Oddly, while Beckham is now officially a gay icon, he's probably someone that gays would rather be than fuck -- all that money, all those free designer clothes, living with a Spice Girl and all those straight men in love with you. Of course, they also like him because imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Gay men did, after all, provide 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 had pioneered the business of accessorizing masculinity in the '70s with the clone look enthusiastically taken up by the mainstream in the form of the Village People. Difficult to believe, I know, but only one of them was gay and 99 percent of their fans were straight.

In the Eighties, the moustaches were shaved off and the male body became more smoothly, invitingly aestheticised and commodified by media regents such as Bruce Weber, Herb Ritts and Calvin Klein. Two decades on, and the hairless -- perpetually adolescent and available -- dazzlingly toothy, muscular, masculine template is still with us, simultaneously a clichi and de rigueur in an Abercrombie & Fitch world. A&F may be looked down upon as middlebrow and middle American by the most refined metrosexuals, but its alarming popularity with straight, beer-drinking frat boys is proof of how metrosexuality has gone mainstream -- while its lusciously produced, semi pornographic quarterly catalogues deliver conclusive proof that male narcissism (in photograpic shorthand: Weber-ism), is only ever a post-workout shower away from homoeroticism.

Perhaps this is because nowadays straight men are also emasculated. Female "Sex and the City" metrosexuality has seen to that. Female metrosexuality is the complement of male metrosexuality, except that it's active where male metrosexuality is passive. No longer is a straight man's sense of self and manhood delivered by his relationship to women; instead it's challenged by it. Women are still monarchs of the private world, but increasingly assertive in the public world too. Series like "Oz," set in a male prison and featuring story lines that revolve around violent buggery, probably look like a kind of sanctuary for some men from the female voraciousness of "Sex and the City."

And, as the pages of the celeb mags reveal, the more independent, wealthy, self-centered and powerful women become, the more they are likely to want attractive, well-groomed, well-dressed men around them. Though not for very long. By the same token, the less men can rely on women, the more likely they are to take care of themselves. Narcissism becomes a survival strategy; apparently, some men actually buy their own underwear and deodorant these days. Beckham, unlike most metrosexuals, is happily married, though he seems to wear his marriage and even his children as accessories: The name of his first child, Brooklyn, is tastefully tattooed across his back.

Many years ago, Norman Mailer described homosexual men as narcissists who occasionally bump into one another. Which was true, of course. But now that everyone's gone metrosexual it's also true of straights. Perhaps this is why straights are almost as promiscuous as gays these days: All those TV dating shows where marriage or even sending each other Christmas cards is the last thing on anyone's mind; all those youth holidays that appear to have become fortnight-long rum-soaked orgies, while Mum and Dad back home are taking part in wife-swapping parties in the suburbs.

Sometimes it seems as if the only thing holding straights back from full equality with gays is the fact that most restroom facilities are not yet co-ed. Perhaps this is also why hetero sodomy has become such a hot topic of late: These days my straight male friends talk of no other kind of intercourse (though maybe it's because they think I'm an expert on it). According to the same straight men, the vagina was made not for their penis but for another female's tongue.

Perhaps because it represents the definition of recreational sex and doesn't remind them of their heterosexual responsibilities but rather of their homosexual possibilities (the exhibitionism of male metrosexuality is literally asking to be fucked), or maybe because it's seen as a kind of extreme sport (it involves trusting your life to some stretchy rubber and taking the plunge), anal sex has become the unholy grail of metrosexual sex. The booty has become the pervey focus of so much fashion lately, including those Engineered Levi's ads featuring men and women with their jeans on back-to-front, zippers over ass cracks.

Kylie Minogue's career was recently successfully and spectacularly relaunched as a global brand by her bending over and offering her pert, almost boyish ass literally to the world. A front-page headline on Britain's most popular national newspaper drooled: "Has Kylie Had a Bum Job?" (One of the most popular taunts used by opposing fans against Beckham used to be "Posh takes it up the arse!!" Now it just sounds like flattery.)

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