~The Spornosexual~ (The new clone)

[+ glutes]

Everyone shouldn't think they're a cast extra on Modern Family!

Currently, the spornosexual, a more body conscious and sexually explicit version of the metrosexual, is vying with the check-shirted, bearded lumbersexual for top spot. Nattily dressed and neatly bearded, the “dandy wildman” and the hipster also abound, too.

 

These are men’s consumer lifestyles. If you want to be a spornosexual, you buy gym membership, protein and some expensive photography equipment to spruce up your Instagram feed. To be a hipster, go to vintage clothes shops, buy the most obscure craft ales, and some beard oil.

 

[+ purplekow]

In the US, fitting continues to be a high priority for most. Sure there is a fringe element who fit into the fringe by disdaining the idea of being like everyone else but the vast majority of people want to feel an sense of inclusion. They want to be the cowboy vest and not the seemingly useless but fashion forward shredded material hanging at the bottom or on the sleeves. This search for acceptance and community is particularly true with people who have insecurities about loneliness and exceptionalism and the prime example of this are teens and young adults. No one wants to be the odd kid, the nerdy kid, the sad kid the lonely kid and despite the lessons of the Breakfast Club, kids cannot sit in detention for a few hours and suddenly discover that despite differences, we are all the same. We are not all the same. Some are just more appealing than others, I mean who wouldn't rather hang with Emilio Estevez or Judd Nelson rather than Anthony Michael Hall. For me it would be a Nelson/Estevez sandwich for a jock/sexy bad boy threeway.

 

But, in a usually futile search for this inclusion, many change what they can change. A haircut, a wardrobe, an interest, an attitude, these are all malleable. To a greater extent in the past, but still today, LGBTQ youth feel this isolation to a exponentially higher degree and it is even more difficult for them to fit in. Though they may escape the clutches of high school, disapproving family and disdaining local community, the need to belong does not die with a sheepskin and a gown. In an effort to belong somewhere, youth in general and LGBTQ youth in particular look for social role models to help them fit. Now in order to fit in, there have to be those who are out, so exclusion is as much a part of community as belonging. It is a big tent and everyone is invited really means, everyone is invited but some are going to be ushered right in and most are going to be waiting on line, out in the rain, afraid to use an umbrella in this circumstance as it will give a too nerdy appearance and so, even though you ran back four blocks to get it and you carried it on the subway with you, you stash your Rainbow umbrella behind a dumpster and hope it is there later so you can retrieve it, that is, if you get in, which of course you would not if you used the umbrella and which of course you will not because you are standing in the rain and you look like a drowned cat in a Saturday morning cartoon. Ah youthful angst.

 

So, what better way to fit in than to look and act as your target in-group and to go where they go and do what they do and talk as they talk. That group though, is always changing, stasis is the enemy of inclusive exclusion. The race is not won without forward movement. There is no time to look back because the outs are gaining on you.

 

So metrosexuals to keep excluding the excluded, keep the fashion sense, the grooming and add going to the gym a bit more to make those pants fit a little snugger and that bulge look a little bulgier. The lumbersexuals, in order to stop from being cut down by the advancing horde, keep the beards but trim them up a bit and dress up the dress down chic. The hipsters and the club kids and the rest all make changes, advance the edges while firmly protecting the rear.

 

Perhaps it is is time for a new, gay Breakfast Club. At an Ibiza circuit party, aptly named Desayuno, five gay men from differing stereotypical gay groups are arrested and placed in a giant holding area with a disapproving and authoritarian guard who just wants to step out and have a cigarette. The guys sit isolated and dejected and then slowly start share their stories and they find out each one is a lumbersexual, a closet case, a drag queen, a jock, and a tweeker, In the end, they all discover that they are very horny and that they all are amazingly well hung with perfect bodies under their identifying garb. They all have insatiable sexual appetites and so they have a orgiastic explosion of drug fueled sexual activity which includes a dance montage on the cell's bench and then dragging in the guard, handcuffing him to the bars in a slow motion bondage scene and then all six, smoke post coital cigarettes, exchange trinkets (one taking off his Prince Albert and handing it to his particular favorite) as they await their rides as a new Teddy Killerz dance version of this plays over the credits:

 

[+ GregM]

Imma just be over here doing me. I have other things to do and worry about then trying to please and or fit into a pretty little box.

 

Hugs,

Greg

[+ Charlie]

Wanting to fit in by looking/acting like your peers or prospective peers is not an American phenomenon--it is a universal objective of mankind. It's the desire to look and act alike that makes it so easy to stereotype people from other cultures, whether it's Japanese businessmen or women from conservative Muslim countries. America is one of the few places where the individualistic image is actually valued, at least in principle.

[+ purplekow]

Wanting to fit in by looking/acting like your peers or prospective peers is not an American phenomenon--it is a universal objective of mankind. It's the desire to look and act alike that makes it so easy to stereotype people from other cultures, whether it's Japanese businessmen or women from conservative Muslim countries. America is one of the few places where the individualistic image is actually valued, at least in principle.

Yes, I agree that this is not isolated to the US, but it seems particularly prominent in the US these days with the "you are not like us" political situation.

[Chuckball]

I don't care if I fit in. I would just like to bring one of these spornosexuals home. If they all look like the bearded guy in the photo, I hope the fad carries on.

[BasketBaller]

I am amused by my eldest son's aspiration to hipster-dom, something he picked up in school in NY. He went to a high school here where the boys dress more or less preppily, and now he wears skinny jeans, a vest and a pork-pie hat. I asked him if he was going to grow a beard, and he said, "If they're still in style when I'm able to, I will."

[rguer]

I asked him if he was going to grow a beard, and he said, "If they're still in style when I'm able to, I will."

That's not style, that's fashion!

[+ bashful]

pork-pie hat

 

I don't see those anymore in Chicago.

[Nvr2Thick]

"Spornosexual" is one of those terms that desperately wants to catch on, but it never really has.