Taking a break from space blogging (and balancing checkbook, and doing various chores around the house) I was watching a movie.

Proposition: Austin Powers (ignoring the bad teeth) is the prototypical metrosexual.

Discuss.

Not sure about Austin Powers, but Mark Simpson's column sounds like a lot of sour grapes to me.

Simple question: What's wrong with having a sense of style?

In 19th and early 20th centuries Western men had a sense of style. Clothing choices were limited, but men knew how to make the best of them - which tie went with which shirt, and more importantly, how it expressed the wearer's persona. Then, between two World Wars, individual expression was replaced by quasi-military sameness. But when around 1960 people got tired of sameness and individuality came back, straight American men (I am not sure about European) took it not as an opportunity to express themselves, but as an opportunity to be slobs.

So if a sense of style is making a comeback, what's the big deal? Sure, David Beckham has about the same relationship to "style" as Madonna does, but that does not invalidate the whole concept. And yes, I am a married heterosexual male, I buy my own deodorant and underwear, I keep in shape both in cardiovascular and literal sense, I take care of my skin, and I happen to like anal sex. If that maks me, in Simpson's words, "an advertiser's walking wet dream" - bugger off, lad! :)

It's true there have always been men who care about those things, and when I first heard of the "metrosexual" meme I wasn't sure why it needed a new word. Seemed to me that such labels of long standing and venerable impact as, say, "dandy" or "fop" still suffice.

OTOH, it was a fop who once drove Rob Roy MacGregor -- a tough and skilled swordsman -- right off the field with the fierceness of his attack. Poor Rob had misjudged the fellow's masculinity based on his fussiness over his looks.