Not long ago, masculinity was all cigarettes, grease-stained work shirts, and a heroic refusal to moisturize. By 2025, masculinity is more likely to mean vintage denim, an oat matcha in hand, and a copy of bell hooks posed artfully for Instagram. The result? The rise of the “performative male,” men who embrace softer, feminist-coded aesthetics, sometimes sincerely, sometimes with the same energy as a guy rehearsing pickup lines in the mirror. The funniest part is that we’ve reached a point where simply owning a tote bag can be a feminist statement, a dating strategy, and a meme all at once. The performative male isn’t just a “soft boy” with a playlist full of Phoebe Bridgers and SZA. He’s a walking brand strategy, carefully balancing emotional vulnerability, consumer aesthetics, and feminist-adjacent vibes. Teen Vogue once dubbed him Gen Z’s “overconsumption final boss,” which feels right. Political awareness meets lifestyle marketing, and suddenly he’s radical because he bought skincare. Sociologist Athena Presto has pointed out that this type of masculinity is more about reaction than authenticity, he’s special precisely because he looks slightly different from “regular men,” while still cashing in on the perks of patriarchy.
Judith Butler argued that gender has always been performance, not essence. Masculinity has always been theater, whether in the form of flexing at the gym or sipping latte foam with deliberate irony. Men in nursing, for example, sometimes lean into “softness” and other times overcompensate with hyper-masculinity. The performative male is just the 2025 version of this long-running show, now with TikTok filters and Hinge prompts.
Psychotherapist Namrata Jain notes that performance often comes from insecurity. Men trying to transition from dominance to vulnerability sometimes don’t know how to “do” vulnerability without faking it. And in dating, this gets messy. If every guy suddenly loves Sylvia Plath, women start wondering whether he’s sincere, or if Plath has just replaced cologne as the new way to impress.
Presto warns that this can slip into manipulation: using feminism as a kind of aesthetic weapon. But others, like journalist Connolly, remind us that making an effort, even if slightly performative, isn’t always sinister. Honestly, dating is performance by nature. Everyone’s playing a role until they’re comfortable enough to fart in front of each other.
The same dynamic shows up in classrooms and offices. Studies have shown that men are often overconfident about their abilities, while women consistently underestimate theirs despite performing just as well or better. Confidence, in other words, becomes part of the masculine costume. Competence is sometimes an afterthought.
On social media, the performative male has become a meme: tote bag, matcha latte, Instagram bio with a Rupi Kaur quote. Final form unlocked. The joke lands because we all know what bad acting looks like. When “feminist chic” is played inconsistently, the cracks show. And nothing is funnier than a man earnestly rehearsing equality but forgetting his lines.
But beneath the memes is a real truth: Butler was right, gender is something we do, not something we are. The performative male just puts this on display in its most obvious, Instagrammable form. The real question is whether these performances lead to growth or just repackage patriarchy with latte foam on top. A tote bag will not dismantle the patriarchy, no matter how sustainable it is. So the next time you see a guy quoting Audre Lorde at a coffee shop, don’t just swoon. Ask yourself: is he enlightened, or is he just rehearsing?
Noel Galon de Leon is a writer and educator at University of the Philippines Visayas, where he teaches in both the Division of Professional Education and U.P. High School in Iloilo. He serves as an Executive Council Member of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts-National Committee on Literary Arts.
