As a chronically online girl, I never seem to miss a trend. I understand every reference that is thrown in my direction, and I love being a part of a niche community. But there is one trend I never understood. That would be the “performative men” trend.
If you do not know what a performative man is, it is a man whose whole personality is based on whether a woman will like him or not. He chooses who he likes based on whether women also like them. He dresses in a way he knows women will like.
You can see them dressed in an oversized shirt and blue jeans, drinking their morning matcha while reading Sylvia Plath, a famous feminist author and poet from the 20th century. They are known for walking around with their wired earbuds in while listening to the newest song by Clario, an indie artist whose music became popular in the 2020s and has retained a mainly female audience since.
And, of course, when TikTok learned about these men’s existence, it was over for them. Video after video made fun of these men. There were even contests that took place both on college campuses and in major cities around the world to determine who is the best performative man.
Now, unfortunately, I am the friend who will ruin the mood, and this is no different.
The real issue with performative men is that they seem to base everything about themselves on getting a woman to sleep with them. While I am all for men expressing themselves in a way that is against the norm, performative men do not seem to truly care about how they present themselves. It is one thing to paint your nails because it makes you feel more comfortable in your body, but it is another to carry around a book written by a feminist author because you know some girl will like it.
They do not care about the matcha that they are drinking; all they care about is trying to get the closest woman to sleep with them.
These men are no different than the “nice guys,” another archetype that was flooding the internet a few years ago. These “nice guys” are famous for dogging on women for their taste in men and explaining how they would never treat women the way that some jocks do. Yet, when rejected, these men will go on a rampage, angry at the audacity of a woman rejecting them. History shows that these “nice guys” have violent tendencies, and many women have horror stories about them. These stories have become very well known, with Netflix even making a limited series called “Adolescence” following one of these so-called “nice guys” after he killed a girl at his school for not reciprocating his feelings for her.
I do not want to accuse every man who listens to Phoebe Bridgers, another indie artist with a primarily female audience, of secretly being a menace to society. But these men tend to follow a pattern of being performative to gain a woman’s trust.
While this trend is concerning, it does seem to have a positive side to it.
Men deciding that they do not have to follow a patriarchal standard of behavior and can be themselves is so nice to see. Breaking the patriarchy takes both sexes, as its structures harm both sexes. But performative men should do it because they want to, not because they want to impress women.
In either case, woman or man, pretending to be interested in something just to get a date is not healthy and will not work in the long run.
Listen to Phoebe Bridgers because you like Phoebe Bridgers. Not because some girl you are into likes her music.