Femininity Without The Cost: How Performative Men “Aren’t Like Other Guys”
- Veda Varma
- 1 day ago
- 9 min read
Joint Article with Tuana Yoğurtcu
He’s been showing up everywhere lately, with his oat-milk matcha held just right, his loafers perfectly scuffed, and his cargo pants hanging in that “I didn’t try” way that clearly took work. With playlists full of Laufey, Clairo, and any song that signals emotional depth without requiring him to actually feel anything. He carries tote bags with ironic prints, posts blurry film photos of sunsets he didn’t stay long enough to watch, and sprinkles in just enough vulnerability to appear safe, and desirable.
None of these traits are inherently problematic. On their own, they’re just tastes: music, drinks, clothes; an aesthetic. But the way they’re deployed feels a little too optimised, like green flags planted strategically rather than grown naturally. Everything he does seems calibrated for the female gaze and for the social media feedback loop that rewards softness when it’s aesthetically pleasing but not politically threatening. And that’s when the reveal clicks into place: this isn’t just a guy with nice shoes and gentle playlists. This is the performative male, Gen Z’s softest, trendiest, and most algorithmically engineered expression of masculinity.
These components have grown so familiar over time that they now represent a common aesthetic, something that is instantly recognisable. It has gotten to the point that people are holding events centred around the style; the most recent one took place in Amsterdam in October, where participants competed to represent the "performative male" image. And when a performance becomes reproducible enough to be judged, ranked, and reenacted, it stops being individual expression and starts becoming an ideology in disguise.
During a conversation with Anna Guildea, a PhD researcher who explores masculinity and political behaviour, it became clear that this kind of repetition isn’t accidental; she describes these trends as masculinity’s way of recalibrating itself rather than challenging its foundations. What matters, then, is not the aesthetic itself but what it makes visible: a new performance of masculinity that appears progressive on the surface while raising deeper questions about power, accountability, and whether this softness signals change or simply disguises more familiar hierarchies.
The Aesthetic of Progress, Without the Politics
A core feature of the performative male is his selective relationship with femininity, specifically, how he borrows from it. The matcha, the soft colours, the gentle playlists, the film camera… Each element is coded feminine, but only in ways that feel safe, flattering, and aesthetically marketable. It's a carefully chosen connection that men may embrace without taking on any of the vulnerability or criticism that women are expected to show as part of femininity. It’s softness without exposure. Femininity without the cost. As Guildea explained, these men “move toward femininity strategically, not politically.” They adopt the look, not the lived experience.
Guildea explained that men’s relationship to femininity differs significantly from women’s. As several cultural critics have pointed out, feminine-coded interests are routinely trivialised as ‘basic’ or unserious, but when men borrow the same signals, they’re praised for being emotionally intelligent and modern.
This is also where conservatism becomes unmistakable. As Guildea expressed, performative masculinity isn’t motivated by feminist politics but by access, specifically access to women’s bodies. Many of these men adopt feminist language, gentle aesthetics, and “soft-boy” signalling not to challenge patriarchy, but to make themselves more desirable to women. In this sense, the performative male isn’t aligning himself with women but differentiating himself from other men, presenting himself as the ‘safer,’ more enlightened alternative. It’s less about equality and more about manipulation — a way to gain intimacy while retaining the entitlement embedded in masculinity.
According to Guildea, “women’s femininity has nothing to do with it; men use femininity to position themselves above other men, not beside women.” In other words, femininity elevates men but diminishes women because it operates as currency only when men wield it. For women, femininity is a liability; for men, it becomes a form of leverage.
This is why the performative male’s feminine-coded choices read less like self-expression and more like branding. The aesthetic creates the illusion of distance from traditional masculinity, while still benefiting from everything masculinity offers. As Guildea highlighted, these men “aren’t interested in feminism, they’re interested in appearing progressive.” Their softness functions as social capital, a way to appear safe or enlightened without confronting the structures that make femininity risky for women in the first place.
And the performative male ends up reinforcing the same hierarchy he claims to transcend; where men remain at the centre, and women remain in relation to them; the only difference is that the performance is now prettier.
