By Aiyah Usison
Matcha, Labubus, dubai chocolate, Clairo, wired headphones, tote bags, and feminist books are just some of the interests of none other than.. performative males.
If you have been on social media then you might’ve already heard the term performative males or you were just introduced to the term right now. But what is a performative male?
A performative male is someone who acts like they like something they don’t just so they could be seen as more attractive or likeable, mainly towards women. They create this whole persona of someone they aren’t just so that other people could like them.
How do you spot a performative male? How do you know if this guy you like is being authentic or performative? Well, for starters they could all of a sudden start liking things that are really trendy, of course “coincidentally”. Such as drinking matcha or listening to beabadoobee. But how do you genuinely tell how a guy likes those things or is pretending? Well it can be hard, but you could always tell from if they just know surface level facts about literally anything that is trending.
Performative males have become such a trending topic that places like New York, Toronto, and Seattle are holding contests to see who looks the most like a performative man. Everyone brings their vinyls, tote bags, baggy jeans, wired headphones, Labubus, iced matchas, poetry, and so many other things to show just how performative they could be.
But even with people pretending to be performative because it became a popular meme, there are still people who choose to actually live like this. Like Ryan Afable.
Ryan Afable (10) stated, “I’m completely a performative male. I love matcha and Labubus, I own 5. I love to listen to Laufey and I also love poetry.”
Another person, Daniel Malki (9) is also very open about being performative. He said, “I’m very performative. I love to listen to Daniel Caesar, especially his song Japanese Denim.”
So now it’s seen that there are people who live to be performative. Some might choose to hide the fact that they are performative but some might be open about it, like Afable and Malki were about it. Can you spot the performative males?
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