Why the “performative male” trend feels too real

He reads Bronte, sips matcha and sympathizes with women. He also might be faking it. 

By Isabelle Oss

Photograph by Sam McGroff

Somewhere between self-awareness and self-parody, a new form of attention seeking has found its roots online: the performative male. 

He’s the man we see in videos online walking down the street with a matcha in-hand – Phoebe Bridgers or Clairo likely playing through his wired headphones. In their other hand, maybe Charlotte Brontë or “Becoming” by Michelle Obama. He’s adopted traditionally feminine interests all for the sake of female attention. 

It is rare to encounter a cisgender man with overtly feminist perspectives, but encountering men who pretend they are feminists is anything but. Whether on dating apps, in class, or in line at Trader Joe’s, there are always cis-men claiming to understand and sympathize with the feminine experience, which is why this trend hits so close to home.

Its popularity is even more proof of the trend’s place in reality.

Across the country, universities and clubs have organized “performative male” contests, drawing hundreds of people eager to parody the sensitive, feminist man archetype. Winners get cash prizes and spectators get a laugh — it's an opportunity to rag on the people who embody the trend unironically. 

One could argue that these events provide a long overdue catharsis from the performative male trend that has been around for decades. Just listen to Christine Lavin’s 1990 song, “Sensitive New Age Guys,” where she sings about this very type of man. 

“Who like to talk about their feelings? Who’s into crystals, into healing? Who are hard to tell from women? Sensitive new age guys,” Lavin sings. 

Even the hipster trend of the early 2000s reflects this phenomenon. The skinny-jean, fedora and chunky-framed glasses wearers of the time projected an obsession with counterculture in the same way the Gen-Z performative male does. In seeking social clout by rejecting traditional masculinity, that being the ripped gym-bro fintech type, they have ended up creating a new conformity of their own, one that is now firmly part of the Gen-Z portfolio.

The real tragedy here isn’t that these men are cringey or that they make us uncomfortable  (although that is not something to be ignored), it is that genuinely sympathetic men who care about being respectful to women are rare. Rare enough that a man reading a book in public sipping on a matcha is automatically pinned as inauthentic.