Microblog Memes

That take seems a bit inaccurate.

Metrosexual meant going above & beyond in male beauty care (a pretty low bar): going to a salon to get manicures & pedicures, maybe apply foundation & eyeliner, manscaping. Possibly wearing those low-heel shoes that show the ankles without socks.

I also remember the words fag and like being ambiguous such that in written contexts I'd sometimes see the clarification good kind of fag to mean homosexual in contrast to an insult directed at someone the insulter dislikes (for being pretentious, aggravating, annoying or whatever). In speech, the distinction was often understood from tone & context, so someone could be a fag (homosexual) yet not an effing fag (detestable), and their company might be absolutely welcome for that reason. An insulter would usually pile on imagery of the subject performing homosexual acts as the recipient of such insults typically disapproves portrayals of themselves that way. The insult was a way to puncture egos & authorities claiming a traditionally masculine image. It wasn't particularly effective against out & proud homosexuals or people who weren't homophobic. While fag wasn't always an insult, however, bigots & religious zealots often drew no distinction, either.

It's like you forgot that "queer eye for a straight guy" was one of the most popular shows at the time. Would have been completely unheard of just a decade earlier.

Much of the 2000's was bridge building, many people who had never even seen or met a homosexual was first introduced to the culture by shows in the 2000's. I know I was.

Every time I come across forum posts from the 2000s I lose a little bit of nostalgia for that period of time. The casual bigotry was fucking everywhere.

That came about partly because homosexuality in the US was legalized on June 26, 2003. Without the fear of raids, people started talking more openly about sexuality and the tide was turning slowly more positive that movies and TV shows that joined the conversation weren't immediately shut down.

Fun fact: the term was literally invented by the British tabloid press to explain how (football superstar and husband of Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham) David Beckham could wear a sarong without being secretly gay.

I wish I was making it up but that's genuinely the origin of the term 🤦

Theres a southpark episode about this.

Hell the 2000's were bad - but it was just an extension to decades, if not centuries of homophobia. Watch the first 5 minutes of Eddie Murphy's RAW to see what was socially acceptable to say in the late 70's, early 80's.

The culture shift is stark sometimes when you watch old stuff.

On the other hand, don't let them turn that into an excuse. You know what dealt with trans rights in a pretty honest, raw, and understanding way, in the mid 1980s? Fucking Hill Street Blues. One of the cops gets together with a woman, he's happy to be with her, and then the other cops start giving him hell for it because she used to be a man. He gets disgusted and angry, goes over to her place, and she lectures him about it and sets him straight, tells him to figure out if he wants to be with her, but don't try to turn who I am into some kind of thing I did to you, or make me feel bad about it. He sort of accepts it, because she clearly has a point, and that's the end of the episode.

Hill Street Blues, man.

This is an episode from my favorite podcast to listen to on road trips, Decoder Ring. https://open.spotify.com/episode/73XOUMOeqkFWYrCcaRMJqd This episode is about the term metrosexual.

I love this podcast. They also did an episode on truck nutz! It's just very very deep dives on random pop culture topics. And it's good journalism too, not just the C-list YouTube Video Essayist summarize-the-wikipedia-article type of stuff.

I been watching some movies and TV shows from the early 2000s as a nostalgia trip with my wife and man there were some terrible lessons. We talked about the homophobia and transphobia but the misogyny, body image and sexualization of teens. The skin women being called fat with the fashion that only looked good on thin thin thin women. The insistence that there was nothing worse than being a virgin. (While the schools were doing an abstinence only education BTW). The countdown clocks to when every female celebrity turned 18 everywhere. It's surreal to think that message was everywhere.

The 2000s were about as homophobic as the 90s, 80s, 70s, etc. Everything was just more out of the closet then.

I used to get called gay because I rolled the sleeves up on my shirt. Also because I worked with a gay guy and occasionally had lunch with him, maybe half a dozen times a year. The odd thing is that I had a girlfriend (same one 22 years later) who these idiots knew about.

Metrosexual 2033, Metrosexual Last Light, and Metrosexual Exodus

Wait, shorts were gay? Does that include cargo shorts? Cuz there were a lot of cargo shorts at the time.

Source: used to wear cargo shorts back then. I still do, but I used to too.

When I was growing up “f!!!ot” wasn’t even seen as a cuss word, it was just a burn you called your friends all the time. We didn’t really think about it until I was 16 and one of our friends came out as gay. My whole friend group kind of had it click at the same time that 1. We didn’t care that he was gay and 2. It was probably pretty fucking rude to call everything we didn’t like “g!y” and call eachother “f!g” as an insult. I think that realization happened for a lot of people who had gay friends in my generation, and it’s part of what helped lead to the level of acceptance and support the LGBT community has now.

Asian dude who went to high school in the 90s.

We were constantly called metro or straight up gay because we dressed like BTS before BTS was born.

But they called us that in a hateful way.

Ya 90s high school sucked for minorities.