Sometimes I take for granted that living in NYC gives me an “edge” on pop culture trends. Scary, but true.
For example, I got a very cute email from my mom yesterday. I’m hosting a murder mystery dinner party tonight, and one of the guests is a guy I met at my friend’s marathon party a few weeks back. I was telling her that this guy was coming over early to help me cook. She replied, “he cooks? He must be one of those new “metro” guys that they were talking about on Sex and the City last week — they have all the good qualities of gay men AND they’re great in bed!” (Yeah, I wish. If any of you readers find that guy lurking out there, send him directly to me, pronto.)
Well, I must admit she’s one up on me, because I don’t have HBO, but I took it upon myself to send her an article written by Mark Simpson, who coined the phrase “metrosexual.” In my mind, the metro trend is in the “on the way out” category, but as he points out in his “Metrosexmania Update” on 8/18, “The media gang-bang of the metrosexual continued to grow, rapidly developing into a case of full-blown global metrosexmania. Is there a single publication in the ‘developed’ world, other than Farming Monthly which hasn’t run the story?”
She replied back, sheepishly, “So I’m out of the loop. At least I’ve heard of it and I don’t live in the city. Doesn’t that earn some points?” Of course it does, Mom.
I realized that metrosexuals were part of the mainstream society when I saw an ad recently for
The Metrosexual Guide to Style: A Handbook for the Modern Man in Time Out New York — not that Time Out New York is necessarily “mainstream,” but it is a mass publication of sorts. Now, the true test of whether or not it has hit mainstream culture is to ask my Dad if he has ever heard the term. So I sent him an email to find out. “Hey, Dad,” I wrote, “I’m taking a survey. Have you ever heard of the term “metrosexual” and do you know what it means (no cheating by looking it up on the internet)?” His response? “No and no.” In conclusion, based on my scientific study — the term “metrosexual” is still not officially mainstream. And Mom gets extra credit points.
(* a tribute to Berlin‘s song of the same name)