The “performative male” trend has seared the eyes of internet users worldwide this summer, starting out with posts featuring outfit inspo, book recommendations and soft thirst trap sequences. The trend quickly turned into a viral meme that even spurred social media users to sponsor citywide competitions, where individuals perform performativeness in order to be ironically crowned the king of performativity.
At face value, the stereotype of the “performative male” presents the all-around “perfect” man to be a partner for the modern woman, i.e., the man that every woman supposedly wants. This ideal man cares about the aesthetic presentation of his dress and personal grooming. He’s conscious of women’s issues, and has read feminist literature like “The Bell Jar” or “The Feminine Mystique.” He is comfortable in his masculinity and won’t label certain pleasures as “gay” or “only for girls”; he won’t turn away luxuries like chapstick, keychains, matcha lattes and listening to Clairo, because he doesn’t consider anything slightly feminine to be too inherently emasculating to associate with. He uses wired headphones because he cares about the environment and doesn’t feel the social pressure to always keep up with the latest tech. This “ideal” has turned into a real personality template assumed by a large chunk of the internet’s eligible bachelors this summer, but like most ideals, reality doesn’t quite measure up.
It’s not uncommon to think of men as “performing” for women’s affection. Even in the animal kingdom, beautiful variegated peacocks will flaunt their colorful feathers to attract the attention of a peahen, and turquoise and burgundy mallards will show off for the plain brown female ducks. However, in the case of our internet’s “performative males,” the blatant exhibition of popular symbols which suggest the presence of interior qualities that women look for men has turned the stereotype into a meme, made fun of by all genders alike.
The fact that these men are trying to impress women isn’t what earns them this ridicule: The real punch line is the fact that the symbols they tend to wear are empty, with no interior quality behind them. Women who want an authentic connection don’t want male partners who parade their suitability and desirable traits. Women want men who are authentically insightful, sensitive, humble, attractive and clean — not men who merely pretend to be such things for the sake of attaining female attention. Sure, a humble, sensitive man might be comfortable drinking a matcha latte in his cargo pants and listening to Lana Del Rey, but a man who drinks matcha, wears cargo pants and listens to Lana isn’t automatically an empathetic and humble guy.
The emergence of this stereotype reflects a common pattern in society, known as “the spectacle,” a concept the French philosopher Guy Debord illustrated in his 1967 work “Society of the Spectacle.” He explains that inefficacious symbols tend to replace the authentic connections that first produced them. For example, someone interested in literature might read “The Bell Jar” for its literary merits, but because “The Bell Jar” has become a known symbol of moody literariness, people will read it publicly only to show off to the world that they are interested in literature. Therefore, in this scenario, the action of reading becomes performative, and the intention behind it is to receive social merit, not to authentically become a more literate person. This is the exact phenomenon that explains the “performative male” epidemic.
Debord observed that the commodification of interior qualities inevitably leads to alienation — which is the opposite of what these boys want. They are performing in order to earn affection and attention, yet it has unfortunately led to their alienation. It is amusing to me, as a woman, to see the men of our time jumping through hoops to appease women superficially while avoiding authentic accountability, thus turning themselves into a display case of empty symbols, a spectacle. It is amusing to me, not because I enjoy male suffering, but because this type of performance is exactly what women have been pressured to do since the dawn of society: to change themselves to the point of diminishing themselves, only to please men. In a twisted way, “performative males” are kind of a gender-bent twin to the “blonde bimbo” character that the male fantasy has plastered over the media since the fall of the Gibson Girl and the flapper.
I wonder what the cure is to this epidemic, and how we as a society can prevent the spread. Humor and bullying are two ways to ostracize a certain group to the point of destruction, but those individuals will simply transform into something else (think how the Labubu-slinging boys of today are simply a reimagining of the beanie-wearing, coffee-swilling, Tumblr-quoting hipsters of circa 2015).
I think the true antidote lies not in ridicule, but in community — the opposite of alienation. If men didn’t feel pressured to “perform” their misappropriated and stereotyped idea of the woman’s ideal man, and perhaps supported each other in their differences of interest and ability, even those that appear traditionally feminine, men wouldn’t feel so pressured to produce a specific image that isn’t authentic to themselves. Maybe, if heterosexual women and men both stopped viewing the other sex firstly as potential partners prior to considering them as human beings, then performances could be saved for stages, and day to day, people would feel more comfortable being their authentic selves. Even more directly, if social media didn’t inherently diminish human beings to carefully curated symbols completely isolated from the person’s real-life and embodied personality, then we might focus less on our outward presentation, and perhaps look deeper within ourselves to ask what really is making us perform for others. How can we better express our authentic selves, instead of performing what we believe other people want to see?
To boys thinking they need to put on an act to impress a girl, I promise you that there is something likeable about who you authentically are. Try exploring your own interests, find new hobbies you actually enjoy or read a book recommended by someone you admire. Developing your individual sense of style, personality and ambitions is far more attractive than pretending to fit into someone else’s. It’s okay to take inspiration from someone else, as long as you don’t let the image you have of them cloud the truth of you. Overall, you will end up feeling more confident in yourself, in a way that leaves room for both your strengths and weaknesses. An honest confidence is a highly attractive quality.
