perceive “gay and lesbian relations” as “morally acceptable” has crossed the symbolically important 50 percent mark.

Also for the first time, and even more significantly, more men than women hold that view.  While women’s attitudes have stayed about the same over the past four years, the percentage of men over 50 who consider homosexuality morally acceptable rose by a by an eyebrow-raising 26% -and for those aged 18-49 by an eyepopping 48%.

What on earth has happened in the US since 2006?  How did the American male lose his world-famous Christian sphincter-cramp and righteous loathing of sodomy? Have the gays been secretly putting poppers in the locker-room ventilation shaft?

Alas, Gallup doesn’t say.  So Mr Blow does what you do at the NYT when you’re stumped: ask some academics.  They came up with three theories:

1. As more gay people come out more straight people get to personally know gay people which makes it more difficult to discriminate.
2. Men may be becoming more ‘egalitarian’ in general, partly thanks to feminism.
3. “Virulent homophobes are increasingly being exposed for engaging in homosexuality”.

Now, the first two of these theories seem to me fairly plausible explanations for increased acceptance of homosexuality at any time, but not especially in the last few years – let alone that whopping 48% rise for 18-49 year olds.  But the third theory about public homophobes being exposed as secretly gay perhaps goes too far in the opposite direction and is too current-news specific.  As if the discovery that famous homophobe George Rekkers hired a rent boy to give him ‘special’ massages could transform attitudes towards man-love overnight – rather than just change attitudes towards George Rekkers.

So I give them all just a C minus.

And, as Blow points out, none of these theories address the main finding – that men now are more accepting than women, reversing the gender split on this subject that has held since pollsters started bugging people with questions about ‘homosexual relations’.

In my own speculative opinion, none of these theories can see the rainforest for the trees.  Of course young men in the US are much more accepting of homosexuality – because so many of them are now way gay themselves.  It’s not really an issue of ‘tolerance’ or ‘acceptance’ of ‘otherness’ at all.  It’s about self-interest – quite literally.  About men being less down on the gays because they’re less hard on themselves now – in fact, rather sweet instead.  It’s about men in general not being so quick to renounce and condemn their own ‘unmanly’ desires or narcissism – or project it into ‘faggots’.

Which from the point of view of today’s sensually greedy male would be a terrible waste of a prostate gland.  Probably most young men are now doing pretty much everything that freaky gay men were once abhorred for doing – from anal play (both ways) to no-strings fuck-buddies, to crying over Glee, and using buff-puffs in the shower while demanding as their male birthright ‘comfortable skin’ (as the recent massive ad campaign for Dove for Men puts it).

And the timing fits almost as snugly as a finger or three where the sun don’t shine.  It was after all only in 2003 that the Supreme Court finally struck down the anti sodomy laws still on the statute books of some US states as unconstitutional.  It was also in the early Noughties that metrosexuality really took off in the US.

Despite a mid-Noughties anti-metro, anti-gay marriage backlash that helped re-elect Bush, in the Tweenies the male desire to be desired, and his eagerness to use product – and body parts and practises – once deemed ‘gay’ or ‘feminine’ or just ‘wrong’ to achieve this, seems to have become pretty much accepted amongst most American males under 45.  It’s consumerism and advertising of course not the gays that has been putting the poppers in the men’s locker room.

Along the way, many young men have twigged that in a post-feminist world of commodified bodies and online tartiness there is decidedly no advantage to them any more in an essentially Victorian sexual division of labour in the bedroom and bathroom that insists only women are looked at and men do the looking, that women are always passive and men are always active – or in the homophobia that was used to enforce it.  Men now want it all.  Both ends.

And perhaps American women aren’t keeping up with men’s changing attitudes because some are  realising how ‘gay’ their boyfriends and husbands are already and wondering where this is all leading.

There’s plenty to wonder about.  After all, it’s the end of the road for that holiest American institution of all: Heterosexuality.  Not cross-sex attraction, of course, or reproduction – but that system of compulsory, full-time, always-asserted straightness for men which straying from momentarily, or even just failing to show sufficient respect towards in the past could cost you your cojones.  What, you a FAG??  If metrosexuality is based on vanity, retrosexuality, it needs to be pointed out, was based partly on self-loathing.  ‘Real men’ were supposed to be repulsed by their own bodies at least as much as they were repulsed by other men’s.  (If they were really lucky they might get away with passionate indifference.)

