Young Metros

About ten years ago, I overheard an office conversation with two heterosexual men in their thirties talking about the clothes they just bought. They were comparing style, colour, fabric, and price. Then they pulled out the shirts from their bags and showed them to each other. I turned to them and said - This is a conversation I can't imagine happening between two men, say five years ago.

They laughed and said - You just gotta get with the times.

Granted, both men were urban designer with designer girlfriends. Urban designers in generally are more finely tuned to the aesthetics of life and male urban designers in particular have their feminine side well developed. They were the first breed of metrosexuals.

Today, on the subway, a group of young people got on, slurping their Tim Horton ice cappuccinos. They were probably first year university students, though they could be mature looking high school kids. There was a girl with long, flowing blond hair, wearing purple ballet flats, black leggings, a pink baby-doll dress with flower prints, and a cropped white sweater over the dress. She looked cute. She was like an artsy Jessica Simpson. Her female friends were also cute, though not as eye-catching as her.

The boy that was with them had long, spiked greasy hair plastered to his head, looking like he was too shy to face the world, though that too could be a cultivated look. He did not look or sound effeminine. What caught my attention was the flow of their conversation.

Cute Girl - My nails are really small, especially on my toes. When I paint my toe pinky, it's just a red dot.

Friend - Why don't you get a pedicure.

Boy - How often do you go?

Cute Girl - I'm not paying someone to put a dot of polish on my toe.

Boy - When are you guys going to start wearing flip-flops?

The innaneness of the topic aside, when did toe polish and foot fashion leave the realm of women's private conversation to be a unisex subject, casually tossed out for discussion on the subway? What's in it for the boy? Do they talk about how often jock straps get laundered?

I get the sense he's the next generation of metrosexuals. Every subject is open, everyone talks about everything. There is no more mystique in the feminine. There is no more awe of the masculine.

Too bad I can't stand D. H. Lawrence right now. Some of his earthy sorting of the differences between men and women would bring back sensuality of the sexes and give flavour to the blandness of loquacious equality.