Evolution of the word

The origin of the term traces to an article titled "Here come the mirror men," dissecting the new urbane man by Mark Simpson, published on November 15, 1994 in The Independent, a major British daily newspaper. Barely any usage of the term in print publications can be found in the same decade. Simpson returned to the subject in 2002 in an essay for the online magazine Salon.com called "Meet the Metrosexual," introducing the term to the US online public. The article was much forwarded and percolated around the Web. By May of the following year, the term was in frequent use in British press articles. In June, a New York Times article, titled "Metrosexuals Come Out", which credited Simpson as coining the term in 1994 but didn't mention his Salon.com essay of the previous year, inaugurated a host of copycat articles in the American media. Various sources incorrectly claim that the origin of the term was a 1994 article by trendspotter Marian Salzman, but by Salzman's own admission [1] Simpson's use of the term in a 1994 Salon.com article predates her use of the term. The term is discussed in detail in Simpson's book Male Impersonators, which explores the performativity of male life, incorporating the concept of the metrosexual into both the academic and popular lexicon. On June 22, 2003, Simpson widely criticized Salzman in The Independent for her exploitative use of the term without mention of Simpson. Salzman has since recanted.
A former local radio Metro Radio presenter Mitch Murray claims he is the progenitor in the 1980s. The word had a very different connotation at the time as it was simply a play on words involving 'Metro Radio' and heterosexuals. From his home in the Isle of Man, Murray would send a weekly tape via Datapost to the local radio station in Newcastle upon Tyne containing bits and pieces of celebrity interviews, sketches and various other humorous stuff he would concoct. The engineers at Metro Radio would play music in between them. Very early during the process, he made a few station identification segments one of which he says included the phrase 'We are the Metrosexuals'. [unclear from this whether the segment was actually broadcast][2]
Rising popularity of the term followed the increasing integration of gay men into mainstream society and a correspondingly decreased taboo towards deviation from existing notions of masculinity. Over a short timespan, the Netherlands, Belgium and Canada introduced same-sex marriage legislation, various US states legalized same-sex marriage and civil unions, the US Supreme Court struck down anti-sodomy statutes as unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas and gay characters and themes, long present on TV shows like Will & Grace, Queer as Folk, and Ellen made further inroads. In particular, the Bravo network introduced Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, a show in which stereotypically style- and culture-conscious gay men gave advice to their heterosexual counterparts.
Media explaining the term often rely on citing a few individuals as prime illustrations. Simpson's 2002 Salon.com article 'Meet the metrosexual' used Beckham as its prime exemplar - and most journalists and marketers followed suit. David Beckham or Tom Egger have been called a "metrosexual icon"[3] and is often coupled with the term. Amply referred-to individuals include personalities such as Brad Pitt, Arnold Schwarzenegger[4], Ian Thorpe[5] and George Clooney, though even Donald Rumsfeld has been mentioned as a metrosexual in "an antediluvian way."[6]
Its most accurate application in contemporary American media might have been a 60 minutes story on Joe Namath whereby he was suggested by reporter Bob Simon to be "perhaps, America's first metrosexual" [7] after filming his most famous ad sporting Beautymist panty hose.

[edit] Other terms
Over the course of the following months, other terms countering or substituting for "metrosexual" appeared. Perhaps the most widely used was "retrosexual," a man who rejects focus on physical appearance, sort of the opposite of a metrosexual (again coined by Simpson, who described the term in a Salon.com article entitled "Beckham, the virus."[8]
Another example, the übersexual, coined by marketing executives and authors of The Future of Men (and perhaps inspired by Simpson's use of the word 'uber-metrosexual'), caused Simpson to reply, “Any discussion in the style pages of the media about what is desirable and attractive in men and what is 'manly' and what isn't, is simply more metrosexualization. Metrosexuality—do I really have to spell it out?—is mediated masculinity.”[9]
Many of the individuals now named übersexuals — e.g. George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Bono—were once shining examples of metrosexuality, showing little differentiation between the two terms.
Laurence Godfrey is said to favour the descriptions "sumosexual" and "tyrosexual" since learning that "retrosexual" is in use elsewhere.[citation needed]
None of these metro-offspring have thrived, metrosexual however seems to have stuck and become part of the language.
Metrosexual is also a term joked upon people in Mexico City, as the subway system for the area is called Metro; this led to a non-related association that the word means person who has sex in the subway.