Mark Simpson

Contrary to what you have been told, metrosexuality is not about flip-flops and facials, __an-bags_ or __anscara_. Or about men becoming __irlie_ or __ay_. It__ about men becoming everything. To themselves. In much the way that women have been for some time. It__ the end of the sexual division of bathroom and bedroom labour. It__ the end of sexuality as we__e known it.

At the dawn of the second decade of the Twenty First Century, masculinity has been rendered so self-conscious in our mediated, mirrored world that even __egular guys_ are apparently just a fashion fad _ this season__ accessory.

In a spornographic age it__ no longer enough for the male body to be presented to us by consumerism as merely attractive, or desiring to be desired, as it was in the early days of nakedly narcissistic male metrosexuality. This masculine coquettish-ness, pleasing as it is, no longer offers an intense enough image. Or provokes enough lust. It__ just not very shocking or arousing any more. In fact, it__ just too_ normal. To get our attention these days the sporting male body has to promise us nothing less than an immaculately groomed, waxed and pumped gang-bang in the showers.

In the 21st century men__ tits have not just rivalled but replaced women__ as the touchstone of __exy_ in mainstream pop culture, even when the audience for them is other men.

Is there a support group for people who didn__ like __rokeback Mountain_? We must, if the rave reviews and the newspaper reports are to be believed, be a very tiny _ not to mention vulnerable _ minority. Am I dead inside because I didn__ experience the torrent of emotions I__e been reading about? Am I as emotionally crippled as Ennis because I didn__ blub and hug after sitting through this __isceral_ movie, but instead wanted to go and __elp with the roundup_?

Of course, fashions come and go but metrosexuality isn__ a fashion _ it__ an epoch. It represents a fundamental shift in what men are allowed to be and to want. Men are now permitted to be __assive_ _ inviting our gaze.

Tattoos, after all, are a passionate, usually doomed assertion of mastery of your own destiny, or at least a defiant embrace of one that you cannot control.

The artistic disposition is little more than an extreme form of sulking.