Maybe he's born with it, Maybe it's Maybelline?

Boys are the new whores.

We've come a long way since the days of No Ma'am and dragging 'em by the hair after clubbing them for that retreat in the late night cave. Now the hair gets caressed and complimented due to mutual understanding of the effort and products that go into that just-woke-up-for-you look. Clubbing them gets replaced with walks in the park and long conversations spoken in Starbuckie (because, of course, regular English is too common and uncool). Now the metrosexual boy (note: I like using the term boy instead of man in any age - it somewhat neutralises the seriousness of this whilst allowing me to talk about boys, even though I am a woman according to my bills) is very precise about not being looked upon as gay, although they share the same qualities, apart from the whole your-penis-in-me thing.

Every time I hear the phrase metro sexual, I see an army of Patrick Bateman all lined up with their latest skincare product set, face mask (cold, and warm versions) with an axe custom designed by Dolce & Gabbana on one side and a ridiculously huge dick on the other. I guess the assumption is that everything is bigger and better once you discover it and therefore learn to groom it. According to a random article about these New Men, they – “have discretionary income to stay up to date with the latest hairstyles, the newest trends, and the right shaped shoes; confuses some guys when it comes to his sexuality; makes these same guys jealous of his success with the ladies - for many metros, to interact with women is to flirt; impresses the women who enjoy his company with the details that make the man.." The details that make the man?! Whoah, slow down mate. Maybe I grew up a little too fast but I can’t remember the day boys went from grabbing their crotch to knowing what set of underwear provides credibility with the ladies, not to mention making the rest jealous, cause, that’s, like, what they are. Right?

Heterosexuals pride themselves in being attracted to the opposite sex, so, that would naturally imply being attracted to people who do things that are opposite to what they do. But the emergence of these boy whores, who think like girls, shop like girls and arguably screw like girls - in order to screw girls - make me wonder where the line is drawn between wanting to do the same things that women have been socialized into, and wanting a woman because she is different from a man (who isn’t gay, or metrosexual, that is). And why is that girls are attracted to these man-made Ken versions? Are we really only impressed with a guy when and if he knows about art and cooking in that Cosmopolitan Is-He-The-One-Questionnaire type of way? Then girls might as well be lesbians cause chicks know a whole lot of shit about clothes and food, they just don’t have a dick. So perhaps it’s the whole penis envy thing finally biting us in the ass, no pun intended.

I think every Man is in touch with himself and his ‘feminine side’, it just sounds so daft to feminise the state of emotion that all human beings are born with and there’s hardly any need for shiny shoes and expensive gym membership cards to personify everything that most people are anyway. I’m not hating on the whole metrosexual concept, I just think it’s belittling for guys to create a new term, as if a whole new breed of Man is created for boys who are just as aware of shit as girls are but feel the need to throw fashion and hairspray into it just to spice things up.

What happened to the Real Men, the ones who didn’t need a label to know that they cry and scratch their balls and watch the same channel for two weeks in a row because they’re too lazy to look for the remote control? I like those men in the sense that they seem real to me (or at least real to themselves). And as much as I enjoy playing dumb when it comes to the Offside rule in football just to ‘feminise’ myself every now and then; I like digging through my makeup box and it being like a wild South American jungle to some guys who don’t know the difference between cleansing and toning. Just to know who really wears the panties in the relationship.

By Hanna Ali

Copyright October 2005