After a decade or so of metrosexuality a tipping point seems to have been reached.  Men’s self-loving bi-sensuality and appreciation of male beauty, awakened and increasingly normalised by our mediated world, seems to be here to stay.  Even in the God-fearing USA.  And might now, if it’s in the mood and treated right, choose to be consummated rather than just deflected into consumerism again.  When I first wrote about how the future of men was metrosexual, back in 1994, it was clear to me that metrosexuality was to some degree the flipside of the then emerging fashion for female bi-curiousness.  I didn’t talk about this much at the time because I knew no one would listen if I did.  (I needn’t have worried – they didn’t anyway.)

In this regard, one of the academics in the NYT piece was (finally) quoted as saying something interesting, right at the end:

‘Professor Savin-Williams says that his current research reveals that the fastest-growing group along the sexuality continuum are men who self-identify as “mostly straight” as opposed to labels like “straight,” “gay” or “bisexual.”  They acknowledge some level of attraction to other men even as they say that they probably wouldn’t act on it, but … the right guy, the right day, a few beers and who knows. As the professor points out, you would never have heard that in years past.’

An A ++ to Dr Savin-Williams.  Not so long ago, when Heterosexuality was a proper belief system that commanded round-the-clock obeisance, ‘mostly straight’ would have been a heretical contradiction in terms – like half pregnant.  But in this Brave New World of male neediness it’s just a statement of where we’re at.

For today’s young men the fear of faggotry is fast being replaced by the fear of missing out.

Tip: Dermod Moore

By Mark Simpson

So, pretty, svelte – and somewhat swish – David Milliband and his million-dollar smile, who was gushingly described by Hillary Clinton as ‘attractive’ and ‘vibrant’, is the front-runner in the Labour leadership contest to replace the big clunking grimace of Gordon Brown with something more electable.

It seems highly likely that soon all three main political parties in the UK will soon be led by adorable 40-somethings who look like moisturised, pampered 30-somethings who never miss the gym – and whose suits are cut to advertise their shape rather than disguise it. Metrosexual politicians rule. Literally. The ‘new politics’ is looking increasingly like a kind of ‘metro-politics’, in which male politicians have to seduce the electorate with their looks and sensitivity in order to have any chance of ugly, hard power.

Despite famously using a poster of Cameron next to an Audi Quattro and warning ‘Don’t let him take you back to the 1980s’, it was Gordon Brown who looked like the throwback. Gene Hunt without the swagger, or the nostalgia. And more creases. (If Cameron looks like anyone from the Eighties, it’s definitely not Gene Hunt or mannish Mrs T – it’s Spandau Ballet’s Tony Hadley at his most preening.) Even without the financial meltdown Brown was never going to win those brightly-lit TV debates on our Widescreen HDTVs. Not because of anything he said of course, but because he looked like death on toast. Dry toast.

David Cameron and Nick Clegg by contrast are politicians with prime-time skin who have gone one step further and entered into a political metro-marriage. A straight civil partnership which proclaims to the world: this is a progressive affair where there is no ‘husband’ and no ‘wife’: we’re equals who are sensitive to each other’s needs. Plus we both look really fetching in our matching blue made-to-measure.

Nor is metro-politics just a British phenomenon. The most powerful man on the globe Barack ‘smokin hot’ Obama is a President several trouser sizes smaller than most American men his age who makes the Free World wait every day on his morning workout. Even the great white male hope of his Republican Party ‘girly man’ hating enemies is a former Cosmo centrefold. In keeping with the dictums of metro-politics, President Obama is something of his own First Lady in front of the camera, always knowing exactly where the most flattering camera angles are – famously winning the Democratic nomination from Hillary Clinton because he was much prettier than her, and sending a ‘thrill’ up the leg of straight male commentators.

Which brings us onto an apparently paradoxical aspect of the ‘progressiveness’ of the metro-politicians admiring their reflection in the polls. Whilst they may be more appealing to many women voters than more traditional, plainer politicians, and are often keen to present themselves as ‘post-feminist’, they tend to regard themselves as so sensitive and lovely that they don’t actually need women in their cabinets. Unless they’re a bit camp like Theresa May. Or a bit scary like Hillary Clinton.

Although backbencher Diane Abbot has thrown her bonnet into the ring in the Labour leadership contest, she isn’t regarded as a serious contender – in part because she’s considered ‘too abrasive’. Instead the choice seems to be between David Milliband’s full-wattage metrosexuality and his brother’s Ed’s less dazzling eco-friendly variety.

The smart and nicely turned out money is on David. But either way, Her Majesty’s Opposition will very likely soon be led – like Her Majesty’s Government – by two surprisingly young-looking straight men who openly profess their love and admiration for one another.

British author and journalist Mark Simpson nails down the metrosexual, explains why civil unions are better for everyone than marriage, why bromance lacks balls, and why women are strapping on Captain Kirk.

