Mark Simpson (journalist)
Mark Simpson is an English journalist, writer, and broadcaster specialising in popular culture, media, and masculinity. Simpson is the originator of the term and concept metrosexual. He has been described by one critic as "the skinhead Oscar Wilde". David Bowie referred to being metrosexual in an interview on the Dinah Shore show in the year 1976, the video is available on YouTube.
Career
Simpson has written for The Times, The Guardian, Salon, Arena Homme +, GQ Style, Vogues Hommes International, The Independent on Sunday, Têtu, the Seattle Stranger, and Dutch Playboy. In December 2007, GQ Russia placed him in their 'Top Ten Things That Changed Men's Lives'.The term ''metrosexual''
Mark Simpson is credited with coining the term metrosexual in a 1994 article for The Independent. He also introduced the word to the US in 'Meet the Metrosexual', a much-quoted essay on Salon.com in 2002, leading to the global popularity of the term. This was also the first citation of the UK footballer David Beckham as the ultimate example of the type. Simpson was later credited with introducing the term 'retrosexual' in 2003.Described as one of the "Ideas of the Year" by The New York Times in 2006, Simpson wrote on the issue of sport and advertising increasingly using homoerotic imagery, in a process he dubbed "sporno". Simpson wrote about "sporno" for Out magazine commenting that: "whole new generation of young bucks, from twinky soccer players like Manchester United's Alan Smith and Cristiano Ronaldo to rougher prospects like Chelsea's Joe Cole and AC Milan's Kak', keen to emulate their success, are actively pursuing sex-object status in a postmetrosexual, increasingly pornolized world." The London Times newspaper also featured sporno in their 'Year in Ideas' list.
In 2010, the global trend spotting website Science of the Time described Simpson as "the world's most perceptive writer about masculinity". The Times of India included 'metrosexual' in their review of the most important words of the last thirty years, commenting: "Much has been written about metrosexuals, but no one has done it as well as the man credited with coining the term, Mark Simpson."
In 2014, Simpson proposed that the age of the metrosexual has passed and is evolving into a new kind of man called the spornosexual. Spornosexual is a neologism, also coined by Simpson, combining the words "sport," "porn," and "metrosexual." It describes an aesthetic adopted by some men who consume both sports and pornography. Such men, in addition to possessing certain metrosexual attributes, carry their own bodies as accessories and are not shy at showcasing them in public. The spornosexual style emphasises heavy, lean musculature, and certain kinds of tattooing. Spornosexuals spend much money and time on physical fitness and upkeep. Some commentators argue that the rise of spornosexuals is another indication of society becoming evermore narcissistic.
Books
''Male Impersonators''
Simpson's first book Male Impersonators provided the background for his theory of metrosexuality by examining the way men were represented in popular culture – movies, ads, mags, music, male stripping, and comedy – and showing how 'unmanly' passions such as homoeroticism, male narcissism, and male masochism were not excluded but rather exploited, albeit semi-secretly, in voyeuristic virility.Returning to Freud's theory of universal bisexual responsiveness, Simpson also 'outed' what he saw as the homoerotic subtext of masculinity itself. In particular, Simpson analysed the way movies, ads, pop music, and bodybuilding, had replaced 'real' masculinity, if it ever existed, with something 'sexy and simulated'. In his chapter on Marky Mark and his recent Calvin Klein ads, Simpson argued that the rapper's appearance on billboards in Times Square and on the side of buses 'in his prime and in his underwear', grabbing his 'package' to shift product, graphically demonstrated how the commodification of the male body – 'and gay men's love for it' – had become 'eyepoppingly' mainstream.
The book included a chapter arguing that the real romance in Top Gun was between Maverick and Iceman. Quentin Tarantino made a cameo appearance in the film Sleep with Me later the same year as a party-guest making a similar argument.