Article
Inaki Dominguez
Sylvester Stallone said in an interview with Larry King that when he started going to the gym, in the 1960s, those places were a sordid location where it was not uncommon to see gentlemen smoking a cigarette while lifting weights. The gym as an urban ecosystem was frequented by strongmen, street thugs and, in some cases, celebrities very aware of his image; this was, after all, his source of income. This trend was probably the dominant one until the mid-1980s, when the gym began to play a more prominent role in social life. Then the fitness craze emerged, dominated mostly by aerobics.
The irruption of this new phenomenon was closely linked to the reinvention of Jane Fonda as the protagonist of a whole bunch of videos on VHS in which she instructed in the art of sports those consumers who could not –or did not want– to leave their house to exercise. Jane Fonda's new identity expressed a dialectical transition moving from anti-Vietnam War protests, hippie movement, and radical politics, to a new reality in which former activists became heavy yuppie consumers. The actress, in this case, served as an example –as a former leftist figure– for the promotion of a new consumption. Before her transfiguration, Fonda was also known as Hanoi Jane for visiting communist troops in North Vietnam in 1972, something many Americans would never forgive her for.
The seed of current metrosexuality could also be found in the 1960s: Jay Sebring, Sharon Tate's hairdresser and ex-boyfriend –and murdered along with her by Charles Manson's henchmen–, was then a true revolutionary in men's haircuts. Sebring then offered a new service to a part of the male public that until then had only been able to resort to barbers. Sebring himself, in fact, cut Jim Morrison's hair for the making of his most iconic photograph, where he comes out shirtless and with his arms outstretched. According to those present, Morrison, as soon as he appeared before the barber, showed him the page torn from a history book that showed a painting of the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great.
The metrosexual, generally, imitates some of the identity traits of women; and he does it, precisely, with those that he finds exciting in it. Naively, the metrosexual considers that women are attracted to men exactly what they want in women, which does not always have to be the case: if the metrosexual man is attracted to the fact that the woman is shaved, he must his skin is very smooth and dark, he replicates these characteristics on his own body to create in women the same sensation of imperative desire that he feels when observing them (or, at least, that is what he aspires to). Jim Morrison followed this same mechanism after observing his friend Ronnie Haran –soul of Sunset Strip, Los Angeles–, who never wore underwear under her blouses. After feeling the pang of desire from her, the singer decided to emulate Haran: she did not wear underpants again under her tight leather pants in what little she had left to live. We can affirm that this basic strategy represents the essence of metrosexuality: trying to arouse desire in the female sex through mere corporeality, something not entirely masculine until then.
From a sociological perspective we can speak of a paradigm shift in the model of masculinity: the idea of the revolution introduced by Jay Sebring was not simply to cut one's hair, but to obtain an added degree of beauty and sophistication by way of distinction. Before the 1960s, women's access to the workplace was rare, but the subsequent massive incorporation of women into the labor market had as a consequence, among many other things, a rethinking of the male role in society. The newly won labor equality had two striking consequences in terms of roles: women adopted attitudes traditionally associated with men, and men adopted roles historically linked to women.
As a consequence, many men also aspired to be the object of desire, to be a «fair sex», which would shape the later function of the gymnasium as a public space. If until then man had exclusively held a wide range of professions –something that he defined as a social subject–, he now had to seek new forms of recognition: “being beautiful” was one of the many resources available to him . This sociological trend has been intensified over the years, and now both genders make their own image a fundamental aspect of their identity, something due to the greater nihilism, hedonism and narcissism of Western societies; phenomena arising, in fact, because of the growing lack of spiritual and religious convictions.
A consequence of these changes is the rampant narcissism that dominates our society: each one of us, today, lends itself to occupying the place of the traditional celebrity. We have technological devices thanks to which we are able to project a media image, something that previously was only accessible to recognized artists. This is the product of a democratization of the use of technology, today available to any ordinary citizen. The relationship between said access to technology and the cultivation of physical exercise is more than palpable. People who did play sports in the past could not share their practices with others, since they lacked technologies and platforms to make themselves visible to others immediately. This narcissism has also been exacerbated by the markets themselves, which aspire to isolate the subject so that, indirectly, he finds himself dissatisfied in his intimate, loving and filial life, being impelled to consume ad infinitum. From this void at the level of intimacy springs a need for recognition that is expressed in the number of likes one receives from the environment. It is a vampiric yearning for recognition that, unfortunately, never satiates; a craving that never works. Despite receiving such frivolous recognition, one is quickly pressured into new doses of dopamine.
The cult of the body has several causes: one is the death of God, which gives preponderance to materiality, to biological life, to the body; another, the emergence of the welfare society: when one has many of their basic needs covered, new ones linked to self-image arise. In addition, the emergence of new technologies for their indiscriminate use means that the media representation of the subject occupies a central place in social relations. All this leads us to find ourselves at a particularly propitious moment to get in shape. Of course, the primary objective of these efforts is to be recognized by others, to obtain a distinction whose achievement demands a lot of effort in overcrowded societies like ours, where each subject represents an atom in an immeasurable environment. The narcissist demands the attention of others, but not to relate intimately with them, but so that they exclusively exercise the function of spectators of their ego. The narcissist needs the other not only to obtain false self-esteem through the gaze of others, but to verify his very existence. I think therefore I exist? No: I'm good, therefore I exist.
