It’s a man thing

It was the bloke in pink trainers who finally confirmed it for me. The bloke in pink trainers identical to mine in style and colour (Pink. Not flesh-toned, not salmon, not anything but totally, 100% pink) who came and sat opposite me on the train.

The things that divide our genders (X and Y chromosones; muscle mass; sides taken on the Sarah Jessica Parker: style icon/irredeemable munter debate) rendered obsolete by our mutual rosy-hued casual footwear. And he didn’t bat an eyelash.

The ‘feminine side’ has just gone turbo-charged. Forget Sky+, we’ve entered the age of metrosexual+.

This is no mass conversion, admittedly. Armies of blokes are not diving head-first into 80-gallon drums of Touche Eclat - although YSL has now formulated a skin highlighter for men, so give it time.

But the tipping point has been reached. I’m no hardened style commentator but I’ve unearthed plenty of evidence recently. The guy swathed in a pashmina for a start, strolling down Oxford Street of a lunchtime. Yes, it was oatmeal and yes, he had probably tried to pass it off as a ‘just a scarf’ to his girlfriend - and no he wasn’t wearing it with a dress.

It was still a pashmina, though, draped becomingly around his shoulders, the way Elle MacPherson or Jemima Khan would wear one, rather than knotted casually around his neck, trad-bloke style.

And then there was the man I saw at a bus stop in Waterloo, proudly sporting boyfriend jeans. Style ‘guru’ Gok Wan recently pointed out that boyfriend jeans are now ‘in’ for blokes - but he meant so they look like low-slung, skater dudes.

Boyfriend jeans are not supposed to hang off heterosexual boyfriends’ hips, alluding to tiny waists and pert behinds and making them look dimunitive, mischievous and cutely feminine, and as if they have a tousle-haired sleepy-eyed man back at home wondering where his new Levi’s have gone. Sorry, Waterloo bloke, but they’re only supposed to do that for girls.

But how do we know this is for real, and not just metropolitan/media whim? My mate from Poland. My ex-bouncer, tattoo-covered, 14st-of-pure-muscle mate, who lives in east London. Not the trendy Hoxton/Shoreditch axis, either; we’re talking the outskirts, the beyond-zone-three style vacuum here.

Anyway, he’s just told me he wants to get a dog - and not a banned-list, spikey-collared gangster mutt. He wants a chihuahua (reason: “because they’re so little and cute”). Yes, blokes have owned chihuahuas before; hello, Mickey Rourke. But real men (is Rourke real? Only his facial augmentation professional knows for sure) historically were more likely to squash a little yappy dog underfoot, rather than adopt one as faithful friend.

As if that’s not enough, his mate, a boxer who lives a mile or so down the road, will happily talk about how he loves to wax not only his chest (borderline acceptable) but his armpits too, because, he insists, “girls like it”.

Ladies appear to be handling this evolution in a variety of ways: bitterness (”he’s girly enough to nick my moisturiser now, but not to clean the bathroom”); euphoria (”Yay! We can go halves on an Epilady”). Polish mate’s girlfriend has put her foot down – but only inasmuch as she’d prefer him to get a miniature daschund.

I don’t think any of them are getting the point. Womankind needs to get copying you men. Because blokes have cannily cherry-picked all the great stuff about being a girl. Stuff like bankrupting ourselves on fabulous moisturiser, having a little cry at the sad bits in films and not being ashamed, obsessing about clothes.

And they sneer at the painful/dire/just plain wrong stuff (the tyranny of high heels, infinite over-analysis of relationship break-ups/love handle-generated suicidal impulses). For once, blokes, here’s one female happy to admit you’re the ones in the right.

Sarah Maybank