Akademik

(ret.roh.SEK.shoo.ul)

n.

A man with an undeveloped aesthetic sense who spends as little time and money as possible on his appearance and lifestyle. Also: retro-sexual.

— retrosexuality n.

Genuine guys are sometimes known as retrosexuals, to distinguish them from metrosexuals, who are men with the good taste of gay men, only they're straight. Metrosexuals are scrupulous about their grooming and are great consumers of men's cosmetic products. They use hair gel. Retrosexuals are scared of hair gel. Some people think that retrosexuals automatically have Neanderthal views about women, but this is not the case. A retrosexual is simply someone who doesn't know the difference between teal and aqua, and frankly couldn't give a damn.

— Margaret Wente, "I married a retrosexual," The Globe and Mail (Canada), February 14, 2004

My mission: to queer-eye myself through a full spa treatment. Friends saw the mission more pointedly: Could a highly-resistant retrosexual be transformed into one of the metro variety?

— Ted Weesner Jr., "For 2004: A metrosexual in the making," The Boston Globe, January 18, 2004

Beckham is the uber-metrosexual, not just because he rams metrosexuality down the throats of those men churlish enough to remain retrosexual and refuse to pluck their eyebrows, but also because he is a sportsman, a man of substance — a "real" man — who wishes to disappear into surfaceness in order to become ubiquitous — to become media.

— Mark Simpson, "Beckham, the virus," Salon.com, June 28, 2003

It's entirely appropriate that this sense of the word retrosexual — that is, man as the anti-metrosexual — was first used by Mark Simpson, the coiner of metrosexual. Note, however, that Simpson didn't coin the word retrosexual. The singer Bebe Buell released an album called Retrosexual in 1994. Also, there's another sense of the word that refers to a person who hasn't had sex in a long time:

"Homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, I've heard it all before," said my friend Ms M. "Then again, I haven't had sex in so long I'm retrosexual."

— Karen Krizanovich, "Talk dirty to me," The Guardian (London, England), August 10, 1995