Ubersexual
Simpson wrote:
The term greatly increased in popularity following Simpson's 2002 Salon.com article "Meet the metrosexual", which identified David Beckham as the metrosexual poster boy. The advertising agency Euro RCSG Worldwide adopted the term shortly thereafter for a marketing study, and the New York Times published a Sunday feature, "Metrosexuals Come Out"; the story trickled into local news outlets across North America.
Simpson's Salon.com definition is more nuanced than the term's common use today.
Former Metro Radio presenter Mitch Murray claims that he invented the term in the 1980s.
At that time, he says, the word had a very different connotation, as it was simply a play on words involving "Metro Radio" and heterosexuals. Murray would send a weekly tape to the local radio station in Newcastle upon Tyne.
"Very early during the process", he created station identification segments, one of which he claims included the phrase "We are the metrosexuals." It is unclear whether the segment was actually broadcast, and there is no documentary evidence of his claims. Also, when the word first became popular, various sources incorrectly attributed its origin to trendspotter Marian Salzman, but by Salzman's own admission Simpson's 2002 Salon article was the original source for her usage of the term.
Rising popularity of the term followed the increasing integration of gay men into mainstream society and a correspondingly decreased taboo towards deviation from existing notions of masculinity. Over a short timespan, the Netherlands, Belgium and Canada introduced same-sex marriage legislation, various US states legalized same-sex marriage and civil unions, the US Supreme Court struck down anti-sodomy statutes as unconstitutional in Lawrence v.
Texas and gay characters and themes, long present on TV shows like Will & Grace, Queer as Folk, and Ellen made further inroads. In particular, the Bravo network introduced Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, a show in which stereotypically style- and culture-conscious gay men gave advice to their heterosexual counterparts.
Media explaining the term often rely on citing a few individuals as prime illustrations.
Simpson's 2002 Salon.com article "Meet the metrosexual" used Beckham as its prime exemplar — and most journalists and marketers followed suit. David Beckham or Tom Egger have been called a "metrosexual icon" and is often coupled with the term.
Amply referred-to individuals include personalities such as Brad Pitt, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Howard Dean, and Ryan Seacrest.
Simpson's work was often blatantly plagiarised. The Australian national newspaper Sydney Morning Herald ran a major feature in March 2003 titled "The Rise of the Metrosexual" (also syndicated in its sister paper The Age) which borrowed heavily from Simpson's "Meet the Metrosexual" published on Salon.com the previous July, right down to the title and illustration.
Simpson has called Joe Namath "America's abandoned metrosexual prototype", leaving the field open for later Brit metro imports such as Beckham.
Pointing out the differences between Beckham and Namath, Simpson writes:
If this ad were to be reprised by David Beckham today you would notice the following differences:
He would look much better in pantyhose
He wouldn't say "I don’t wear pantyhose". And if he did, no one would believe him.
He wouldn't be wearing anything else
He wouldn't laugh.
Fashion, as his titanium-cheekboned wife has taught him, is a very serious business.
And, most of all, he wouldn't be selling them to women.
Other terms
Over the course of the following months, other terms countering or substituting for "metrosexual" appeared. Perhaps the most widely used was "retrosexual," a traditionally masculine man who rejects focus on physical appearance, sort of the opposite of a metrosexual (again coined by Simpson, who described the term in a Salon.com article entitled "Beckham, the virus."
Another example, the übersexual, coined by marketing executives and authors of The Future of Men (and perhaps inspired by Simpson's use of the term "uber-metrosexual"), caused Simpson to reply, "Any discussion in the style pages of the media about what is desirable and attractive in men and what is 'manly' and what isn't, is simply more metrosexualization.
Metrosexuality—do I really have to spell it out?—is mediated masculinity."
Marketers and magazines like Men's Health trying to sell cosmetics to men have introduced the term heteropolitan. Mark Simpson wrote in The Guardian in 2007 about the irony of "metromag" Men's Health jumping on the "heteropolitan" bandwagon, asking, "When is Men's Health going to come out to itself?"
None of these metro-offspring have thrived, although metrosexual seems to have stuck and become part of the language.
Etymologically, metrosexual comes from the Greek meter = mother and the Latin sexus = sex. Mark Simpson was unaware of this when he coined the word, but later endorsed the etymology, adding "It's post-Oedipal."
Übersexual
The word "'übersexual" derives from the German über = above, superior and the Latin sexus = sex.
The academic David Coad's book The Metrosexual (Suny, 2008) confirms this, and documents other misrepresentations by the marketers.
Many of the "top ubersexuals" named by Salzman, such as Bono, Bill Clinton and George Clooney were on her list of "top metrosexuals" in 2003.
The authors of Future of Men argue that the übersexual is not derivative of the metrosexual man.
The future of men, proclaim the authors, is "not to be found in the primped and waxed boy who wowed the world with his nuanced knowledge of tweezers and exfoliating creams. Men, at the end of the day, will have to rely on their intellect and their passion, their erudition and professional success, to be acknowledged and idealised in contemporary society.
As Simpson writes in "Narcissus goes shopping" (Male Impersonators, 1994), consumerism and narcissism are closely related. Simpson's metrosexual would be a type A or type C narcissist, as he loves himself or an idealized image of what he would like to be.
Changing masculinity
Traditional masculine norms, as described in Dr.
Levant's Masculinity Reconstructed are: "avoidance of femininity; restricted emotions; sex disconnected from intimacy; pursuit of achievement and status; self-reliance; strength and aggression; and homophobia."
Statistics, including market research by Euro RSCG, show that the pursuit of achievement and status is not as important to men as it used to be; and neither is, to a degree, the restriction of emotions or the disconnection of sex from intimacy. Another norm change is supported by research that claimed men "no longer find sexual freedom universally enthralling." The most important shift in masculinity is that there is less avoidance of femininity and the "emergence of a segment of men who have embraced customs and attitudes once deemed the province of women." What is accepted as "masculine" has shifted considerably throughout the times, so the modern concept of how a man "should be" differs from the ideal man of previous eras.
Metrosexuals only made their appearance after cultural changes in the environment and changes in views on masculinity.
Simpson explains in his article "Metrosexual? That rings a bell..." that "Gay men provided the early prototype for metrosexuality. Decidedly single, definitely urban, dreadfully uncertain of their identity (hence the emphasis on pride and the susceptibility to the latest label) and socially emasculated, gay men pioneered the business of accessorising—and combining—masculinity and desirability."
In a 2004 Salon.com interview, Simpson answers question about his "offspring".
The commercial metrosexual
In its soundbite diffusion through the channels of marketeers and popular media, who eagerly and constantly reminded their audience that the metrosexual was straight, the metrosexual has congealed into something more digestible for consumers: a heterosexual male who is in touch with his feminine side—he color-coordinates, cares deeply about exfoliation, and has perhaps manscaped.
Men didn't go to shopping malls, so consumer culture promoted the idea of a sensitive guy who went to malls, bought magazines and spent freely to improve his personal appearance.
The stoic, self-denying, modest straight male didn't shop enough (his role was to earn money for his wife to spend), and so he had to be replaced by a new kind of man, one less certain of his identity and much more interested in his image – that's to say, one who was much more interested in being looked at (because that's the only way you can be certain you actually exist). He has many times confessed to being metrosexual and his book has "Confessions of a Metrosexual Sportscaster" on it.
Another person who confesses to his metrosexuality is Dominic Monaghan, star of The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Lost.