Friday 18 May 2007

Metrosexual Poison


Metrosexual? No, no, no…it does not mean a person who has sex in a subway (unless you are Mexican). The term is usually associated with narcissistic dandies who are actually straight. I tend to view such creatures as unfortunate brainwashed victims who worship at the altar of the First High Church of Modern Fashion Marketing where the ideology is relentlessly promulgated through the sacred texts of FHM, Arena, The Face and GQ via prophets such as David Beckham in collusion with the media (which is their literal and metaphorical mirror - they love each other darrrling)

For me it’s clear the metrosexual poison have already made a vice like grip on the collective consciousness. What. Evar. I am being deliberately misleading here as that’s just my little rant for the week and not what I really want to talk about (oh, spot the irony). In between all the hair care products and painted nails, if I was to stretch the definition to include the embracing of practices by men usually perceived to be the domain of females, then there is one unfortunate rise of incidence of a habit I have anecdotally noticed on an almost daily basis that I find alarming.

Ten years ago I remember seeing the vast majority of cases of deliberate self-harm occurring in females. And within this group it was stereotypically crying-for-attention young Caucasian girls who have had “relationship issues” or Asian (the UK meaning of those from the Indian sub-continent) girls who have had tense “intra-family issues”. Working in the front lines these days I am seeing more and more cases of males presenting with DSH…overwhelmingly due to “relationship issues”. To the extent that I feel the gender ratio is now almost equal. A superficial perusal (yes, I find oxymorons amusing so sue me) does seem to confirm my anecdotal suspicion in which there is particular concern that the DSH rate in young men aged 15–24 years of age is rising more quickly than in any other group.

The cause is probably multi-factorial and multi-layered, but seriously, are men getting so metrosexual these days that the moment their relationship goes pear-shaped they will feel the need to swallow a handful of lethal vitamins in self-pity, and then drama-queen-like, immediately tell anyone who cares to listen to their woes, and thus have ambulances blue-lighting to their rescue?

I am not entirely sure what’s going on here but it’s a very noticeable trend that more and more males are losing their grip. Isn’t that supposed to be the domain of females?

:P

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