I think this whole “metrosexual” thing happened after I left North America; I spent my last few years there cloistered deep in academia, but it was literary academia and I’m sure someone would have mentioned this at the first available namedrop of Eve Kosofsky Sedwick. But I can’t recall hearing the term till after I’d come to Korea.

Anyway, I’m quite sure that many Americans will cringe or get riled up seeing this, but I found Parag Khanna’s article, “The Metrosexual Superpower”, pretty interesting.

According to Michael Flocker’s 2003 bestseller, The Metrosexual Guide to Style: A Handbook for the Modern Man, the trendsetting male icons of the 21st century must combine the coercive strengths of Mars and the seductive wiles of Venus. Put simply, metrosexual men are muscular but suave, confident yet image-conscious, assertive yet clearly in touch with their feminine sides…

Geopolitics is much the same. American neoconservatives such as Robert Kagan look down upon feminine, Venus-like Europeans, gibing their narcissistic obsession with building a postmodern, bureaucratic paradise. The United States, by contrast, supposedly carries the mantle of masculine Mars, boldly imposing freedom in the world’s nastiest neighborhoods. But by cleverly deploying both its hard power and its sensitive side, the European Union (EU) has become more effective—and more attractive—than the United States on the catwalk of diplomatic clout. Meet the real New Europe: the world’s first metrosexual superpower.

Read it all here. I found it on Arts & Letters Daily, as you might have guessed.

And in a (vaguely?) related story (and it is, if you just squint hard enough): there is actually a website for fanfiction about Kerry and Edwards. Slash fanfiction, which according to Asparagirl over at The Protocols of the Yuppies of Zion means gay porno fanfiction. Yes, people are writing gay porn about 2004’s Democratic Presidential Candidate and his running mate. I wonder if anyone’s done the same for Bush and Cheney? Then again probably not or there would be an American Internet Ban, too. No, wait, there is such a thing, says Asparagirl. My God.

I haven’t gone and looked—I really don’t feel the need to—but I know some of my friends will want to, so here’s the link to the livejournal with the Kerry/Edwards slash fiction.