"The Future of Men"(November 2006)
Online Copy
The marketing consultants who dug up “lucrative market niches” like “wigger”, “singleton”, and “metrosexual” have struck another, albeit shallower one: the “übersexual”. Marian Salzman, Ira Matathia, and Ann O’Reilly try to put another social term into the mass vernacular in The Future of Men – a short examination of the changing condition of (mostly) white, Western males and how advertisers can better exploit this new identity.
The trio of authors takes a light look at how various factors – particularly those that have empowered and changed female possibilities – have been forming the popular and personal conceptions of masculinity. By citing statistics, interviews, research, and their own cultural interpretations, The Future of Men concludes that the male identity is in a crisis, no longer supported by waning traditional values, unsure of what is right amongst so many new, acceptable social roles.
Salzman, Matathia, and O’Reilly believe that have picked out a new form of masculinity amongst this transitioning. The übersexual is a reaction against the indulgent and wimpy metrosexual, who, quite vaguely, defines things for himself and is an apotheosis hybrid of classic masculinity with new age dynamism and aesthetic sophistication. They are driven by “M-ness”, or “My-ness”, which seems to be some unique, self-defined sense of manliness.
The Future of Men is expedited argument and overlong elaboration that fixates on narrow evidence and defines its terms with fortune cookie ambiguity. It bases itself on business-speak buzzwords and pop logic. While the authors do eventually draw out some observations on how men may be living and behaving differently, they really only spend a few, almost gratuitous pages of the conclusion trying to show how these new identities can be accessed by marketers. As both a gender study and an advertising manual, it is lost in generalities and idealism, in mediocre conclusions and indefinite suggestions.
©2009 Tim Peters/All rights reserved