In your original definition, the sexual orientation of a metrosexual is immaterial. Yet in most of the coverage and the marketing literature he is described as straight. Why is this?

Partly, as I say, because all gays are assumed to be stylish and well-presented. This is what "gay" means, apparently. However, describing the metrosexual as being straight is slightly silly. But then, advertising always sells things as being the opposite of what they are. Yes, most metrosexuals go to bed with women, and will only ever go to bed with women, but there is nothing "straight" about metrosexuality. It "queers" all the codes of official masculinity of the last hundred years or so: It's passive where it should always be active, desired where it should always be desiring, looked at where it should always be looking. That most metrosexuals aren't gay or bisexual only makes things even queerer. A hetero metrosexual checks out 1) himself, 2) other metros -- how else to know what's "in" this season? -- and 3) women that match his key colors. Not necessarily in that order, but then not unnecessarily in that order either.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about metrosexuality is that it represents the beginning of the end of "sexuality," the 19th century pseudo-science of sexual preference that said that personality and identity are dictated by whether or not your partner's genitals are the same shape as yours. In a hyperconsumerist post-industrial age like ours, identity and personality are not permitted to be inherent -- it would put most ad agencies out of business -- and are instead based on lifestyle choices, consumption patterns, brands, social circles. As a measure of this, there are even glossy lifestyle magazines for same-sex and cross-sex couples. Love -- and also reproduction -- is a lifestyle. The sexual orientation of metrosexuals is obviously important to them and their partners, but their identity is not based on it, and from a cultural-commercial point of view it is almost immaterial.

From a marketing perspective, though, it makes perfect sense to maintain officially that metrosexuals are all straight -- after all, advertising is trying to persuade as many men as possible to relax their sphincter muscles, cooing in their ear that there's nothing gay about being fucked by corporate consumerism. Which, ironically, is true.

Are hetero metrosexuals really latent homosexuals?

Certainly it would make life easier and less worrying for retrosexuals if this were true -- and I notice that in certain slightly, shall we say, clenched circles, metrosexual has become another word for "homo" or "fag." Unfortunately for these threatened types -- and also for me -- this is just wishful, over-tidy thinking, homophobic housework. Hetero metros are not "really" gay -- they're just really metrosexual. In point of fact, hetero metrosexuals are probably rather less "latent" than retrosexuals. They are, after all, rather blatant -- in their flirtatiousness. Their identity is not based on a constant repudiation of homosexuality. What the retrosexual finds repugnant in the metrosexual is his invitation of the gaze -- a gaze that is not and cannot be gendered or straightened out. They're equal-opportunity narcissists.

Homoerotics, rather than homosexuality, is an inevitable and obvious part of male narcissism -- just as it is for female narcissism, hence "lesbian chic." Which is one of the reasons why it has been discouraged for so long. This isn't to say that most metrosexuals want to go to bed with other men -- not even so as to generously share their beauty with the half of the human race so far deprived of it -- it's just that they aren't necessarily repulsed by the male body in the way that many retrosexuals like to assert, repeatedly, they are. By extension, their interest in women is not necessarily driven by self-loathing or a need to prove their virility; it's a matter of taste and pleasure. Which I suspect many women find something of a relief, not to mention a turn-on. Though admittedly some women may feel that the metrosexual is too much like competition.

Who best personifies the metrosexual, besides David Beckham?

Tom Cruise. He's in his 40s now, but he uses all the technology of beauty and fashion to remain a desirable, smooth-skinned, buffed boy with a tarty grin. He's still Maverick from the definitive '80s movie "Top Gun." Actually, he's still the adolescent with no pants jumping up and down on the sofa in "Risky Business." Hence the "Missy Impossible" movies are really all about his impossible quest to remain eternally youthful and desirable -- and the sex object of his own movies. This is the narrative that all metrosexuals are destined to act out, though most with rather less help from Hollywood makeup artists, filters and CGI. Metrosexuality is just a ticking clock away from mutton-dressed-as-lamb-ness. I understand that in his latest film Tom's finally grown a beard, but I'll bet you ready money that it's full of hair products. Like the metrosexual, there is no "mystery" about his sexual preference -- his stunningly successful film career is a testament to his passionate love affair with ... Tom.

Is the metrosexual a product of Gen X? That is, having no heroes, does a man then turn inward and start adoring himself?

It's more a case of having no father. Metrosexuals are all "bastards" inasmuch as they want to be their own special creation, though they perhaps end up being the offspring of corporate culture. They do have heroes, but usually only aesthetic ones. Men who are famous for their looks and style, rather than, say, their political or military achievements. They do admire sporting heroes, but generally only the ones with the best (media) profile and product endorsement deals.

Is Howard Dean, who briefly outed himself as a metrosexual, really metro?

Well, he's a modern politician. So of course he desires to be desired, particularly by the media. And as we know, the metrosexual is the favorite love object of the media these days. Perhaps Dean also had heard from the marketers about how "female-friendly" the metrosexual supposedly is. I notice, however, that he ran back in the metro closet shortly after outing himself.

Arguably, though, all politicians operating in Western democracies have to be at least a little bit metro these days, to attract flattering media attention as well as female and male X's. They're all a little bit Mel Gibson in "What Women Want": admen trying on women's underwear and beauty products in the bathroom to "get inside" women's ... minds. Some are less openly metro than others. When Air National Guard absentee George W. Bush dressed up in Cruise's "Top Gun" costume and used the USS Abraham Lincoln as a giant, nuclear-powered strap-on, that was as brazen an exhibition of cross-dressing as there's ever been. But it was represented by Bush's P.R. machine as evidence of his "real," "down-home," "all-guy" masculinity.

What about Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has been called metrosexual?

Yes, definitely, but not, as has been suggested, because he wears Prada shoes. As a multimillionaire film star, what else is he supposed to wear? Flip-flops? Rather, Arnie is an example of (early) metrosexuality, proto-metro if you will, because, after watching too many Steve Reeves movies as a boy, he became devoted to his physique, turning himself into a spectacle, a sign, a commodity, one that was eventually noticed and bought by Hollywood -- and used to seduce hundreds of millions of other boys around the world into turning themselves into commodities. This is the new American Dream: Don't live it, become it. Arnie was a new kind of working-class hero, one who works on himself, laboring for aesthetics. As we now know, beefcake can become the most powerful man in the wealthiest -- and most metrosexual -- state in the U.S. Arnie may have been accused of groping women in real life, but it was mostly men's bodies that he assaulted and aroused at the movies, which, because these were early days for metrosexuality, had to be "action" movies which frantically disavowed the passivity -- and redundancy -- of his aestheticized body.

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