How different is a metrosexual from a yuppie?

A metrosexual would never wear padded shoulders. He'd be wearing a sleeveless shirt to show off his deliciously developed deltoids and designer tattoos. Yuppies, anyway, are now a defunct and meaningless category because since the '80s everyone in the Western world has become one, or wants to be one. Give or take a few anti-capitalist protesters in balaclavas.

What's the relationship between metrosexuals and bourgeois bohemians, known as bobos?

A bobo would rather go to a gallery opening than the gym. A metrosexual would probably rather read the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog, or Wallpaper, than David Brooks' "Bobos in Paradise."

So, really, what's the difference between a metrosexual and a homosexual?

Metrosexuals are better dressed. Homosexuals are so last season.

What role will the homosexual play in the future?

Gooseberry.

Do metrosexuals have to be wealthy or middle class?

This is a common fallacy, partly based on the idea that working-class equals authentic and middle-class equals inauthentic. It's actually a matter of spending priorities. Most metrosexuals in Britain, for example, are probably working class. David Beckham, like most of his male fans, is from a working-class family; he may have rather more money than most and get his togs for free, but this just means that he's been able to continue his metrosexuality longer and on a larger, more frightening scale than most working-class men. Who, until recently, have had to give up these tendencies when they take on a family.

Partly as a legacy of the now-expired British aesthetic youth movements of teddy boys, mods and glam rockers, working-class men in the U.K. spend more per head on clothes and cosmetics than any other group in Europe. They tend to live with their dear old mums longer than middle-class boys, so much of their income is disposable; and because of their status they tend to be more keen to advertise. They also tend to have a more direct -- and historical -- relationship to the male body than middle-class boys. Though now they go to the gym instead of doon tha pit, if I can go all D.H. Lawrence on you for a second.

Are metrosexuals really such a modern phenomenon? What about dandies?

A metrosexual wouldn't be caught dead in a powdered wig -- though he might be tempted by the stockings and buckled shoes. Sorry to be pedantic, but dandies were an 18th century phenomenon. Metrosexuals belong to the 21st century. Dandyism was the pursuit of an elite, mostly aristocratic, or wannabe aristo group of men and was largely a way of advertising their wealth, idleness and refined taste. Metrosexuality is a mainstream, mass-consumer phenomenon involving the complete commodification of the male body. It takes Hollywood, ads, sports and glossy magazines as its inspirational gallery, rather than high classicism. The metrosexual desires to be desired. The dandy aimed to be admired. Or at least bitched about.

That said, there are continuities. Oscar Wilde, probably the most famous and most populist dandy of the last century, would have understood metrosexuality and might even have approved of it -- he did once declare: "To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance." Even if he could never have lived up to its exacting, athletic standards himself. It was Wilde's trial and imprisonment for "gross indecency" at the end of the 19th century that popularized the Homosexual: The word was coined in 1860 -- and, like "metrosexual," is a forbidden and unfortunate conjugation of Greek with Latin. It also symbolized the triumph of the Industrial Age notion that male sensuality, aestheticism and narcissism were pathological, perverted and criminal. At least when you did them right. It was the decidedly middle-class concept of "sexuality" that killed the dandy. Now, fittingly enough, the metrosexual is killing sexuality.

Would the metrosexual still exist if the media didn't pay attention to him?

No, but then he's a product of the media, so it's a trick question. You can't have metrosexuals without the media; you can't have a global media without metrosexuals. Metrosexuality is one of the most flagrant symptoms of a media-tized world: The male body was the last frontier and it's now being thoroughly explored and mapped. Though admittedly, the media's gangbang of the metrosexual, their own love child, is slightly incestuous, or at least nepotistic.

Have glossy women's magazines helped create metrosexuality? Do the magazines influence the woman, so that the woman influences the man?

Possibly, though again I think men's relationship to consumerism and temptation is more direct and not something that we can blame on Eve's shamelessness. Metrosexual men are the way they are because they like what they see in the mirror. Women's glossy magazines have had an influence on men mostly via men's magazines, which have become, like women's magazines, gender manuals, maps and bibles.

Is metrosexuality related to transvestism or transsexuality?

I suspect the rise of metrosexuality may actually lead to a decline in male transvestism. Or, at least, it will no longer be noticed. Beckham, after all, likes to wear sarongs and his wife's knickers but is not seriously accused of being a transvestite. In a metrosexual world it will no longer be necessary for men to change sex surgically or sartorially in order to indulge their narcissistic and exhibitionistic tendencies. Which is progress of a kind, I suppose.

Is metrosexuality a sign of male confidence or a sign of weakness?

Very good question. I'm rather conflicted on this one. But then, so is the metrosexual. The answer is: both. Metrosexuality depends on a certain kind of anxiety about identity -- as a creation of advertising, the metrosexual couldn't be anything else. Metrosexuality also represents a switch in the power relations between the sexes and, in traditional terms, an "emasculation" of the male. On the other hand, metrosexuality is a sign of a certain kind of sexual confidence or "liberation" on the part of men -- they can express "unmanly" desires they have always harbored but have had to repress for generations. It can also be a way of asserting a new, aesthetic power in an aestheticized world. A wealthy, successful male like Beckham can enhance his success and wealth via a "submissive" metrosexuality, and even be perceived as a better athlete as a result. Someone who looks like a male masseur at a Palm Springs spa can become governor of California.

Did you know that "metrosexual" means "motherfucker" in Greek?

No, but thank you for pointing it out. It does make a certain kind of sense. Metrosexuality is the sensibility of the New Matriarchy. It's post-Oedipal. Dad is largely out of the picture, replaced by Nike and Playstation. The metrosexual family romance, the cradle of male narcissism, is just Junior and an adoring Mom. It's why, from a certain perspective, Italians have been metrosexuals for years.

Is a metrosexual a straight man in touch with his feminine side?

This common definition is a more polite version of the "straight men who act gay" line. Implicit in it is the laughably mistaken notion that gay men are by definition in touch with their feminine sides. Actually, male homosexuality could be characterized as less an attraction to men and more of lifelong flight from the feminine -- a terror of the womb-tomb and suffocating domesticity. Arguably a straight man is the one who really gets in touch with his "feminine side" -- when he gets married. Admittedly, though, gay men -- all of them, without exception, even lesbosexuals like me -- are no stranger to the phenomenon of male narcissism. And narcissism has been seen as the feminine quality par excellence -- even though Narcissus was in fact a bloke.

Again, it was the hallmark of the sublimating 19th century and its division of labor that all desire, beauty, sensuality and "weakness" had to be projected onto the female. It's why the female nude replaced the male nude in art (the male nude had been dominant since ancient times) and why women became so pathologized. It is the hallmark of a metrosexual world, where the male nude sometimes seems to have replaced the female, that what is masculine and what is feminine are no longer quite so self-evident -- perhaps because they never were.

Is the metrosexual a good or a bad thing? You have made fun of him quite a bit.

I have to confess I've been something of a deadbeat dad. I've been very hard on the metrosexual. I've taken some cheap shots, pointed and laughed at him and then abandoned him to the marketing people and the media. I'd like to think I was just trying to toughen him up, but probably it was reverse-Oedipal: I'm just jealous of his complexion and all the attention he gets. He isn't without some redeeming and naturally attractive features, which I've tended to overlook. But as for whether the metrosexual is, in the long run, all things considered, taken as a (w)hole, a good or bad thing, I can't say. It might be said that metrosexuality represents a certain kind of liberation of the male, but I suspect it's another kind of enslavement, albeit a better-dressed variety.

The only thing that's certain about the metrosexual is that he's the kind of man that the modern world deserves.

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