Mark Simpson's Blog, page 17
June 23, 2017
Heavy-Handed Muller Light
As you will know all too well if you’re a regular visitor to this blog, I don’t have a problem with male ‘objectification‘. More please. But there’s objectification and there’s objectification. Despite not being altogether innocent of sadistic tendencies, I’m not sure I’m also cool with treating hot ‘objects’ that gladden the eye as idiots who deserve a good slapping for making us perve over them. OK, I might think it sometimes, but I probably wouldn’t say it out loud. But food giant Muller h...
June 19, 2017
Male Lib is Nothing to Be Scared Of
(First appeared in Sweden’s SvD newspaper, 17/06/2017; published here in English with permission) The ‘crisis of masculinity’ is really a form of male emancipation argues Mark Simpson Back in the late 20th Century, when I first began writing about masculinity – which seems an epoch away now – everyone knew what masculinity was. Or rather, what is wasn’t. And what masculinity wasn’t was very, very important. As a man, your balls depended on it. Masculinity wasn’t sensual or sensitive. It wasn...
June 11, 2017
Sixth Form Boys Will Hug Boys
Someone simulating coitus behind you while you were potting a tricky black on the pool table was a popular part of the game. Grabbing one another’s lunchboxes as a form of greeting was another. Often this was accompanied with a loud John Inman/Dick Emery ‘OOOOH!!’ noise, which somehow proved that what you were doing was, in fact, totally and utterly straight. Me in the Daily Telegraph contrasting my teenage school days with a new report showing how much ideas about masculinity have have chang...
May 31, 2017
Just For Men & Hipsters
Remember Just For Men? Or ‘JFM’ as it likes to call itself now. Well, it never went away – and it’s all over social media. Though perhaps it’s just my social media – because those pesky algorithms know how old and grey I am now. Launched in the late 1980s by Combe Incorporated of White Plains NY (who also market Grecian 2000), Just For Men was a pioneering mainstream male vanity brand. If incredibly cheesy. They became a byword for camp in the sense of […]
The post Just For Men & Hipsters app...
May 16, 2017
Gymder – The Spornosexual Social App
Finally! Spornosexuals no longer have to run the risk of socialising with people who don’t work out, own no Lycra, and think that whey isolate sounds absolutely vomitous. Now, thanks to a Munich-based company, spornos have their very own ‘social’ app that will allow them to find, locate and interact with other spornos in their vicinity. Which of course is likely to be someone sweating on the machine next to them in the gym they spend their lives in. Read the rest of the article by […]
The pos...
May 12, 2017
Cristiano Ronaldo The Electronic Sex Doll
This ad starring Cristiano Ronaldo flogging body exercise electrodes called SIXPAD has been airing UK television for some months now, but every time it comes on it still makes me gape – pardon my French. It’s both funny and disturbing, and in truth I had avoided writing about it until now because I hoped it was just a bad dream (I usually glimpse it on late-night TV). But it isn’t going away. The ad itself is incredibly camp. Or kitsch. Or cheesey. Or all of […]
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May 9, 2017
Driven Dotty
The Psychopathology of Everyday Driving by Mark Simpson Do you fantasise about roadside executions when someone fails to indicate? Find yourself talking back sarcastically to motorway dot matrix signs talking down to you in HUGE LETTERS? Abandon all hope for humanity whenever you visit the Hobbesian horror of your supermarket car park? Hate cyclists when you’re driving – and motorists when you’re cycling? Are you surprised and hurt when your wise advice and running commentary on your friend/p...
April 22, 2017
Mark Simpson at Heartland Festival
Delighted to announce that I’ll be appearing at Denmark’s famous Heartland Festival, Egeskov Castle, 2-4 June. I’ll be discussing that hot topic of contemporary masculinity – and it’s need to be hot – along with the Danish designer Mads Norgaard, with the journalist Adrian Lloyd Hughes charing. More info here. The festival promised in the video below looks charming. Not sure I’m flexible enough for the yoga, but the hot tubs look fun.
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April 18, 2017
Pre-Activated Glutes – With Added Sleet
Not entirely sure how useful their fitness advice is – nor how you ‘pre-activate’ your glutes without using lube. But full marks to the Kilted Coaches for doing their kilted/un-kilted vids in Scottish sleet. Next to what looks like a busy A-road.
The post Pre-Activated Glutes – With Added Sleet appeared first on marksimpson.com.
April 17, 2017
Love Reaction (Give Me Satisfaction)
About a decade ago, I visited my Queen is Dead pen-pal/co-author Steve Zeeland when he was living in the largely-forgotten US Navy town of Bremerton, WA. Forgotten, that is, save by the self-described ‘lover of sailors’. In the early 1980s, before he discovered his true, bell-bottomed love, Steve had been the frontman for industrial-electro band Zyklon (‘America’s answer to Throbbing Gristle, according to one critic). He still had several synths and sequencers which we fooled around with at h...
