Twenty years ago, my essay ‘Meet the Metrosexual’ was published on the (then) popular online US magazine Salon.com, introducing my insistently pretty offspring to America. Both the piece and he went virulently viral, starting an outbreak of global metrosexmania that lasted years. Thousands of… Read More »Meet the Metrosexual – Twenty Years On
Mark Simpson on lavender marriage – between the closeted star & the public. (Independent on Sunday, August 1995) [One from the vaults for LBGTQIA++ Pride. Probably because it came on the cowboy heels of Male Impersonators (1994), it’s rather more… Read More »Purple Passions
Mark Simpson looks at the British ritual of stripping off on the hallowed turf (Independent on Sunday, July 1996) Melissa Johnson’s bra-less gallop across Wimbledon’s Centre Court this week in a skimpy pinny and lovely smile proved to be a… Read More »Streaking: The Naked Truth
Mark Simpson interviews Neil LaBute about his film ‘In the Company of Men’ – twenty years before ‘toxic masculinity’ went ‘hegemonic’ (Originally appeared in Attitude, 1998) Women are made of sugar and spice. While men are made from slugs and… Read More »Men Make Terrible Company – Neil LaBute interview
Mark Simpson on how we’re all living in Nick Kamen’s Launderette now Another fondly-remembered part of the 1980s finished its last cycle last week. Nick Kamen, real name Ivor Neville Kamen, the Essex-born much-gasped-over star of the famous 1985 Levi’s… Read More »Jeans-Genie – The Lecherous Legacy of Those 80s Levi’s Ads
Mark Simpson checks out The Voyeur’s Motel I recently watched a documentary on Netflix. Which is what I seem to mostly do, TV-wise, these days – being middle-aged and male. This one wasn’t about Hitler, or unsolved grisly murders, or… Read More »Welcome to the Hotel Scopophilia