There’s a good chance you might know this guy.
He peppers his conversation with references to Joan Didion and Angela Davis, has an on-off relationship with his Mubi membership, and does community uplift “down at the co-op.” During the week, he’s blocking the doorways of coffee shops, raving in hushed tones about Laufey and Mazzy Starr, while the weekends are spent in strangers’ kitchens, having bellowing arguments over the latest pieces of feminine-coded cultural consumption. He covets Dries Van Noten torpedo shoes and had a psychological episode after the release of Normal People on Hulu. It’s all a put-on, and yet none of it is; his friends increasingly dress like he does, and so together they appear to represent a kind of new normal. Every night he watches TikToks of young, loafered men aura-farming through the glass, filling his impressionable head with ideas. In the fashionable desperadoes staring out at him, he sees himself as he ought to be.
This is the all-conquering 2025 person-type known as the Performative Male, someone who is deliberately—or not!—curating an aesthetic that will supposedly make him more appealing to progressive women. But has the Performative Male become so recognizable, so ripe for parody, that he is already doomed?
At this point, the notion of the Performative Male is so well established that a contest to London’s most performative male of all was covered by the BBC, while similar events have been staged in San Francisco, Dublin, Florida, Sydney, and New York. Contestants have homed in on certain key signifiers: camo caps and carabiners; tucked vests, crop tops, and billowing shirts; the slimmest of sneakers, loafers or other ostensibly formal shoe worn with pulled-up white socks; jewelry: rings, bracelets, necklaces—all silver; music by Clairo, books by bell hooks and Sally Rooney; matcha lattes and collagen smoothies; Substacks and underground literary readings; free-flowing pants and—most crucially of all—jorts.
According to his critics, the Performative Male has absorbed these markers of taste from social media and implemented them into his lifestyle cynically.
For alleged Performative Male Elias (left), these are all “easy signposts for the Performative Male’s character—sensitivity, introspection, bookishness, a ‘feminine intuition’ and refined taste.” At the same time, he maintains, they’re widely adopted for reasons that are not always duplicitous. “Loafers are a gentle shoe,” he shrugs. “Sally Rooney is a popular female author, matcha is more niche or ‘refined’ than tea or coffee.”
What is unspoken about this off-the-rack personality type is perhaps more important than the signifiers themselves: he is fashion-conscious; he cares about women’s interests insofar as it benefits him in the sexual marketplace; and in the fraught landscape of masculinity in the 2020s, he has absolutely no idea how to conduct himself authentically. He doesn’t know who he is. So why not just be what he thinks women want?
Of course, there is nothing profoundly evil at play here. He and his increasingly common comrades are simply following the trends, like so many before, understanding when curating their peacock ritual that certain feathers look more beautiful and might be more conducive to receiving hand stuff. However, the Performative Male’s appeal lies in his plausible deniability. The fact that his chosen stereotype has already become such a widely understood punchline gives him the perfect ‘out’ should he be pressed on it. If not, then he’s “just being himself.”
And this version of himself, he thinks, is the best one yet.
“To me, it’s reminiscent of the Fuckboy stereotype from ten-or-so years ago,” says Angel (pictured above) when asked about the Performative Male trope. “When it comes to disingenuous representation with ulterior motives—by anybody, really—I’d think criticism is in order. But it comes across a bit, ‘You don’t really like matcha, do you? You like beer. You just drink the green latte to get with this particular kind of person.’ In regards to deliberately curating a certain aesthetic in order to attract the people they want to attract—romantically, sexually or otherwise—isn’t that something all people do?”
“People perform everyday and for good reason: to be friends, to be understood, to be loved, to be attractive,” adds Elias. “The ‘funny guy’ can choose to perform or not perform his ‘funniness’ and either way he is sincere. The problem is insincerity and manipulation, which are intrinsic to the Performative Male and certainly worthy of criticism. We can’t detect performance when it is sincere, which is why the Performative Male sticks out like a sore thumb… he’s a bad actor.”
This point feels crucial. The space in which the Performative Male would arguably appear most convincing and authentic—in his bedroom, reading alone—doesn’t make sense for him, because no one is around to witness the performance. This is why, when he sees an ad for the local Performative Male contest, of course he commits to it (as a joke, obviously… or is it?).
“There is something quite tragic about this”
His is an archetype that can only really function in public. Sitting one table over from you, regaling a girl from Hinge with his feminist Marxist reading of Scary Movie and his love of roses (white) and peonies (red). Sauntering through town afterwards, Patti Smith’s Just Kids commingling with miscellaneous vapes inside his tote. Drinking BuzzBallz and kissing beneath the day-glo signage of a 7/11 on the way to a club. Those unlucky enough to find themselves at the mercy of the urban house-share market aren’t even safe from the Performative Male’s performance in their beds: many will have spent the summer being awoken by the sound of footsteps and doors closing and giggling over Joni Mitchell songs around 2AM.
It is hard to think of a recent person-type that has become reified so rapidly. It is very easy to imagine a room—or, given the existing competition footage, a university quad or pub garden—full of Performative Males, all attempting to outperform each other. An incomprehensible din of Ruth Bader Ginsburg quotes. A holding pen of Le Labo and Labubu. A man with a toothpick and black Studio Nicholson shorts that end just below the knee whipping out a concealed harmonica and playing the Sex and the City theme to rapturous applause. Someone lighting a Diptyque candle for Tracy Chapman and the police moving in to shut things down.
There is something quite tragic about this. VICE asks Elias where he gets his own books and style tips from. “Performative Males,” he replies.
Yet while they are easy to ridicule, perhaps there is more to admire about the Performative Male than immediately meets the eye. Yes, it’s silly. Yes, it’s self-aware. Yet it is also quite brave. It takes real courage for a grown man to wear a little girl’s top out of the house. It’s the fearless behavior of someone who’s never had the ‘shame brain’ telling him to pull his shirt down over his gut. In this way the look also represents a kind of virility, emphasizing the youthful, skinny body. For anyone whose parents grew up in the 1960s or 70s, it might bring to mind your mum bringing out embarrassing old Polaroids of your dad, laughing as she remembers how for a brief period ordinary suburban lads would go out on Fridays dressed up like Tony Manero or Marc Bolan in a desperate attempt to get someone to love them.
That said, it’s impossible to ignore the contradiction at the heart of the Performative Male phenomenon, which is that they are all essentially competing in a contest to appear as uncompetitive as possible. The issue with studied languidity is that trying too hard brings down the complex system of wires and gaffer tape and supporting structures holding the production together. Or, to put it another way: At least unreconstituted geezers being sick all over themselves during a Sunday afternoon pint-downing battle aren’t gilding their intentions.
We are then brought back to the question of what this deception is in aid of. “At best, they’re something to poke fun at,” reckons Elias. “At worst, they’re ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing.’” The coming months will be a kind of reckoning for the Performative Male. Will the blueprint survive the winter? Will the jorts make it back out of the cupboard come spring? Or will some other fad have appeared that feels like a more efficient strategy for getting him what he wants?
Keep an eye on your Instagram feed in early March. The cherry blossom will let you know.
Follow Nick Thompson on X @niche_t_
The post An Obituary for the ‘Performative Male’: Will This Guy-Type Survive the Winter? appeared first on VICE.