Read the interview here.

What do Simon Cowell, Vinnie Jones, Tony Blair, Kayne West, Christian Bale, David Cameron and Russell Brand have in common?  They’re all Straight Queens , according to an entertaining piece by Stephanie Theobold in The Sunday Times.

Mark Simpson and Caroline Hagood Discuss the End of Sexuality and Other Girlie Stuff

huffingtonpost.com

My attention was recently drawn by a concerned member of the browsing public to a piece on Salon.com, ‘Retrosexuals: The latest lame macho catchphrase’ by Aaron Traister, entertainingly lambasting the ‘new’ retrosexual trend:

I woke up this morning to discover my local paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, peddling a story about America’s new favorite model of man: the retrosexual. Normally I ignore almost everything in my local paper, but this, in combination with a recent article in the New York Times about the sequel to “The Official Preppy Handbook,” has got my knickers in a bunch.

The retrosexual is a clever play on that other dusty gem of modern trend masculinity, the metrosexual. Unlike metrosexualism, which encouraged men to worry about their appearance and spend copious amounts of money on beauty products and clothes to mask the kinds of insecurities normally pushed on women, the retrosexual trend encourages men to worry about their appearance and spend copious amounts of money on products and clothes to mask more traditional masculine insecurities, like being gay, or a broke loser, or a gay broke loser.

I happen to agree with much of Traister’s trashing of retrosexualism, particularly the way he mocks its central fear of being thought a fag.  But then I would because I’ve already done it. Several years ago. On Salon.  OK, so I stopped writing for them yonks ago, and it would of course be entirely understandable if they were still sulking about this….

But still, Salon writers should perhaps show a little more research – even from just the Salon.com search box – before lambasting at length ‘the latest lame macho catchphrase’. According to WordSpy.com the first usage of the term ‘retrosexual’ in the sense of the ‘anti-metrosexual’ was in an essay (‘Becks the virus’) by yours truly in 2003.  On Salon.

By the following year, 2004, America was having a gigantic national nervous breakdown over metrosexuality and gay marriage and re-elected Bush. I remember it well because it followed the crazy year or so of metrosexmania that swept the US – after my outing essay ‘Meet the metrosexual’ in 2002, and its bizarre appropriation and bowdlerisation by American marketers.  Which also appeared on Salon.

The ‘menaissance’ was mendacious even back in the mid noughties, of course, with its prissy lists of ‘dos and don’ts’, and euphemistic marketing strategies – as I pointed out at the time. But now everyone knows that ‘retrosexuality’, at least when appropriated by the media and marketing business, is just jokey, Mad Men-esque nostalgia for nostalgia – with a trilby cocked ‘just so’.  Or gag-me-with-a-silver-spoon preppy wannabe niche marketing that isn’t to be taken seriously.

In early 2004, with the homophobic anti-metro backlash brewing in the US, I returned to the subject – again, for Salon (‘Metrodaddy speaks!’).  Since I love quoting myself (at length), and since I think this as pertinent now as back then, here’s the relevant section from that auto-interview, which explains the repugnance of traditionalists towards the lack of repugnance metrosexuals generally have towards homoerotics:

Are hetero metrosexuals really latent homosexuals?

MS: Certainly it would make life easier and less worrying for retrosexuals if this were true — and I notice that in certain slightly, shall we say, clenched circles, metrosexual has become another word for “homo” or “fag.” Unfortunately for these threatened types — and also for me — this is just wishful, over-tidy thinking; homophobic housework. Hetero metros are not “really” gay — they’re just really metrosexual. In point of fact, hetero metrosexuals are probably rather less “latent” than retrosexuals. They are, after all, rather blatant — in their flirtatiousness. Their identity is not based on a constant repudiation of homosexuality. What the retrosexual finds repugnant in the metrosexual is his invitation of the gaze — a gaze that is not and cannot be gendered or straightened out. They’re equal-opportunity narcissists.

Homoerotics, rather than homosexuality, is an inevitable and obvious part of male narcissism — just as it is for female narcissism, hence “lesbian chic.” Which is one of the reasons why it has been discouraged for so long. This isn’t to say that most metrosexuals want to go to bed with other men — not even so as to generously share their beauty with the half of the human race so far deprived of it — it’s just that they aren’t necessarily repulsed by the male body in the way that many retrosexuals like to assert, repeatedly, they are. By extension, their interest in women is not necessarily driven by self-loathing or a need to prove their virility; it’s a matter of taste and pleasure. Which I suspect many women find something of a relief, not to mention a turn-on. Though admittedly some women may feel that the metrosexual is too much like competition.

God, I was good back then.  But so was Salon.

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.