Glam guys to gag on
No amount of preening can hide their deep unattractiveness
F you have been focused on sensible things for the last few years, it may have escaped your attention how exceedingly metrosexual young British men have become. I am referring specifically to young British men who star in trashy reality TV shows, I concede, which narrows down the sample group somewhat.
But seriously. They pluck their eyebrows, they moisturise, they have strategic plans for their hair which take upwards of 20 minutes to reach fruition. They bring a fastidious attention to their clothes, prizing plunging necklines to enhance the appearance of deep man cleavage.
You’ll know what I’m talking about if you’ve ever watched Geordie Shore, a show which imprisons the highly sexed youth of Newcastle in a lavish pad and feeds them alcohol until they fight, fornicate or frow up. Newcastle, a former coal-mining hub, is supposed to be a gritty bastion of rugged masculinity. Not for nothing did British comic Jimmy Carr once joke: “I’m not gay. Unless you’re from Newcastle, and by ‘gay’ you mean ‘owns a coat’.”
Yet the young (furiously heterosexual) men of Geordie Shore primp, preen and fuss with the best of the girls. The lads who don’t have a sufficiently deep tan — derived from a tanning bed, naturally, as opposed to the lesser-spotted sun of Northern England — are roundly mocked and derided.
Is a similar appearance preoccupation widespread among young South African men? Democratic Alliance parliamentary leader Mmusi Maimane has said he has a meticulous skin cleansing and toning routine.
But here conventional models of masculinity still seem to reign supreme, with magazines trotting out the hilarious caper of sending rugby players for a day at the spa and chronicling their discomfort. The Geordie Shore lads would probably stab you in the face for a day at a spa.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m all in favour of gender-nonconformity. But I’m convinced that what lies behind this shift to metrosexuality is not so much the desire to take an axe to gender binaries as it is the extreme narcissism of the rich-world selfie generation.
I’m more persuaded of this than ever after watching MTV UK’s “daring” new dating series Ex On The Beach (MTV, Thursday, 9.15pm). The painful premise: four single guys and gals are sent off to live in a Mediterranean paradise, where they believe they’re being encouraged to find holiday romance. Little do they know — as a voiceover dramatically intones every five minutes — that their ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends are about to arrive too. Ex-cruciating scenes follow, together with a lot of ex-citing puns.
They all deserve each other. The youngsters are pretty much universally awful, with the possible ex-ception of lippy Northerner Vicky — who is an alumnus of Geordie Shore, thus proving that “reality TV star” is now actually a viable career choice. But the young men are particularly ghastly — and, to a man, utterly obsessed with their physical attractiveness.
The women spend a lot of their time crying in corners, possibly because the lads are taking up all the mirror space. They don’t even mind being reduced to their hair colour, as has been the traditional lot of women. Joss, 24, has confidently awarded himself the title of “best-looking blond in the UK”.
On the one hand, there’s a kind of rough feminist justice in the idea that men are now feeling the same pressure to look hot that women have been experiencing for millennia. On the other, these shows are superb exemplars of the old adage that beauty is, indeed, skin deep. As we’d say in South Africa: mooi van ver, maar ver van mooi.
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