By Ron Ford
In the realm of male fashion trends, the metrosexual has finally met his match. Clear the runway for the lumbersexual. But wait. It seems he’s been here all along, hiding out in the densely wooded Pacific Northwest, and on the SFCC campus.
“Lumbersexual” is defined by Urban Dictionary as “a metro-sexual who has the need to hold on to some outdoor based ruggedness, thus opting to keep a finely trimmed beard.” So, if metrosexuality defines a man who is fastidious about grooming and fashion, a lumbersexual is a guy who is lax about shaving and says, “fashion be damned.” He wears the same stuff he’s always worn: flannel shirts, well-worn jeans, and maybe a knit cap to keep his long hair out of his eyes.
It’s a look familiar to us in the Pacific Northwest. Men have been adopting it here for decades. It’s practically the standard Northwest Guy’s uniform. Now it has become a national “thing,” with columns on the topic appearing in such diverse sources as GearJunkie, The Independent, Cosmopolitan and Time.
Rebecca Cook, a Spokane voice-over artist, is happy she lives in the Great Northwest, where she can observe this specimen in its natural habitat.
“I am totally in,” Cook said. “This may be my favorite look on a man. Of course, I actually love wearing men’s flannel shirts, too. Whatever. I’m into it! I’ve always been into it. I’m cool with it being a trend.”
But not every Spokane woman is so quick to endorse the trend.
“Lumberjacks don’t do a thing for me,” Kez McIntosh, a Spokane jewelry artist, said. “I’m hoping it doesn’t evolve into plumbersexuals, and buttcracks become all the rage!”
Troy Nickerson, a Spokane hairdresser, spoke of the look from a same sex perspective.
“The lumbersexual look is becoming very popular in the gay community,” Nickerson said. “Cuffed jeans leather boots, flannel, even suspenders. The hipster community has adopted this look as well. Of course you should be sporting an impressive beard.”
Tim Teeman, a correspondent for the political website The Daily Beast, sees the fashion trend as an emblem of gender pride and celebration. Something, he says, straight men learned from the LGBT community.
“The lumbersexual is just straight culture’s latest belated attempt to theatricalize masculinity, decades after gays got there first,” Teeman wrote.
Some, however, believe the trend is a reaction to our rapidly-changing gender roles. Time correspondent Denver Nicks, in his article “Confessions of a Lumbersexual,” wrote that he believes the trend comes out of the male perception of losing control in the age of female empowerment. Men are embracing a cloak of iconic rugged masculinity, Nicks says, as a reaction to women stepping into roles traditionally reserved only for them.
“If not a breadwinner, not ogreishly aggressive, and not a senior member in good standing at a stuffy old real-life boy’s club, what is a man to be?,” Nicks wrote.
Others also see the lumbersexual as a poser, trying to look like the man he wishes to appear to be.
“Personally, I think men and women should wear what they enjoy wearing and not be too into following trends,” Amy Sherman, a Spokane actress and model with Mitchell Artist Management, said.
Allen James Teague, who owns a painting company in Priest River, Idaho, was even more critical of the trend.
“You can always tell the phonies,” Teague said. “They resemble those urban cowboys with scuffing on the boots where scuffing doesn’t really happen and they shy away from rodeo bull pens, manicure their facial hair and get their coffee at espresso stands.”
Fashion trends come and go, and the same will likely be true of the lumbersexual. However, it’s a fair bet that the look will be around in our area for some time to come. We invented it.