Every time I saw him, I felt as if I’d just been rolled in mud. With perfectly blow-dried hair, J. Crew sweaters and shoes that till this day I haven’t been able to find in any store, I was ready to buy my gaydar a trip to Key West as a thank-you present, and make my move with invincible confidence. Ten minutes later I got shot down, and I realized no ground is safe. If a straight guy can take on good gay qualities and still not even be slightly willing to get it on with me, something must be wrong. Forget about winking at a Gucci-shod blond with a Burberry bag across the salad counter at Whole Foods store. The bets are off; welcome back last call at "Manhole".
The ironic thing about metrosexuality is that it has nothing to do with sex at all. The term invented by a British journalist Mark Simpson in 1994 then transplanted to the American media in one hell of a Salon.com article in 2002 has quickly caught on with label-hungry journalists who had seen something cooking in society but didn’t quite know what it was, as well as regular men and… well, men responsible for all that yummy commotion.
A metrosexual is, to put it simply by quoting the always relevant Samantha Jones, "a straight man with a lot of good gay qualities," in reference to Charlotte’s date on an episode of Sex & the City, who lives in Chelsea (hello!), loves Cher (yea!), recognizes a Cynthia Reilly outfit (duh!) and still manages to give a woman two orgasms in one night and enjoy it himself (gasp!). And no, this time it wasn’t just on HBO. At the VH1 Music Awards Lenny Kravitz struts up and about the stage wearing clothes and an attitude previously only seen on Karaoke night at any boy bar downtown. Simpson bravely took on himself the pleasure of "outing" British star of football David Beckham as a proud flaming metrosexual, whose fabulous style (more than his solid athletic substance) can level even with his own wife, Victoria’s.
Finally, on Bravo’s Queer Eye for a Straight Guy, you can watch the phenomenon in the making every week, as five actually gay men give out modern life tips to struggling, inferiorly scared straight men. The tricks of the gay trade include tips on how to make your life better by using not your girlfriend’s but your own face moisturizer, putting almost as much thought into preparing a meal or picking an outfit as into painting a Pollock reproduction, or thinking twice before buying anything from Kmart—except for Martha Stewart, and batteries.
Metrosexuality was the hot topic last year, as theoretical as it was practical. Straight men suddenly became aware of the poor decorative aesthetics of their own bedrooms and proposed to their grateful girlfriends; while gay men almost everywhere reclined in their mohair sofas, convinced they had redefined salvation. Gay magazines nationwide raved about a revolution, raising social awareness, all the pro’s and pro’s coming from the exploitation of this formerly homosexual agenda, now seen live on Jay Leno. Homosexuality became widely talked about and visible, moreover it became hip, a trend. Everybody wanted to be gay; only they didn’t want to sleep with their own sex, but rather look good, smell good and feel good like the gay guy next door. America all of a sudden embraced gays—having figured out their usefulness and contributions to fashion, culture, and general fabulousness. The metrosexual man, apart from being commercialized as god’s gift to women, became the ultimate power entity, a sort of a perfect male. He seemed to have it all—a great moisturizing routine, and a legal right to get married.
Nevertheless, after a sultry summer of gushing over this new man, one has to wonder, what do the Queer Eye’s Fab Five and the Spice Girls really have in common? And how fast will the former follow the latter’s sequent footsteps? Like every trend in the American culture, from overalls to Ricky Martin, metrosexuality is sure to hit the inevitable expiration date. Or has it overstayed its welcome already? Somewhere between the Fab Five’s infamous appearance and décor job on the Jay Leno set, and the Martha Stewart NBC biopic, metrosexuality’s happy oblivious attitude was flaunted in ‘our faces’ one too many times. Whether it was the ostracizing "gay=good, straight=bad" idea kids were ecstatically engulfing, or the vision of one of my girl friend’s boyfriend getting a manicure with no sign of discomfort, the metrosexual male started making more and more people roll their eyes rather than rush to get a Banana Republic discount card.
Leave it to the viciously sarcastic minds behind TV’s South Park to level cultural trendiness with alien invasion and hit a few social commentary jackpots along the way to comic relief. When metrosexuality enters the South Park vicinity, everybody falls in. Husbands start wearing color, paying more attention to their drinking buddies’ skin tones than to their own wives, to the initial wonder then horror of the spouses. Teenage boys run from class to class in colorful tight clothes as if handpicked by Carson Kressley and fight over who gets to be "gayer". The token gay teacher on the show and his leather-clad boyfriend are not amused though. According to him, the trend impairs the individuality of gay people, deprives them of their uniqueness.
