Earlier this month, hundreds of people gathered at a park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle for yet another look-alike contest. Kind of.
Instead of searching for earthly versions of celebrities like Timothée Chalamet or Pedro Pascal, the spectators were looking for which of the assembled contestants was the best example of the so-called Performative Male — a relatively new social media archetype.
The Performative Male curates his aesthetic in a way that he thinks might render him more likable to progressive women. He is, in short, the antithesis of the toxic man. “It’s men who are trying to cater to what they think women who are feminist like,” said Guinevere Unterbrink, 24, an art teacher who was one of the contest’s hosts.
Such a man might sip on iced matcha lattes at a cafe while reading Sally Rooney or Joan Didion. He might wear wired headphones and baggy pants, and he would most likely be carrying a tote bag (perhaps with a Labubu attached). He could be listening to Clairo and would be quick to reveal his collection of vinyl records. He turns himself into a walking mood board of on-trend markers for softness, stylishness and a feminist leaning that he may or may not actually possess. And as a result, he has become a scoffed-at meme.
“A lot of the time, they don’t know what they’re talking about,” Lanna Rain, 24, the contest’s other host, said of the idea of performative men. “It’s just an aesthetic for them.”
Some have gone as far as calling the Performative Male an epidemic. Online, users have posted stealth videos of the performative men they have spotted out in the wild or videos imagining what it would be like to date one of them. And Seattle’s competition was not an aberration: In July, New York hosted its own version in Washington Square Park and there was a similar contest in Jakarta, Indonesia, last week.
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The post How Do You Spot a ‘Performative’ Male? Look for a Tote Bag. appeared first on New York Times.
