Let us take this opportunity to scrape our shoes on the pop-sociology word of the minute: retrosexual.

Go ahead, take a minute. Rub your eyes. Groan.

The term, first coined by Salon.com writer Mark Simpson in 2003, has appeared sporadically over the past few years. It's turned up with more alarming frequency in recent months as a way to define the current "man's man" trend in commercial advertising and the enthusiasm for thick, blundering male leads, á la Jack Black or Vince Vaughan, in film and TV.

The profile compares and contrasts with metrosexuals, who are supposedly highly evolved men who move fluidly between "Queer Eye" and "guy's guy" sensibilities. By implication, retrosexuals are a little dumber, a little cruder, a little squishier, and a lot more "real."

The archetypal metro plucks his eyebrows, knows how to pair each dinner course with an appropriate vino, but can still argue the pros and cons of the NBA's hand-checking rule. The retro may or may not wipe the barbecue sauce from his unshaven chin, can appreciate the subtle qualities of both Bud and Bud Light, and methodically rates his farts on a scale of Martin Gramatica to Julius Peppers.

Insightful? Please. What we have here is a mouthful of morning film.

The "retro" part of retrosexual seems to imply a harkening back to an earlier model of masculinity, a return to "traditional" male values and behaviors that are supposedly more real than the metro alternative.

The problem, of course, is that such a figure has never been universal or immutable. Effete metros and manly retros have coexisted, though not always in the same socioeconomic spheres, since time immemorial. For every Hemingway, mind you, there has always been a Fitzgerald.

Boomers have presented the 1950s as a baseline of paternalistic middle-class American culture — a masculine culture frequently thrown into the mix in retrosexual profiles. Yet doesn't responsible and fastidious 1950s Man (reimagined in the Miller High Life and Dial "Take Back the Shower" campaigns) seem to better fit the metrosexual profile? Proud, ample gut notwithstanding, where does Jack Black fit in with all of this?

It would be one thing if "retrosexual" were simply a throwaway term, but pinheads with serious-looking author pictures are starting to make bucks by connecting a wilder set of dots. And dang it, the idea that grooming, manners and physical fitness are indicators of a man's more intrinsic qualities flies as well as Floyd Landis' Jack Daniels defense.

If there's anything valuable to be gleaned from all of this, it's that box office surveys have found women respond well to the new, flabby, potty-mouthed retrosexual as leading man.

Could it be the fairer sex is willing to look past a thrice-worn flannel shirt and a couple of extra chins to appreciate what really counts?

Dang, they always have been more progressive.

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.