The Metrosexual
Decoder Ring
Slate Podcasts
4.6 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 10 June 2020
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2003, the word "metrosexual", meaning a well-groomed heterosexual man, exploded all over the English lexicon. It invaded the news, TV, and even American politics. On this episode of Decoder Ring we explore the origins of the metrosexual, and how trend forecasters, marketers, David Beckham, Sex and the City, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy helped make the metrosexual possible.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In the early 2000, Marian Saltzman was an executive at a global advertising firm who specialized in market research. |
| 0:15.3 | Though that's a pretty dry description of what she did. |
| 0:18.0 | I guess I'm called a trend spotter. |
| 0:20.4 | At one point in my career, |
| 0:22.3 | I was responsible for the sex survey for Aspera magazine. And I would come up with really |
| 0:29.5 | lovely and more friendly questions like who should sleep on the what spot. She also asked |
| 0:33.9 | questions that Chiquilit tried to get at how men were feeling about their relationships |
| 0:37.8 | and their masculinity. |
| 0:39.3 | Do they have any kind of envy about the fact that gay men had better relations with women than |
| 0:44.7 | they did more conversational relationships? |
| 0:47.1 | Another question, do they want to be the best friend, the best love, or the best shopping partner? |
| 0:51.2 | The answer she got, alongside ones for more exacting surveys, stood out to her. |
| 0:55.8 | She began to suspect that a trend was afoot. |
| 0:58.5 | Between 25% and the third of men were straight men who wanted to increasingly adopt |
| 1:04.9 | more characteristics associated with gay men. |
| 1:09.0 | Marion was not the only person to have noticed what seemed to be a new subset of |
| 1:13.3 | self-identified heterosexual men. |
| 1:15.7 | I am so confused. |
| 1:17.1 | Is he gay or is he straight? |
| 1:18.5 | This is from an episode of Sex in the City that aired in August of 1999. |
| 1:22.2 | It's not that simple anymore. |
| 1:23.5 | The real question is, is he a straight gay man or is he a gay straight man? The gay straight man was a new |
... |
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