Metrosexuality seemed like a great way to expose gay people to the general American conscience, once and for all break down discrimination and pave the way to ultimate equal civil rights. Because if a regular straight man can allow five gay guys to invade his place, strip him to his underwear right in front of their eyes, take him to a spray-on tanning salon, and not feel like beating the shit out of them, legal acceptance cannot be far along. Meanwhile, all that were actually exposed were gay stereotypes, and America has remained just as uncomfortable with homosexuality as it’s always been, only now it has gays classified as style gurus and sold out. While not completely misunderstood, since most gay men are actually good at this, style has become all they stood for to the average consumer.
"Will & Grace" may be a landmark TV show for putting two gay men on the same shelf as legendary comic characters Ricky Ricardo and Archie Bunker, but like Queer Eye for a Straight Guy, as a true gay visionary force, it has had paltry merits so far. Sure, Will and Jack look good, but the show, now in its sixth season has yet to show either of them sustain a relationship with another man lasting more than two episodes, or even hold a man’s hand, let alone engage in a romantic lip lock. The drunken pill-popping supporting character of Karen gets more on screen action than they do, not to mention Grace herself, the ultimate fag hag who’s made out on screen with more or less every guy who would have her.
The difference between the straight soon-to-be metrosexual guy on Queer Eye who is always with a wife or a girlfriend and his stylish ‘saviors’ is not solely the matter of sexual orientation, but more that he is shown having a real life, while the Carson, Kyan, Ted, Thom and Jai, by the end of the hard day of work, always end up in front of a big TV screen with nobody else to cuddle to but each other (not that we would ever be shown that kind of intimacy anyways). If you thought Bravo’s Boy meets boy will throw some humanity into the glossy image of gay people, by luring you with a hopeful premise of the first gay dating reality TV show, you were sent immediately back to HBO, where for an extra monthly fee you could see the real glimpses of a homosexual lifestyle weaved into a decent and honest storyline rather than a product placement ad.
The Saturday Night Live skit "Queer Eye for a Straight Gal", a female parody of the Bravo trendsetter shows five lesbians trying to enforce their unique style into the life of a perky straight woman, and pass it on as cool. The idea is hilarious in that it is so wrong. After all, the recent hip American style and consciousness has been set by hip gay men, not tomboyish gay women. The lesbian stereotype is far from cool and doesn’t mesh well with the metrosexual agenda. Gay women have been surprisingly shunned from a movement that they’re more innately related to than a (no matter how well exfoliated) metrosexual man.
In the November issue of Vanity Fair, a series of pictures glorifies the hot faces of the current gay TV programming. There’s Kyan Douglas embracing Queer as Folk’s Robert Gant; there’s Carson Kressley stroking Gale Howard’s hair. There’s Megan Mullally and Eric McCormack looking sultry and metrosexual. There’s even the faux-lesbian cast of the new show The L Word, which promises to do to lesbians what Queer as Folk did to gay men. Who isn’t there, however, are Rosie O’Donnell or Ellen Degeneres, women who have ridden the backlash of publicly coming out into a two books deal and a successful daytime TV career, respectively. Maybe it’s because they refused to pose wearing black lingerie, or maybe it’s simply because the hot face of today’s gay TV has a little bit too much glitter for a humble lesbian. As does this whole supposed gay revolution.
In the New Year, we can all hope for the better—provided, of course, we had thought something was wrong in the first place. Gay men still know how to find each other, despite their fabulous aesthetic covers being blown off. Meanwhile, some straight men still do not know how to dress for a clean conscience or pick the right wine. Hell, sometimes even I forget to moisturize; I’m too busy spotting Ted Allen in downtown Chicago or trying to figure out this whole gay media mess without losing my mind. I’m sure the metrosexual didn’t mean any harm. And after tons of articles, debates and second lives for corduroy, the whole affair already seems more "retro" than "metro" these days anyways. I will always appreciate the metrosexual effort as benign. After all sometimes I do have to sit next to the absolutely horrid case of fashion and grooming neglect on public transportation. In times like these I wonder where is Carson indeed when I need him.
Pretty soon the snow will melt, uncovering an innocent land hungry for a new obsession. A new diet book will hit the market. New faces will be airbrushed for magazine copy desperate to define a look, a trend, an era. Perhaps the most wishful New Year’s thinking of all should be as simple as trying not to let ourselves get too wrapped up in media sensations, staying true to ourselves, and supporting gay marriage, rather than gay reality TV.
Originally published in Lumino February 15, 2004
