Something New for [white?] Guys to Aspire To?

They were the metrosexuals, men in their late twenties happy to embrace their feminine side....they weren't afraid to wear make-up, garish earrings and even sarongs.

But now the metrosexuals are being elbowed aside. Here come the heteropolitans: men perfectly at ease with themselves, fathers who prefer nights in with their families to nights out on the tiles; guys who prefer shorts to skirts and whose skin only changes colour if they have been out in the sun.


http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2609309.ece

 

Chome, can you explain the title of your post, you put white guys in () and I am wondering why. Do you think BM aren't metrosexuals or whatever is next in the "male movement" ?

 

I thought the same too but if you look closely, most black male metrosexuals often try their best to keep it a secret from their friends.

 

I don't know Laydeezman, isn't the whole metrosexual thing literally worn on your sleeves? At least when it comes to clothes, I swear if I see one more guy in a striped shirt and jeans I will call it the "Metrosexual Uniform" lol

Can you really hide it if you are a metrosexual? A manicure shows no matter what. And washing& moisturizing your face alone doesn't make you a metrosexual I think...
Why do you think it is that BM feel the need to hide it? Afraid of having their sexuality questioned?

 

Oh, you have no idea!!!

Listen, i do not expect you to understand this, but black men are largely under pressure to conform to "blackstream" (a portmanteau of black and mainstream) standards of masculinity and unfortunately, you cannot deviate from those standards or there is a price to pay. To be honest, there's a better chance of seeing black men being able to connect with guys like, say 50 Cent or Will Smith than Usher or a person like LL COOL J. Despite what most will tell you, 50 Cent is seen, by both whites and blacks alike, as the ideal macho black man; Usher isn't.

Someone like Usher moisterizes his face, waxes his legs and stuff like that (or at least i've seen in the media); i'm not too sure 50 does.

I hope you understand now.

 

I understand, I assume it's kind of along the same lines with most BM's reaction and interaction when it comes to gay men or anything surrounding/ involving that lifestyle. I am just wondering why that is still so strong in the BM community

 

I think i have a few ideas why. Obviously, i cannot represent the ideas of all African-American men but generally, masculinity is part of black life, both here and in the diaspora. And it dates back historically. In Africa (specially West Africa), a man was and still is seen as more than just a man. He represents fatherhood, warhood and something larger than just himself. In some West African tribes, if a man is to ask for a bride to marry, he could be put through a series of tests - tests of whipping and i am not kidding you. If he remains strong and takes it, he's fit to be her "protector" but if he caves, he's not.

Obviously, in the slave trade era, there are certains values that many of the slaves happened to hold on to. As you may know, the slaves were all captured and placed in strange places, largely emasculated in the process, so largely resisted authority and further emphasized their manhood in some order ways. Sometimes, this meant fighting back when their masters hit them, and although it had consequences, it worked some times as in the case of Frederick Douglass. Occasionally, it meant illicit affairs with the master's wife. Once in a while, slaves would be put through "slave activities", many of which have evolved into modern sports. Seldomly, they took some of the biggest but worthwhile risks in trying to escape from bondage.

Obviously, the slave trade did end and somehow, whites sought another means of keeping the Negro "in his place", because of fears of black hypersexuality and supremacy. As you know, a black man being accused of "rape" is bad enough to get him executed by angry white mobs - whether or not he was guilty did not matter. So, years of de jure Jim Crow segregation in the South and de facto discrimination around the rest of the country meant that blacks were once again relegated to "slave" status.

In the wake of the oppression, where black manhood meant nothing, black men often felt they could devise methods for America to accept their manhood, whether or not they liked it. For a long time, jazz music was the solution. From the late 1800s to about the 1960s, jazz was the ultimate expression of the black, largely male, experience. No doubt there were female jazz singers like Ella Fitzgerald, the field was dominated by black men. To quote jazz musician and historian, "Jazz is something that Negroes invented, and it said the most profound things not only about us and the way we look at things, but about what modern democratic life is really about. It is the nobility of the race put into sound; it is the sensuousness of romance in our dialect; it is the picture of the people in all their glory, which is what swinging is. Jazz has all of the elements, from the spare and penetrating to the complex and enveloping. It is the hardest music to play that I know of and it is the highest rendition of individual emotion in the history of Western music.

Not that i need to remind you, but blacks were not allowed in whites-only avenues for the most part of the 20th century. Jazz performers often were the exceptions. For example, Nat King Cole and Louis Armstrong, not devoid of criticism, often played in front of all-white crowds. Black performers were still obviously black but it seemed like the stage was the only place where they could finally be "equal" Americans. To some extent, that was true.

However, things began to change in the wake of the civil rights movements, where the fight for racial equality was long, vigorous but arguably successful one. As with everything in American history, things changed and jazz was replaced by soul music (and depending on whom you speak to, blaxploitation movies)as the number one articulator of black life. Those two artforms peaked at a time where black self-pride was tantamount for African-Americans and it was no coincidence both were adopted by mainstream African Americans.

That didn't last like most other artforms and was replaced by perhaps the single, most widely accepted form of black identity; hip hop. Of course, it's beginnings were modest and sure hip hop had been around as early as the late 60s, it didn't peak until the mid 80s. Hip hop was a cultural form of expression, its sonorous beats and rhythms articulating the anguish in the black and Latino underclass. Through a series of mainstream (read: white) appropriations, it has become perhaps the biggest musical and cultural expression since Jazz in the early 19th century.

Since hip hop comes from the hearts and minds of blacks, it would make sense that black ideals are articulated. That meant talking about the hardships of the ghetto, and in some cases, romanticizing a life on the fast lane. Whether or not you liked it, black people could rarely ever get away from the black experience and perhaps that is why so many blacks (and other races) identify with hip hop.

Boy, that was long!!!! :lol: