In his contrast, his juxtaposition of “metrosexual” with the plural collective noun “blokes” creates this comparison of a metrosexual’s appearance, with the use of a trio of adjectives, “vain and effeminate, and quite probably gay”, to the ‘bloke’ who is stereotyped by the use of the adjective ‘rugged’. The writer might have deliberately used this to clearly identify the difference between these two sub-‘species’ of men. Or this might show an effect that these stereotypes both show a similarity; their negative treatment by society.
The writer’s positive representation of the metrosexual is also reinforced by his use of proper nouns: “David Beckham, Ewan McGregor, Orlando Bloom...Robbie Williams”. With the assumption of these famous celebrities to be “happy to be known as metrosexuals” – this identification creates an impression to the reader that metrosexuality is not a minority group, but it shows that this category of men is widely known. Another effect of this is that this article encourages a wide range of audience; celebrities starring from sports, film and music.
Finally, the writer’s assumption of metrosexuality to be not a “passing fad” is his association of it with the lexical field of biodiversity. The adjective “endangered” followed by the collective noun “species” and the abstract noun “extinction” positively assumes that metrosexuality is not an “endangered species doomed to extinction”. This assumption is based on his comparison of the metrosexual to the “SNAG” or “Sensitive New Age Guy” of the eighties and nineties; Where the abstract noun “masculinity” is said to be still present on the metrosexual but not the SNAG.
The text “Metro-Sexual Man and Proud of It” by Joe Zwales is an online article that was posted on December 12, 2005 in his article directory website “Articles 365”, an independent opinion based website. This suggests that his audience would be subscribers of his website. Overall, his purpose is to inform and entertain his audience by defining metrosexuality as well. It also positively represents metrosexuality. However this article is important to the selection because this was published six years ago, and has claimed that metrosexuality is “increasing in numbers”.
The writer uses declarative complex sentences, “You know what a heterosexual man is.” and “You have certainly heard of homosexual men.” creating syntactic parallelism in the first two paragraphs, and the last paragraph, and introducing the “metrosexual”. From these the writer assumes his audience with their knowledge in the context, because the adjectives “homosexual” and “heterosexual” are technical terms that a young audience would not understand, therefore the writer also assumes his audience’s age group. Another function for this is that this sentence structure, deliberately divides the three sub categories of men.
From the way the writer wrote “metro-sexual”, we can identify another explicit division, with the use of a dash. The initial morpheme of the term “metro” can have collocations on it being an abbreviation to the word ‘metropolitan’, which we can relate to urbanity. From this analysis the writer’s emphasis on the word “metro” can be a way to summarise his point, that the metrosexual is unique being only found in a specific environment or area. It is also important to point out that this article is four years earlier than “The Metrosexual is Here to Stay”, therefore the term is still fresh in the media, perhaps used as a pun.
In the third paragraph, the writer starts with a part imperative part interrogative sentence –“Remember the big to-do about whether or not real men eat quiche?” From this the concrete noun “quiche” is a kind of food or pastry, which usually would be stereotypically feminine. Possible connotations that would attach to it, is that it associated with France-being one of the fashion capitals of the world. We could relate this to the metrosexual, who is also by definition, a fashion enthusiast.
The text “The joy of being a lifestyle gay” by Tim Lott, is an article in The Times newspaper, and was published on December 6, 2010; out of all the selection, this is the latest source, showing the relative longevity of the concept .This is a very interesting source, as the writer himself is addressing the issue, hence it would be expected to be highly personalised, this is evident by his use of the first person singular pronoun “I” in most instances within the article. Being in a national newspaper, this suggests a wide audience who reads The Times newspaper. His possible purposes of this article are to share his definition of metrosexuality, to present his lifestyle of being a metrosexual himself, and possibly to entertain.
In the opening paragraph, the writer addresses metrosexuality with the use of adjectives he had created; “stray” and “gaight”. The writer had created these portmanteaus from swapping the initial and final graphemes of the adjective “straight” and “gay”. This pattern of neologism can make the reader clearly see the fusion of the two extremes of being a man “somewhere in between”.
Other examples of these juxtapositions are also shown clearly, to link to his extensive use of the term “stray”, by adding a morphemes“-ification”, into his own personal abstract noun “strayification”. This suggests to the representation of metrosexuality as a transition, a development.
His repetition of the negative modifier “not” and “no”, suggest that metrosexuality is also identified by attributes that he does not possess; other examples of negations are his use of adjectives such as “uninterested” and “incapable”. In the reader’s point of view, this suggestion can be ambiguous on the effect it puts forward: Firstly, it might be seen as a weakness of being a metrosexual, of defying what is the norm of being “straight”; or it can express a sense of uniqueness of the metrosexual, that he would prefer other things, that women can relate to.
The lexical pattern of the “past version of maleness”, or lexical field of aggression and being firm is used, by mentioning the present participle verbs: “fighting”, “fixing”, “stripping”, “hammering” and “shouting”. However he repeats the conjunction “and” before every verb; this syndetic listing suggests an emotive language of agitation. The compound effect of this also shows the stereotypical traits of men, in which Tim Lott is expressly uninterested.
In my last selection, the text “The flaming metrosexual” is a poem by a poet whose online screen name is shadow_manifest. This poem was posted online on August 3, 2003, in 4degreez.com, an online-based poem-related social network; therefore it is the oldest source in my selection, showing that the idea has been represented in the media for almost a decade. This is an interesting piece to contribute to the representation of metrosexuality, as it focuses on the emotions involved, for example the abstract noun “Love”. The poet’s use of language suggests that his intended audience are women who are perhaps “attracted” to metrosexual men. From this his intended audience would also be people who look at poems online. And the purpose would be to entertain and provoke.
In the first stanza, the poet, from line 2-4, wrote a trio of imperative clauses: “see how he walks”, “see his hips bounce” and “watch his feet”; by commanding the reader by using dynamic verbs such as “see” and “watch”- these verbs revolve around the lexis of speculation and observation, where it creates an effect of hypnosis to women seeing a metrosexual man.
The poet then imposes interrogative clauses “can he really be straight” and “can he act like a feminine creature” to be rhetorical, inclusively to create an effect of doubt to women. This may suggest a negative representation of metrosexuality because of its uncertainty. Although taking into account that this poem was written eight years ago, the term might be still recent then. But by the way he coined the term “metrosexual” it shows the familiarity of the term; the existence being there even earlier than my second source.
It interesting to see that because it is also the oldest, there still remained a similar representation of the metrosexual having attributes from both sexes. In his second stanza, he presented an ellipsis between male and female stereotypes such as: “working out at his fitness club” and “curling his 15lbs weights”, “careful not to break a fine manicured nail”. From this we can clearly see both stereotypical behaviours of men and women, linked by subtle alliteration of the ‘c’ sounds.
The poet explicitly uses present perfect tense verbs, such as: “walks”, “goes”, “orders”, “tells”, and “smells”. From this, it might suggest that present perfect tense verbs are used in order to illustrate to the reader that the metrosexual man exists at this particular moment in time, and may contribute to the hypnotic effect to the audience.
To conclude, metrosexuality is an idea or concept that has been represented by the media for almost a decade. Its term has been presented both positively, as a unique revolution of a better modern man; and negatively, as a stereotype that threatens the idea of a ‘real man’. However, all of my text do agree to each other in an extent that metrosexuality, tends to show more female stereotypical behaviours. And is gradually accepted in society as time goes by.
