The metrosexual is dead. Long live the 'spornosexual'

Dan Osborne (right) from TOWIE shows off his “spornosexual” form in Marbella Photo: REX FEATURES

In a development which will probably have him running to the mirror yet again

to search anxiously for lines, this year the metrosexual leaves his teens

and turns 20.

How quickly your children grow up. Although it seems only yesterday, I

first wrote about him in 1994 after attending an exhibition

organised by GQ magazine called “It’s a Man’s World”.

I’d seen the future of masculinity and it was moisturised.

“Metrosexual man, the single young man with a high disposable income,

living or working in the city (because that’s where all the best shops are)

is perhaps the most promising consumer market of the decade,” I

predicted.

Two decades of increasingly out and proud – and highly lucrative – male vanity

later, and the metrosexual remains the apple of consumerism’s rapacious eye.
In a recent report, HSBC drooled all over his “Yummy”-ness,

pointing out how mainstream metrosexuality has become.

This was of course old news to anyone with eyes to see the extremely

image-conscious and product-consuming men around them – or in bed with them.

Or the way that the glistening pecs and abs of men’s health and fitness

magazines have been outselling the “lads’ mags” for several years.

Or indeed anyone who saw the news last year that men

in the UK now spend more on shoes than women.

From the perspective of today’s fragranced, buffed, ripped, groomed,

selfie-adoring world, it’s hard to believe that the metrosexual had to

struggle to be heard in the early 1990s. Most people were in “New-Lad”

denial back then about what was happening to men and why they were taking so

long in the bathroom.

<sub>Metrosexual 2.0: rugby player turned model ThomEvans (Photo: D

Hedral)</sub>

Just as male homosexuality was still stigmatised and partly criminalised back

then, the male desire to be desired – the self-regarding heart of

metrosexuality – was scorned by many. Narcissism was seen as being

essentially feminine, or Wildean – and look what happened to him. The trials

of Oscar Wilde, the last dandy, at the end of the 19th Century helped stamp

a Victorian morality over much of the 20th century. Male vanity was at best

womanish – at worst, perverted.

The end of the 20th century, the abolition of the last laws discriminating

against male homosexuality, and arrival of the preening dominance of

celebrity culture with its Darwinian struggle to be noticed in a visual, “branded”

world finally blew away the remnants of Victorianism.

To illustrate this, I only have to say two words: David Beckham, the

working-class England footballer who became more globally famous for his

attention-seeking haircuts, unabashed prettiness and rampant desire to be

desired than for his footballing skills. Once the sari-wearing midfielder

was outed in 2002 (by

me again, sorry) as the ultimate metrosexual, everyone suddenly “got

it”. All that Nineties denial turned into incessant Noughties chatter

about metrosexuals and “male grooming”. But still people failed to

understand what was really going on with men.

In fact, the momentous nature of the masculine revolution that metrosexuality

represents has been largely obscured by much of the superficial coverage it

got. Metrosexuality is, in a paradox that Wilde would have relished, not

skin deep. It’s not about facials and manbags, guyliner and flip flops. It’s

not about men becoming “girly” or “gay”. It’s about men

becoming everything. To themselves. Just as women have been encouraged to do

for some time.

This uptake by men of products, practises and pleasures previously ring-fenced

for women and gay men is so normal now – even if we still need to be

reassured with the word “man” or “guy” emblazoned on the

packaging, like a phallic pacifier – that it’s taken for granted by young

men today who really have become everything. So much so that it can be too

much for the older generation of metrosexuals.

With their painstakingly pumped and chiselled bodies, muscle-enhancing

tattoos, piercings, adorable beards and plunging necklines it’s

eye-catchingly clear that second-generation metrosexuality is less about

clothes than it was for the first. Eagerly self-objectifying, second

generation metrosexuality is totally tarty. Their own bodies (more

than clobber and product) have become the ultimate accessories, fashioning

them at the gym into a hot commodity – one that they share and compare in an

online marketplace.

This new wave puts the “sexual” into metrosexuality. In fact, a new

term is needed to describe them, these pumped-up offspring of those Ronaldo

and Beckham lunch-box ads, where sport got into bed with porn while Mr

Armani took pictures.

Let’s call them “spornosexuals”.

But unlike Beckham’s metrosexual ads of old, in which his attributes were

possibly artificially enhanced, today’s spornosexuals have photoshopped

themselves in real life. Think Towie’s Dan

Osborne in a pair of glittery Speedos (and then have a lie down.)

Glossy magazines cultivated early metrosexuality. Celebrity culture then sent

it into orbit. But for today’s generation, social media, selfies and porn

are the major vectors of the male desire to be desired. They want to be

wanted for their bodies, not their wardrobe. And certainly not their minds.

I suspect Wilde might have approved.

The metrosexual is dead. Long live the "spornosexual"