Say hello (or don’t) to the übersexual

Remember when “girls were girls and men were men” to quote Archie and Edith Bunker? Used to be there were men and there were men’s men. Men worked office jobs and came home at night, hopefully to a steak and a cold beer. Men’s men were lumberjacks and football heroes, playboys and fighters and country music legends (think Johnny Cash, not Kenny Rogers). A few years ago, pop-culture maven Marian Salzman, now with JWT, embraced the term metrosexual to define the kind of eyebrow-waxing, glycolic facial-getting, fashion-obsessed male who seems exhausted by his own aesthetic regime. Now deemed passé by the very marketing tycoons who created him, the new “it guy” is the “übersexual.” The übersexual is still concerned with his looks, but he’s “a more masculine male,” Salzman tells the New York Daily News. Less Ryan Seacrest, more Bill Clinton, according to Salzman. Less David Beckham, more Bono. “He likes to watch sports with the guys, and he’s not bothered by his sexuality,” Salzman explains. I’ll let the puzzling phrase “not bothered by his sexuality” go and comment instead on the big picture. This is not a demographic. These are simply men who are not slobs. We used to call them dapper, well-groomed, coiffed. The Brits said they were natty. Cowboys called them dandies. They were smooth, stylish or smart. They had depth and subtlety and individuality. Most important, they were not emasculated by a moniker that lumps former U.S. presidents in with any guy who has enough sense to match his belt to his shoes. So please, before we latch on any further to this or any other classification of man, let’s follow Archie’s advice and “stifle it.”

—Posted by Deanna Zammit

Photo: PR Newswire Photo Service

October 12, 2005 | Permalink