Metrosexuals, the pretty boys of the age, are pruned to aesthetic grandeur with the technology of hair removal, from their chests to their testes, and high-priced hair gels. According to Mark Simpson, who coined the word in his 1994 article “Here Come the Mirror Men,” a metrosexual is “one less certain of his identity and much more interested in his image.”

Now, although sexuality was irrelevant in Simpson’s earliest definition, they can be described as straight men exuding a homosexual’s sense of style and taste. With their poster boy David Beckham at the helm, these men have taken the fashion and advertising world by storm. And, they are threatening to usurp the female demographic in fashion and skin care while simultaneously coalescing and challenging societal gender and sexuality definitions. But, where did these self-obsessed males originate? History shows us that they were not the first to rise from the urban streets to become models of good hygiene and utter fabulousness the world over.

In the mid-18 th century, exquisitely and effeminately dressed males known as “macaronis” began to grace the avenues of England. Their wigs were so tall and outlandish that the point of a sword was needed to remove the tiny hats they perched atop them. “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” a popular song in America at the time but one that has survived the ages, just as the macaroni has lived on in the metrosexual, mocks the macaroni: “Yankee Doodle…put a feather in his hat and called it macaroni!” The ditty also ridicules the dandy who first appeared in Paris and London in the 1790s.

Idle men, they spent their time gambling, hunting, drinking and smoking, leading very extravagant lifestyles. They exuded an air of aristocracy despite lacking noble blood. Charles Baudelaire, the personification of the dandy lifestyle, declared the canon of a dandy is to have "no profession other than elegance. . . no other status but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own persons. . . . The dandy must aspire to be sublime without interruption; he must live and sleep before a mirror." Stereotypically, their narcissism got the better of them as they squandered their money and wound up in dire poverty.

The metrosexual appears as simply another strain branching off the macaroni and dandy epidemics. And already new forms have taken shape. The technosexual mirrors the metrosexual with his strong sense of aestheticism, yet has an equal fondness for his palm pilot and cell phone. He is obsessed with “his urban lifestyle and gadgets” and is sometimes implied to have a superficial sexuality as well.

‘Technosexual’ is sometimes a derisive term implying that one favors sex with a toy over a human being. However, hoping to break the superficiality and excessive narcissism inherent in the metro- or technosexual, the übersexual has returned to a more traditional conception of ‘manliness’ in conjunction with class and taste. The coauthors of the new book, The Future of Men, describe the übersexualas “the most attractive (not just physically), most dynamic, and most compelling men of their generations. They are confident, masculine, stylish, and committed to uncompromising quality in all areas of life." With George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Diddy named as archetypes, these men are less self-focused and more culturally focused. However, the obsession with image remains.

Fostered by the dandies of the past, the marketing potential of every variant of the metrosexual was there from the start. But what in the mid-90s caused the reemergence of the urbane narcissist? Perhaps these men are merely a well-dressed side effect to a consumerist culture. Indeed, they do steep themselves in materialism as they dig for cues among the Versace and Ralph Lauren print ads. When clothes transformed into fashion, these men began modeling an identity from minced GQs. Metrosexuals have been shaped by magazines and brand names, yet they have also carved their own consumerist niche, one with great economic potential for advertisers. And now the marketing goliath is modeling identities for them.

The advertising giant JWT is responsible for The Future of Men, the book that has coined the ‘ übersexual,’ thereby crafting an entirely new demographic. And in return, the metrosexual is changing the way marketing views and targets men. The fastest growing subdivision of L’Oréal Paris, according to their 2005 annual report, was men’s skincare. And as men covet skincare, a formerly female sector, they are also responding to more traditional female cues in advertising. “Increasingly,” explains Alan Treadgold of the advertising agency Leo Burnett, “there's a certain type of male choosing [home entertainment systems] from what might be seen as female attributes, such as the environment of the store, level of service and other intangible things." Are metrosexuals just men gone soft? Some conservative voices argue that metrosexuals have lost their identity in an overly feminized world.

“The naissance of the Metrosexual is prima facie evidence that women are winning the war of the sexes,” argues one conservative article. Michael Quinion, journalist and author, furthers this thinking on his website, claiming that the “21st-century man has become neutered and insecure as a result of the rise of female power in the workplace.” Are women really to blame for these materialized and ‘emasculated’ men? Perhaps this accusation is an oversimplification; regardless, metrosexuals have reacted to the androgynization of the office.

Another line of reasoning follows that “no longer is a straight man's sense of self and manhood delivered by his relationship to women; instead, it's challenged by it.” Or maybe metrosexuals are simply evolving. They have learned not to define themselves by their opposite but have progressed to accept female traits in the same manner many women are rejecting stigmatized adjectives such as docile and obedient as innate definitions. By assimilating conventionally feminine and homosexual attributes in order to prosper in a consumerist culture, they are adapting to changing definitions of gender and sexuality.

Or maybe this is not assimilation at all, but pure identity confusion. Simpson addressed this issue in Russia's OM Magazine, explicating that "Metrosexuality is in fact the end of 'sexuality'." He carries his thought further, designating sexuality as “utterly immaterial because the metrosexual has taken himself as his own love object and pleasure as his sexual aim. Desire in the metrosexual has been uncoupled, or at least irretrievably loosened, from reproduction and gender—and reattached to commercial signs."

Perhaps the metrosexual reemergence was nothing more than a consumerist reaction. But are these men just hapless captives in a consumerist prison? They may have replaced their gender role with a gender image, but is this not a critique of the superficiality of gender roles and identifications in general? Perhaps not; perhaps these men, as critics claim, only have skin exfoliates on the brain, but regardless of their intentions or depth metrosexuals have successfully, perhaps unintentionally, united feminine perspectives with a homosexual’s flair thereby broadening the straight male’s margins.

They gracefully assimilate advertising images and harmonize feminine and masculine traits, thus imitating our culture’s growing consumerism and the evolution of gender and sexual identifications. These gender-benders stand enraptured, as if before a funhouse mirror, reflecting and skewing society’s views on gender issues in a consumerist context. And they have certainly, if nothing else, added a little panache to machismo.