January 20, 2007

A REBUTTAL -- by Steve Nadis

A friendly reader--and a celebrated blogger in her own right--recently asked whether I considered myself "metrosexual," a term I hadn't heard of before. When she described it--involving a slavish adherence to fashion and the like--I knew it was not me. The antithesis, in fact. What handball player with any self respect would call himself metrosexual?

That was the end of the story until yesterday, when I came across something written by a cosmologist I've talked with before, who used to be in Chicago. He spoke of his neighborhood there, saying "I was truly in my yuppie-metrosexual element." That word again. I'd never seen it before in my life and now it had reared its ugly head twice in two days. Whereas I recoiled from the suggestion, this guy seemed to embrace the term, without any trace of embarrassment. Which shows that you don't necessarily know someone, just because you've talked a few times about the birth, evolution, and end of the universe. And he doesn't know a thing about me, since I was the guy asking the questions, saying little and revealing even less. On many issues of politics, I know we agree. But when it comes to that one 11-letter word, we're worlds apart.

Posted by Snake at 22:34:51 | Permanent Link | Comments (12) |