TNG Flashback: Give Me A Fucking Break

The work day is almost over. We hope you use your last ounce of concentration to revisit this year-old TNG article. Originally published by Zack on 3/20/2008

"Less discussed has been [the metrosexual's] female counterpart: gals who, while not lesbians, dress like guys (young guys), well into their 30’s; who leap into games of pickup basketball with male friends while the rest of us watch wanly from the sidelines; who affect a wry detachment from their sex’s conventional concerns of shoe-shopping, man-hunting and family."

The above quote is from a Tuesday New York Observer article, entitled "The Urbane Tomboys," that attempts to draw a female equivalent to the metrosexual label that I found so offensive a few years ago. I thought we were past this kind of pigeonholing, but The Observer couldn't let a sleeping dog lie. Their article elucidates the unthinkable fact that some women don't like wearing dresses and makeup, but are still totally into dick.

Did I fall asleep in my time machine last night? Is that how I woke up in 1942?

I hated the whole metrosexual craze (and its follow-up, gay vague) because it put sheep's clothing on the old homophobic standby that gay people somehow look different than straight ones. So, in the eyes of these labels, hetero men dressing well didn't signal an era where appearance is separate from sexuality — instead, it just meant that straight men were dressing more like snazzy fags.

I thought we were past this kind of pigeonholing, but The Observer couldn't let a sleeping dog lie. Their article elucidates the unthinkable fact that some women don't like wearing dresses and makeup, but are still totally into dick.

I don't even know where to begin with this article. First off, I thought the whole "only men wear pants" notion died with falsies and sockhops. Are the standards of "normal" male and female behavior so ingrained in our culture that the slightest deviation from them warrants the creation of some bogus new trend? Lawrence King died because he didn't dress the way men were supposed to dress. So instead of making a big deal out of every person that has an unconventional personal style, we'd all be better served to just let people dress how they want to dress and accept the fact that we're pretty far beyond the days when only cowboys wore jeans.

The implications of articles like this to the homo crowd are pretty obvious too. Like those lame "white people walk like this jokes" that are so popular with bad stand-up comedians, the Urbane Tomboy and metrosexual labels imply that straight people dress and act one way and gays dress and act another. I think the lines between gay and straight are blurring because, in some circles, people are realizing that how you dress doesn't indicate who you fuck, it just shows where you shop. The idea that you can be a straight woman and dress manly, or be a lesbian and dress femme, just shouldn't be a big deal any more.

I'm sorry if this isn't the funniest post I've ever written, but shit like this really pisses me off.