We see him on TikTok carrying a Trader Joe's tote with strawberry matcha and a book of feminist literature, wearing baggy jeans with a Labubu keychain, and listening to Clairo through wired earphones on the way to a vintage store. This "performative male starter pack" has gone viral, presenting a new version of masculinity that contrasts with the traditional markers of muscles, cars, and rock music.

Some dismiss it as a performance without substance. Others see it as a step towards men embracing new ideas about masculinity through aesthetics once coded feminine. This rising trend shows how Gen Z is using social media to reimagine what masculinity looks like.

"Cultural historians see the performative male as the latest in a cycle of shifting masculine aesthetics, from the "metrosexual" of the 2000s to the "soft boy" of the 2010s. Each iteration reflects gender norms, fashion, and sincerity. But while some see these aesthetics as a push back against conventional ideas of masculinity, others argue that the definition has shifted over time. "What people have to be to qualify as masculine has changed at different points in history," says Tristan Bridges, a professor of Feminist Studies at UC Santa Barbara University. "We didn't always even use 'masculinity' as a term — it only really took off around 1900 and eclipsed other terms like 'manliness' by the 1940s," Bridges explains. "That tells us something: what counts as masculine shifts quickly depending on culture and time period."

"Social media has destabilized traditional gatekeepers of who gets to control the image of what masculinity is," says Ronak K. Kapadia, a professor and director of the interdepartmental graduate Gender & Women's Studies program at the University of Illinois, Chicago, "Suddenly, everyday people, influencers, and niche subcultures can create and circulate their own gender aesthetics, and that's been particularly revolutionary and interesting."

"The rise of soft masculinity is about vulnerability, self-care, and K-pop-inspired styling," explains Kapadia. "At the same time, queer and trans creators have gained visibility on social media, offering alternative masculinities not centered on whiteness or cis-heteronormativity."

This trend is now visible on social media like TikTok and Instagram where influencers like Jerry Zeng, who mostly does contents of toxic masculinity. "I think my first impression was, it is really funny, relatable and very familiar. Because I think the whole concept of a performative male is a rebranding of the soft boy or fuck boys, or of the male manipulator."

It also brings self-reflections to men, "And I also think part of it was, Oh, am I performative? Because obviously a lot of the content that I make is very progressive, and I know one of the big tropes about a performative male is a guy that cares about feminism or likes women's literature. And I'm literally sitting at my desk with a women's literature book." Zeng said.

Mary-Elizabeth Benware, social media like TikTok and Instagram where influencers like Mebby on youtube, with 69k followers and 21k views of her comedic commentary video The Performative Male Epidemic, she did two commentary comedy videos about this trend. She touched on how this trend was being made, how people made fun of it, performative male contests, deeper meaning and reasons behind it. "I hit on the performative mail trend because of its recent trend and how popular it got, and how quickly it got."

Performative male isn't just a trend, it reflects something deeper, and it also sparks conversations of how people think about their identities. "I hope this trend as a whole sparks because it has in me, it sparks the idea of why people are performative, what is performative? Because we can be called performative males. We could say that's performative, but we can't ignore the fact that when we as women are performative, or when kids feel like they have to be performative, and how influencer culture impacts that? I think it's like a big, giant conversation that can be impacted by many trends in the future." Benware said.

That irony is part of what makes the trend spread. Posts are typically tagged with hashtags referencing female musicians like #laufey, #clairo, and #beabadoobee, as well as viral objects and food choiaces such as #labubu, #matcha, #dubaichocolate, and #oatmilkonly.

What began as an online meme on TikTok and Instagram has since spilled into real life. The "performative male contest" is staged in parks and on campuses, where groups gather to embody the look, which draws wider attention from social media.

Emma Ababa, a student at Berklee College of Music, whose the host of a performative male contest happened in Boston said, "I just found it really funny online because I was seeing a bunch of contests happening, and I thought it would be really fun if I tried to throw one of these" Ababa added, "Performative men, to me, are basically men that dress and act a certain way, for female attention, for the female gaze. I think it's kind of weird that a lot of their things that are attached to the performative male title is like leaning Asian."

"I don't like matcha, I think it's nasty. But I do like to dress up, and I like to read. And that's my authentic self." said Adrian Soliz, a contestor who studies at Berklee College of Music from Austin, Texas. "A performative male is somebody who might do those things. They might dress up, they might read, they might drink matcha, but it's a front. They're doing it just for female attention."

The third place of this contest, Avi Sukhramani, a student from Roxbury Community College said "We have to have contests like this in order to make fun of people like that, because if we don't make fun of them, then they'll actually start to take over in the mainstream. People will start appreciating it as something that is real, rather than something that is just a performance."