I Need More Thrust In The Stern, Mr. Sulu!

So last week, George Takei (correctly pronounced "tak-AY", but usually pronounced erroneously as "tak-EYE"), that guy who played Mr. Sulu in the original Star Trek series, made public that he's gay. It wasn't really a coming out because he was very open about his homosexuality once it became socially acceptable.

Well, more power to him. I am secure enough about my heterosexuality to have a couple of gay friends without fear of being gay by association. They are among the nicest, politest, and neatly dressed guys I know. It is pleasant company with people who do not have as much of that aggressive and confrontational male tendencies, unless you're hanging out with the leather-and-steel-studded kind of gays, but even then it's all just fun and games. I think heterosexual guys have a lot to learn from them in terms of politeness and fashion sense (i.e Queer Eye).

Fortunately for George, the pretzel-munching-beer-guzzling-football-watching "macho" kind of heterosexual male from Western culture is rather outdated when it comes to Asian males, as the line between masculinity and femininity blurs. This is summed up by that really stupid buzzword "metrosexual". Sadly, mentioning this word does nothing to hasten its demise.

I personally witnessed this during my three years in Japan. They've got a ton of beauty products and salons dedicated to the XY's. Hell, even I still use some of those to keep my face acne and wrinkle-free. I may live to be older than 1000 years, but it doesn't mean I have to look that way. Most prominently, J-pop/rock stars like Gackt (thanks Henrietta for correcting my spelling) and Izam really begin to look like women (with the latter being full-fledged transgender), but not Michael Jackson creepy. Those pretzel-munching-beer-guzzling-football-watching men would be really confused.

From a business perspective, this is a good thing happening. The female beauty product market is totally saturated, meaning that the only way a company like Shiseido can gain market share is to take away somebody else's. It is an extremely competitive business with almost no growth prospects. The male beauty product market, on the other hand, is relatively untapped, so every company is aggressively trying to get first dibs.

There's a great cover article by Time Asia about this phenomenon, so check it out here. Once again, the credit goes to Henrietta for bringing it up on Kenny's Blog. This makes one wonder what it would've been like if homosexuality was as socially acceptable back in the 60's as it is today, so that Mr. Sulu could be more open about his sexual orientation...

Warp 5 to Uranus? That's faaaaabulous!!!