How a trip to the mall on Black Friday led to a slight postmodern view of masculinity (wait…what?)

Last week I went downtown Christmas shopping in Indy with my family on Black Friday. We were in Nordstrom, looking for a scarf for my cousin, Rachel. Now, I never shop at Nordstrom, to me it’s just a walk through area if I happen to park in the Circle Center garage to go out downtown. A quick observation without paying close attention, while we were looking for a scarf, I didn’t see a sharp contrast between the man and the woman sections of the store. Did each section have its own floor? I don’t remember. Were there even two section to begin with? Seriously though, everything from the lighting, to the colors, to the manikins, and yes even the sales associates all seemed to blend together androgynously. Anyway, we ended up in an area that had scarves and hats right next to some designer bags and whatever else. Close, by was a sunglass table, where I tried on a weird looking pair to show my bro for a laugh. Being a little over 50% confident I was in the women section quickly diminished after the sales associate said that most of the sunglasses were unisex. Right then I became perplexed and realized that my conventional wisdom of a department store and what it looks like and how its organized, is getting turned on its head.

This made me think of the obvious, as we talked about in class and read about in Chapter 13 of Consumer Diversity that since the advent of the term “metrosexual”, the spectrum of aesthetic sexual orientation between masculinity and femininity seems to be shrinking while at the same time becoming increasingly androgynous. Now for this to be true we are told that a metrosexual is androgynous by exhibiting a feminine trait of taking great care towards displaying a quality aesthetic appearance. Meaning masculinity is now partially defined with the trait of one not caring too much about his/her outwardly appearance.

Now lets look back at history, way before the term metrosexual was used. In the 16^th through the 18^th century, in the western world, men wore Powder wigs mainly as a symbol of social status. White was the most common color of powder used, giving the man an older and much wiser appearance, here by increasing his social status. That’s just one example. A skirt thirty years ago, was called a “gown”, which before the 18^th century was worn by both male and females. Just look at the kilt worn by those in Scotland. A male wearing that in the U.S. might have his masculinity questioned but in Scotland it is a formal garment for men that is also used for sporting in the highland games.

My main point is that looking at the aggregate of known history and across different cultures, minus physiology behavior, there is no real objective way to display masculinity.