In Vain?

Last year, the metrosexual was the man of the moment. Theage of the preening, pedicured man had arrived. Marketersresponded, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy paraded intoprime time. But now, the metrosexual is courting criticism.Comedy Central is running a Queer Eye parody calledStraight Plan for the Gay Man. And the wordmetrosexual was recently deemed the most overused word inLake Superior State University's annual "List of WordsBanished From the Queen's English." The metrosexualis suffering from that most American of marketing traits:overexposure. "People just get saturated with it," saysArthur Gallego, vice president of New York City marketingcommunications firm LaForce & Stevens.

"I'm as sick as everyone of metrosexuals. Butit's something we need to incorporate [into marketingstrategies]," says Schuyler Brown, trend spotter for Euro RSCG MVBMSPartners, the ad agency that launched the originalmetrosexual study a few years ago. The extremes ofmetrosexuality are easy to make fun of, and that's where thebacklash is happening. "It's on the edges of a shift inthe way men are acting and [buying]," Brown says. Themetrosexual trend, she adds, showed marketers how much theywere stereotyping a changing male audience.