Thank goodness for the latest hipster fashion trend.
Thank goodness for the latest hipster fashion trend.
LIAO XIANGJUN
Features writer, The Peak.
At 16, an age that many believe to be the bud of a man’s prime years, I swopped my T-shirts for turtlenecks and sleeveless apparel, let my hair grow two inches into curly locks, and invested a fortune in facial foams. I was embracing the trend of the day: the metrosexual. By pop culture standards, this clean-shaven, fashion-savvy male was the epitome of manhood. But whatever illusion I had as a capering stag popped when I stepped out the door.
“Not seeing any girls?” my mother asked. The question was a pinprick that brought down an ego. To her relief, I eventually got tired of both the effort required to keep a flawless complexion and the heckling it invited, and traded my curls for an unkempt crop. A very expensive, identity-seeking experiment had ended up in my sexuality being called into question. Fast forward to 2015. At long last, an archetype of the fashion-forward male which I’d be more comfortable aspiring to is making its rounds.
Enter the “lumbersexual”, derived from fusing “lumberjack” with “sexual”. Think plaid and flannel, pre-faded denim and Timberland boots. Calloused digits coupled with meticulously tousled hair, camping backpacks with laptop compartments. And let’s not forget the hallmark of masculinity: facial hair. The more, the manlier.
The lumbersexual’s blatant ruggedness masks the effort he’s put into the curation of his beard-care products. At a glance, this is someone you can entrust your life to should a bear burst out of the woods – or the company storeroom. This corporealisation of masculinity is more than just a new style on the block – it signifies a growing undertow to recapture masculinity, in a world awash with androgynous models strutting needlessly lean bodies and observing skincare regimens to rival (and even dwarf) their female counterparts’.
More deeply, it’s a buoy for manhood everywhere. A 2012 study by the European commission asserts gender parity is at last coming to fruition and the erosion of gender roles is leaving both sexes bewildered. The lumbersexual is an overt repudiation of gender homogenisation. The term was coined and sensationalised last year by publications such as GQ, Time and The Huffington Post.
Members of the selfsame circle were responsible for casting the spotlight on the budding metrosexual movement nearly two decades ago, subsequently elevating the latter into a way of life. Will history repeat itself? Detractors dismiss lumbersexuality as a hipster trend, popularised by film stars letting themselves go in between production windows and off the sets.
There’s merit to that cynicism: fads come and go particularly quickly in this digital age, and are amplified out of proportion by social media. But this one might take. After all, early metrosexual culture was sculpted by consumer brands sensing a gold rush. They advocated clean shaves, great skin and luscious hair.
“A man, in other words, who is an advertiser’s walking wet dream,” writes Mark Simpson, the English journalist credited with the creation of the word “metrosexual” in 1994. By all accounts, the emergence of the lumbersexual is a coup of sorts. It’s a ground-up renaissance that embraces both freedom to groom oneself while harking back to Paul Bunyan, the giant lumberjack of American lore and the ultimate icon of masculinity. Is it here to stay, particularly when half the world’s men (myself among them) can’t grow a decent beard? Maybe not. But the identity struggle it underscores certainly is.
“LUMBERSEXUALITY SIGNIFIES A GROWING UNDERTOW TO RECAPTURE SOME SEMBLANCE OF MASCULINITY.”
