495:(1998) collected his colourful and confessional correspondence with American writer Steven Zeeland. According to the jacket blurb: "A chance letter sparks off an hilariously doomed transatlantic literary romance involving Marines, glory holes, cats, intellectuals, transsexuals and a bizarre love-triangle rivalry with gay serial-killer and Gianni Versace's assassin Andrew Cunanan." Despite its openly offbeat subject matter, it was reviewed positively: "Something of a masterpiece" wrote Roger Clarke in
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Spornosexual is a neologism, also coined by
Simpson, combining the words "sport," "porn," and "metrosexual." It describes an aesthetic adopted by some men who consume both sports and pornography. Such men, in addition to possessing certain metrosexual attributes, carry their own bodies as accessories
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responsiveness, Simpson also 'outed' what he saw as the homoerotic subtext of masculinity itself. In particular, Simpson analysed the way movies, ads, pop music, and bodybuilding, had replaced 'real' masculinity, if it ever existed, with something 'sexy and simulated'. In his chapter on
551:'s 2004 comeback. The book prompted some comparisons with the subject's style: "Simpson is funny, clever, honest, irreverent and egotistical: quite the match for Morrissey. More biographies should be written this way." (Laurence Phelan, Independent on Sunday Books of the Year')
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published the same year, described on the dust jacket as "hilariously perverse" and "taking a warped look at fin-de-siecle pop culture where nothing is as straight – or gay – as it seems", collected
Simpson's popular columns of the same name which appeared in
565:(2011), collects his writings on the subject of metrosexuality, offering a kind of biography of the subject, which he describes as a "Frankenstein monster with flawless skin". The book follows the term from its origin in an article of Simpson's for
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in 2006, Simpson wrote on the issue of sport and advertising increasingly using homoerotic imagery, in a process he dubbed "sporno" ("the place where sport and porn meet and produce a gigantic money shot"). Simpson wrote about "sporno" for
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included 'metrosexual' in their review of the most important words of the last thirty years, commenting: "Much has been written about metrosexuals, but no one has done it as well as the man credited with coining the term, Mark
Simpson."
606:: "Mark Simpson is a skinhead Oscar Wilde, his bon mots are both alarming and amusing, getting up people's noses and inside their trousers with equal aplomb."; quote used to promote Simpson's books "Sex Terror" and "The Queen is Dead"
351:(1994) provided the background for his theory of metrosexuality by examining the way men were represented in popular culture – movies, ads, mags, music, male stripping, and comedy – and showing how 'unmanly' passions such as
265:. He also introduced the word to the US in 'Meet the Metrosexual', a much-quoted essay on Salon.com in 2002, leading to the global popularity of the term. This was also the first citation of the UK footballer
332:. Spornosexuals spend much money and time on physical fitness and upkeep. Some commentators argue that the rise of spornosexuals is another indication of society becoming evermore narcissistic.
1038:
446:, Lisa Power, and Anne-Marie Le Ble, voiced their criticism of the gay "one-size-fits-all" identity and the gay media's intolerance of anything that wasn't "glad" and "clap happy".
64:
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and AC Milan's Kak', keen to emulate their success, are actively pursuing sex-object status in a postmetrosexual, increasingly pornolized world." The London
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was one of the first "post-gay" books, appearing a year or so before a series of largely conservative
American gay books critical of gay culture, such as
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as the ultimate example of the type. Simpson was later credited with introducing the term 'retrosexual' (in the sense of the anti-metrosexual) in 2003.
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In 2010, the global trend spotting website
Science of the Time described Simpson as "the world's most perceptive writer about masculinity".
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was
Simpson's "psycho-bio" of the former Smiths front man, written at a low point of the singer's career, and published the year before
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and on the side of buses 'in his prime and in his underwear', grabbing his 'package' to shift product, graphically demonstrated how the
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and are not shy at showcasing them in public. The spornosexual style emphasises heavy, lean musculature, and certain kinds of
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magazine commenting that: "whole new generation of young bucks, from twinky soccer players like
Manchester United's
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newspaper in 1994, to its international adoption in the early 2000s, the backlash against it and its subsequent
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is a collection of essays, interviews and articles from
Simpson's late 1990s journalism, including writings in
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magazine, and showed how gay and straight culture were converging, a decade before this became a common theme.
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resurgence, to the point where
Simpson argues that metrosexuality had come to be seen as simply "normal".
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and his (then) recent Calvin Klein ads, Simpson argued that the rapper's appearance on billboards in
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424:(1996), described on the jacket as "the shameful antidote to feelgood politics"', according to
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is an
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later the same year as a party-guest making a similar argument.
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placed him in their 'Top Ten Things That Changed Men's Lives'.
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The book included a chapter arguing that the real romance in
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has passed and is evolving into a new kind of man called the
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639:Simpson, Mark (1994). "Here come the mirror men".
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45:, potentially preventing the article from being
272:Described as one of the "Ideas of the Year" by
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673:Simpson, Mark (2002). "Meet the metrosexual".
316:In 2014, Simpson proposed that the age of the
163:. He has been described by one critic as "the
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618:"Simpson Tops Arnie And Freud in GQ Spread"
1039:People educated at St Peter's School, York
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65:reliable, independent, third-party sources
366:Returning to Freud's theory of universal
83:Learn how and when to remove this message
510:Sex Terror: Misadventures in pop culture
59:by replacing them with more appropriate
796:. London. 30 December 2006. p. 18.
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713:"THE 6th ANNUAL YEAR IN IDEAS; Sporno"
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979:. Marksimpson.com. 24 August 2004
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739:"Metrosexual man invents Sporno"
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522:. Interview subjects include
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741:. In The Mix. Archived from
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929:"It's a Queer World"
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749:11 January
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563:Metrosexy
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330:tattooing
246:The term
240:GQ Russia
181:The Times
73:July 2019
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766:"Sporno"
657:Archived
596:Archived
514:Attitude
479:Attitude
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422:Anti-Gay
415:Anti-Gay
368:bisexual
295:Joe Cole
229:Stranger
205:GQ Style
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843:27 June
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389:Top Gun
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135:Website
130:British
113:England
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174:Career
675:Salon
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300:Times
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