That is the headline in Today’s Times magazine. Are men the new women? And what the fuck is that supposed to mean? That we lactate? Forget how to park the car? Say ‘no more naan bread for me, six is more than enough, and I’ll pass on another beer too’?? But they don’t exactly explain where the question comes from. Although the magazine edition is filled with how men can, dress ‘stylishly’, how they can diet like a motherfucker and how to ‘detox’, get fit, grow a six-pack and paint their sodding toe-nails. Its an instruction manual in metrosexuality. Otherwise known as ‘what to do if you haven’t come out of the closet yet’. They even have the great Zinedine Zidane modelling clothes. The man whose last act of note was head-butting Marco Materrazzi. He’s obviously not thick enough to become a football pundit. Or speaks too clearly.

Coincidentally, and just to stress how nothing is ever new, last night’s BBC4, Mel’s asleep on the sofa, offering was The New Romantics. And it was brilliant. Not the music, that was pretty much total shite, all synthesisers and drum machines with a couple of nobs wearing plumage and too much make-up lolling around mumbling in the background. But the concept. New Romantic. Wow. Though in fact it was more New Androgyny. Take a man, some yob, like Boy George perhaps, dress him as a woman, give him high heels, a stupid hairstyle, a bucketful of eye-liner and call him a ‘New Romantic’. Rather than ‘a tosser’ which you’d rather call him other than his boxing prowess. And it all started at Blitz in Covent Garden. The place where you could go and act like a transvestite.

Men like ‘Marylin’ and Steve Strange (in name, nature and dress), and George, ran the place and it was odd. A fancy dress party every night. For people who didn’t change back into regular clothes in the daytime. Spandau Ballet started there, Tears for Fears and a whole host of electro-synth rubbish un-musicians who craved stardom like an addict craves heroin or like I crave Cadburys. Even Midge Ure came all the way from Scotland, a rare bit of talent in a sea of preening, posing tone-deaf imbeciles.

So men acting as women is nothing new. Dressing as women. Been around years. But becoming the new women? Not for ‘this’ man. As I have to go and change my stockings due to a snag.

Happy gender confused Saturday

A xxxx