Clothes Wearing Men

From the column Sacred Cows, Dominion Post, 2oo7

Thomas Carlyle said: "A Dandy is a clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse, and person is heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of Clothes wisely and well: so that the others dress to live, he lives to dress...”

Today we have the metrosexual, a man whose most profound relationships are with Dolce & Gabbana and his own reflection. Your eyebrows no longer meet in the middle; teams of clinicians have de-thatched your body; you sculpt your hair into a glistening fin, like the ass-end of a duck protruding from a lake; you get up 15 minutes early every morning so you have time to cleanse, tone and masturbate. You don’t care whether you’re just gay, or too gay, or flaming across the night sky like a Nazi blimp, just as long as women who shake your hand say “My god, so soft, what do you use?” so you can reply, “Avocado extract,” as you smile and take a self-assured sip from your strawberry and papaya Mojito.

Metrosexual. Not a man who gets aroused by underground mass-transit systems but a term for an urban male who has a strong aesthetic sense and spends time and money on his appearance and lifestyle. Like any form of Narcissism, metrosexuality comes with the risk of starvation – if not literally, then emotionally and intellectually. The moral, said comedian Al Lubel: “Pack a lunch.” But the metrosexual is watching his weight. All his powers are focused on his appearance.

The term metrosexual was coined by journalist Mark Simpson back in 1994, but it only became popular when discovered by an advertising executive who saw that he could re-package ‘exfoliating cleanser’ as ‘scruffing lotion’ and sell a boat load. In this sense the metrosexual isn’t so much a grooming pioneer as an experimental monkey, and he doesn’t stand at the forefront of a revolution so much as linger at the back-end of a column of pathetic marketing casualties: fat guys in Just Do It t-shirts, women clutching copies of Chicken Soup for the Ovaries, pre-teens in soft-porn crop-tops, metrosexuals.

The well-groomed male is nothing new. My friend’s dad was an RAF officer during World War Two and had a weekly grooming ritual that would make Carson Kresley look like a hillbilly: a daily barber’s shave, a weekly trim and about five hours in the manicurist’s chair. For starters. His dentist once suggested that he solve the problem of slightly elongated incisors by having his entire top row of teeth replaced with a new set. So he did. Your move Mr Clinique 10% off sale.

But let’s go back further: past the Dandies of the late 18th and 19th century, past the cults of male beauty in China and in Egypt. The most illuminating example of male vanity is perhaps the ancient men recently unearthed near Dublin who were found to have manicured hands and hair styled with a ‘gel’ made from plant oil and pine resin imported from France. Let me put this another way: Prehistoric Irishmen made an effort with their appearance comparable to the effort the average metrosexual makes today. This really kills the idea that we’re ushering in some kind of manaissence.

Rather, the modern urban male presents just the right cocktail of uncertainty and curiosity to entice the manufacturers of grooming products, the writers of books (Male Impersonators: Men Performing Masculinity. Mark Simpson, 1994) or producers of television shows about itinerant gay makeover artists. These opportunists don’t rely on confident, secure people. They need the gullible, the easily led. Most importantly, they need the vain, the people who are likely to believe that a little snake-oil in the morning does wonders for the complexion.

For the first time in history Western males have no central unifying code with which to define their actions. Most of us don’t go to church, or fight in wars, and we don’t have to wear hats when stepping out to promenade with our sweethearts. With what are we going to fill this vacuum? With the insane rantings of advertisers or teams of homosexual grooming evangelists? With the false dilemma presented by two oversimplified ideas: metrosexuality, the narcissistic pursuit of symbols of success, and retrosexuality, a collection of outmoded notions of masculinity and the idea that the world would be a better place if it wasn’t for all those “gays”? With the absurd idea that we’re on the cusp of a revolution because Dan Carter had his hair straightened?

More than ever we need ideas that will produce men of substance and dimension, but the metrosexual is a man of one dimension and no substance; he is a shadow in pursuit of a phantom image he saw on a billboard or tore from the cover of a magazine. The metrosexual diverts his wealth toward clothes, cosmetics and symbols of status that will suggest to others that he’s a significant man, but his superficial tendencies only insulate him from achieving any depth of character, or any real idea of what it means to be a man. “And now, for all this perennial Martyrdom, and Poesy, and even Prophecy, what is it that the Dandy asks in return? Solely, we may say, that you would recognize his existence; would admit him to be a living object; or even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will reflect rays of light..." The metrosexual is a clothes-wearing man.