You’re walking around Studio City, Silverlake, or maybe even Los Feliz and you see the same copy paste of a man strutting around with his cropped, sleeveless, The Marias graphic T-shirt. He sips his iced matcha latte while looking for his wired headphones in his Trader Joe’s tote bag. He has a fresh mustache and Bass Pro shop baseball cap or beanie. Perhaps after he puts on his baggy jeans in the morning, he reads a page of All About Love by Bell Hooks; I’m sure you know this man. After our Monday of HTLA spirit week 2025, many folks want to know: who is the performative male?

The performative male is this archetype that plays upon a certain category of men; I’m sure I am not the only one who has heard men attempt to “ban period cramps” and mansplain the Clairo lore simply to attract women. 

In today’s dating world, this man is not only ironically performative, but many of them genuinely want to appease the female gaze. It isn’t uncommon for anyone to put up a facade to attract their preferred sex, and this is only a new way in which men do that. Before performative men, we had soft boys, and before them, we had the hipsters. The concept of the performative man now is quite ironic, but it derives from a real kind of person. We are sick of seeing the pretentious, self-righteous liberal, performatively reposting AI-generated photos of political movements; this isn’t new. This meme began as a criticism of a manipulative man performing as a romcom archetype to get laid, but perhaps now it has twisted into so many new meanings. 

Of course, not every feminist, matcha drinking, straight man is performing, but we see more people on the internet calling every literate man “performative”. Maybe we have a rightful distrust in men, or maybe we have taken this too far. It’s ironic how our shaming of men for reading feminist literature is doing the exact opposite of what we want them to do: learn about feminism. For many people who cannot see through the origins of the concept of a performative male, it could be interpreted that men aren’t allowed to be comfortable with their masculinity– which is far from the truth. Not to mention, shaming anyone for reading is inherently perpetuating our anti-intellectualist culture. What started as a genuine criticism of men who fake feminism to manipulatively attract women began to spiral into calling Kurtis Connor performative. Although Connor does have a mustache and mullet, we also must mention that he is married and thus has no reason to attract women. Not to mention, Kurtis Conner did say “if you want an ugly little freak attached to your hip all day, just have a baby” about labubus. Nonetheless, bullying on the internet isn’t unique to performative men, people are just shocked when anyone says anything about men, but don’t bat their eyes when we say things way worse to women; this is just the internet taking things too far as the internet always does. However, like most internet things, this can become really fun beyond the screen. 

Across the country we are seeing hundreds of satire “performative male contests” with men in pageant-like formations jokingly professing their love for analog media and labubus. Amongst these men, winners tend to be the most stereotypically performative of all, but none of these men take this seriously. Perhaps this trend could have a positive influence on our communities; Tufts University student Hazel Herch called this event a “third space” on Instagram. In some ways, this is just a viral silly joke that we have in common, and with the rise of algorithmic media, we don’t have things in common with each other anymore. The monoculture has died, I see Oklou everywhere, but my best friend will never know who she is – the niche culture of the internet is taking so much community away from us. It is nice to have a joke that everyone knows about and can dress up as in a spirit week theme.

Maybe there is a deeper societal issue behind this meme, and we just have this little trust in men that we can’t even trust if their feminism is genuine. Or perhaps we should give these men more credit and stop diagnosing every journaling matcha drinker with performativity. Perhaps we are all human and always are putting on different performances for everyone we meet. However, this also may just be a silly meme that is bringing people together with a common running gag that I don’t oppose: bullying men.