Performative Masculinity as Conservatism
Beneath the performative male's controlled sweetness and pastel softness is something much less aesthetically pleasing: masculinity's constant urge to protect its own structure. What looks like a gentler, more enlightened identity often functions as a rebrand rather than a rupture. The hierarchy remains the same even when the performance changes.
This became especially clear in the conversation with Guildea. According to her, different strands of masculinity, whether hyper-masculine or soft, reactionary or progressive, often operate on the same underlying logic. “Hostile sexism and benevolent sexism only differ in tone; both position women in relation to men.” Neither form treats women as autonomous individuals. Hostile sexism frames women as manipulative or inferior, while benevolent sexism casts them as delicate, virtuous, and in need of male protection. One is violent and the other is flattering, but both assume that women exist for men either as threats to control or as prizes to protect. Seen this way, the trad-man’s overt dominance and the soft-boy’s gentle charm aren’t ideological opposites at all; they simply express the same hierarchy through different aesthetics. In both cases, men remain central, authoritative, and entitled. The stylistic difference obscures a shared foundation: women are still defined in terms of what they offer men.
Building on this, Guildea emphasised that the performative male’s softness should not be mistaken for feminist alignment. Many men adopt feminine-coded aesthetics or feminist language not to challenge patriarchal power, but to make themselves more desirable to women. “These men aren’t interested in feminism,” she noted. “They’re interested in looking progressive.” In practice, the performance becomes a strategy for gaining emotional or sexual access to women while keeping the patriarchal structure intact.
This logic becomes even more apparent in interpersonal dynamics. Performative men may critique toxic masculinity, yet rarely question how they themselves benefit from the systems they denounce. Positioning themselves as “different from other men” allows them to sidestep collective accountability while maintaining comfort. Guildea noted that this is particularly common among left-leaning men, who often assume their politics exempt them from sexism. In this sense, performative masculinity aligns with conservative impulses not in style but in function. Under the cloak of progressiveness, it maintains hierarchy, which Guildea sums up as follows: "the performance changes, but the outcome stays the same."
The Subtle Slide to the Right
As societal conditions gradually improve for women, who have historically been a marginalised subset of society, members of the dominant group – in this case, men – experience this progress not as collective betterment but as a dilution of their inherited privilege. Hence, this fuels a nostalgic, and often inaccurate, belief that "things were better in the past," a past where their social status was perceived as more secure, clearly defined, and inequitably powerfully amplified. Exhibiting ‘performatism’ is a performance that lets men look progressive in chosen spaces, while quietly cashing in on patriarchal and right-wing privilege in others where it benefits them. As introduced, while benevolent sexism is more commonly associated with men on the left and hostile sexism with those on the far right, both ultimately constrain women’s autonomy and distort their perceptions. Despite their different tones, each form of sexism works to disparage women and limit their agency.
A qualitative research firm focused on Gen-Z, The Up and Up, found that ‘Gen Z…are twice as likely to identify as more conservative than their parents’, prompting the question: what is fueling this shift in political stance within our generation? An article in the Journal of European Public Policy indicates that younger men are becoming more conservative while women in the same cohort are growing more liberal, pointing to a significant yet subtle shift within Gen-Z. This deviation is further dominated by the gendered re-policing of everyday life, where drinks, fashion, and hobbies become arenas to prove one's alignment with or deviation from masculine norms. This creates a low-level cultural pressure that influences political attitudes, even among those who don't consciously identify as conservative. For young men navigating this terrain in an attempt not to step outside the status quo, adopting a conservative-leaning aesthetic that grants them power becomes a way to locate themselves within a hierarchy and elevate them above other men they deem too close to femininity. It is crucial to understand that this is not a genuine opposition to conservatism but rather a complex symptom of it. It reflects a conservative impulse to preserve the core of male privilege and social status.
However, can men break the mold? To do so, they would have to transcend such performative behavior to affirm themselves in the eyes of other men. While some men are leaning into conservatism, others are trying to align themselves with feminism; neither of which has a favorable outcome for women. Such a performance is a new form of patriarchal bargaining, where men negotiate for attention and access, all while the underlying patriarchal dividend, the benefit men receive from the subordination of women, remains the ultimate goal.
