LizzieMaine
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Fletch said:But once you got past the style and the consumerism, was it really that different from the dandyfied Everyman role model of the 20s and 30s? That was more of a subversive, individualist kind of masculinity than we remember today - because the militarization of WW2 and the corporatization of the boom years crushed out all traces of it in straight society.
It had its harsh detractors in the twenties as well. Look up the editorials published in 1926 against Rudolph "Pink Powder Puff" Valentino and you'll find comments much harsher than anything that's been put forth here against the metrosexuals:
"Who or what is to blame is what puzzles us. Is this degeneration into effeminacy a cognate reaction with pacifism to the virilities and the realities of the war? Are pink powder and parlor pinks in any way related? How does one reconcile masculine cosmetics, shieks, floppy pants, and slave bracelets with a disregard for law and an aptitude for crime more in keeping with the frontier of half a century ago than a twentieth-century metropolis?
"Do women like the type of "man" who pats pink powder on his face in a public washroom and arranges his coiffure in a public elevator? Do woman at heart belong to the Wilsonian era of " I didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier"? What has become of the old "caveman" line?
"It is strange social phenomenon and one that is running its course not only here in America but in Europe as well. Chicago may have its powder puffs; London has its dancing men and Paris its gigolos. Down with Decatur; up with Elinor Glyn. Hollywood is the national school of masculinity. Rudy, the beautiful gardener's boy, is the prototype of the American male." -- Chicago Tribune, 7/18/26