Social media has identified a new species of man. He carries a tote bag, drinks matcha, and has a Labubu dangling from his carabiner. He has an extensive vinyl collection including prominent underground artists Phoebe Bridgers, beabadoobee, and Clairo. He’s a feminist, a social justice warrior, and a little too curated to seem real.
The “performative male” is the pinnacle of inauthenticity, and his feminist literature and silver jewelry is a manufactured personality constructed to attract women. However, placing the blame on him ignores that everybody performs; the only difference is some do it better—or perhaps more insidiously than others. We should not view this new flavor of inept male as the problem, but rather a symptom of our collective failure.
The problem starts here: authenticity is dead, and social media killed it. Rapid trend cycles, hyper-consumerism, and a never-ending culture of comparison mean that we are all fraudsters in our own way. The performative male is simply the latest iteration of the impulse to craft an identity that signals belonging. His rehearsed feminism and tote bag are no more artificial than someone else’s Parke sweatshirt or beige “clean girl” aesthetic.
The reason his performance is cringy is because his performance isn’t just to belong. It’s for attention, specifically from women. Every move feels calibrated to attract a specific type: the indie, feminist, emotionally-literate girl who drinks iced lattes and reads Sally Rooney. He’s figured out that sensitivity sells, and he’s marketing it hard. It’s allyship as an aesthetic and feminism, not as a belief system, but a branding strategy.
That’s where it turns sour. When men co-opt feminism as a dating tactic, it rings hollow. It reduces real advocacy to a performance designed to gain approval, not material change. To the performative male, empathy is a prop, which reinforces the very dynamics feminism is meant to dismantle by recentering men once again.
The performative male is nonetheless not the reason for this problem; he’s a symptom. He is the product of a culture that values image over intention, where politics can be commodified for likes and validation. When you make fun of performative males, stop to think about your own performativity, and whether you too use political convictions for cosmetics. If you do, you’re no better than him.
The performative male isn’t just performing for us—we are all performing for each other.
This piece was originally published in Zephyrus’ print edition on Nov. 6, 2025