The “Trad Wife” Revival and Return of Feminized Submission
Augmented by the rise in the “performative male” trend, the “trad wife” aesthetic has surged as well online, with many young women suddenly gravitating toward ideals of domesticity and submission. What’s striking is how these women, many of whom were raised in a post-third-wave feminist milieu, being drawn to such aesthetics – aesthetics that are now seeping into their lifestyle – is often explained away through "choice feminism”. When we posed this to Guildea, she pointed out that “choice feminism” is inherently individualistic and doesn’t take other people into account. As noted, choosing to embrace a submissive role in a relationship or to dedicate oneself to domesticity is reframed as a liberating act of self-expression, which also often goes hand-in-hand with a rejection of women’s economic sovereignty. This individualistic ideology posits that any decision a woman makes is inherently empowering simply because she chose it – but we have to ask, is it really a choice at all?
A choice is only truly a choice when it’s made outside of pressure. In this case, the desire for trad-wife femininity is shaped by lifelong gender expectations and a culture that rewards women for compliance far more than it rewards them for autonomy – suggesting the “choice” reflects a constrained set of options rather than unfiltered personal freedom. However, a surprising reality that is often overlooked is that the patriarchy isn’t upheld by men alone; women can, and often do, reinforce it just the same. Akin to the performative male, the revival of the “trad wife” is merely a carefully constructed facade that ultimately places men in a position of power while obscuring women from it and reinforcing tale-as-old-as-time privilege dynamics. Like performative masculinity, the “trad wife” revival is also a reaction to changing gender relations. As discussed with Guildea, it’s been suggested that many women are overwhelmed or fatigued from liberal feminism, the insecurity of independence, and thus, retreat to more familiar but disempowering relations to cope. This trend complements performative masculinity perfectly; it provides the necessary counterpart for the ‘benevolent sexist’ who seeks to position himself as a protector. The man who performatively displays progressive values to gain female approval and the man who displays traditional authority are both, at their core, operating within a fundamentally conservative view of gender that still frames women as a prize to be won or a resource to be accessed.
For instance, influencers like Nara Smith are emblematic of an impossibly pristine vision of domestic bliss, where homemade pasta and vintage dresses symbolise a return to “authentic, fulfilling womanhood”. But this aesthetic is more performance than reality; many of these women rely on nannies, housekeepers, and other forms of invisible labor to sustain such an illusion.
So yes, he has been showing up everywhere, with his oat-milk matcha held just right, his loafers perfectly scuffed, his cargo pants hanging, and playlists full of Laufey and Clairo; but the reality is, that he has always been there – just repackaged.
While people perceive performative men and far-right men to be on opposing ends of the spectrum, they are much closer than you think. In fact, they are on the same end of the spectrum where masculinity and sexism collide. It is a rebranding that operates not through political rallies or policy papers, but through the shareable, deeply personal language of lifestyle, aesthetics, and identity. The very nature of this “modern” masculinity, as noted, is fundamentally insecure; it is not a stable state but a performance that must be constantly proven and validated, in an attempt to seem appealing to women. Guildea further elaborated that alongside accessing women’s bodies, it is the desire to prove that they are “real men” by having claim to what they deem to be more ‘rational’ and enlightened political opinions – opinions that do not necessarily play-out in practice, in their relationships with women. However, it further forces us to question whether we’re being overly critical of men and if so, what avenues exist for men to truly align themselves with feminism? With a dilemma so convoluted, it’s difficult to find the middle ground, especially when left-leaning men assume they’re exempt from the issue and right-leaning men’s outlook precludes any acknowledgement of it.
Ultimately, the challenge isn’t identifying and understanding the underlying bias in their behavior – a bias shaped by algorithms and cultural narratives that teach men to preserve their centrality even when they appear progressive – it’s figuring out how to engage and educate those who shape it. Failure to address it, and we risk inadvertently normalising these performances of strategic femininity that are rooted in the archaic gender hierarchy; hence, paving the way for a subtle but significant generational shift toward the right.