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Mark Simpson is a British journalist and writer specialising in pop culture, media and masculinity. He has been described by one critic as 'the skinhead Oscar Wilde'^[1] and by another as 'a c**t'^[2]. His work provokes passionate responses and has been compared to Camille Paglia^{[citation needed]}. Simpson is also a frequent commentator on British TV shows.

He is credited with coining the term "metrosexual" in 1994.^[3] [1] He also introduced the term to the US in 2002, inaugurating the current popularity of the term.^[4] He is also credited with being the first to use the term "retrosexual" in the sense of the anti-metrosexual in Becks the virus (Salon.com, 2003).^[5] The New York Times recently acclaimed his analysis of how sport and advertising are getting in bed to produce blatantly homoerotic images, what he dubs "Sporno" - "the place where sport and porn meet and produce a gigantic money shot" - as one of the Ideas of the Year. The Times newspaper also featured sporno in their 'Year in Ideas' list ^[6][7]

His first book Male Impersonators (1994) looked at the role of narcissism and homoeroticism in the representation of masculinity and in particular at the way films, ads, pop music, bodybuilding, were changing the nature of 'real' masculinity. Returning to Freud's theory of universal bisexual responsiveness, it also 'outed' the homoerotic subtext of masculinity itself. Most famously, it included a chapter arguing persuasively that the real romance in "Top Gun" was between Maverick/Tom Cruise and Iceman/Val Kilmer, something which may have inspired Quentin Tarantino to make a cameo appearance in the film "Sleep With Me" later the same year as a party-guest making a very similar argument. His highly controversial collection Anti-Gay (1996), in which various "non-heterosexual" contributors voiced their criticism of the gay 'one-size-fits-all' identity gay "feelgood" propaganda, began what came to be known as the "post-gay" movement, and pre-empted a series of gay books critical of gay culture.^{[citations needed]}

It’s a Queer World published the same year showed how gay and straight culture were converging, a decade before this became a common theme.^{[citations needed]} Saint Morrissey his innovative biography of the former Smiths front man, was written at the nadir of the singer's career, and published the year before Morrissey's 2004 comeback.^[8]

In 2006, Details magazine ran an exclusive "inside" feature by Simpson regarding the gay porn scandal involving paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne, which Simpson had researched for Salon.com two years before the scandal erupted on the global stage.^[9]

• Saint Morrissey (2004)
• Sex Terror (2002)
• The Queen is Dead (2001) (with Steven Zeeland)
• Anti-Gay (1996)
• It's a Queer World (1995)
• Simpson, Mark (1996). It's a Queer World: Deviant Adventures in Pop Culture. Haworth Press, 256 pages. ISBN 0099597519. 
• Male Impersonators (1994)

1. ^ Philip Hensher, The Independent: "Mark Simpson is a skinhead Oscar Wilde, his bon mots are both alarming and amusing, getting up people's noses and inside their trousers with equal aplomb."; quote used on Simpson's website and to promote his books "Sex Terror" and "The Queen is Dead"
2. ^ Boyz magazine: "Simpson is a snobby c**t"; quote used to promote his book "Anti-gay"
3. ^ Simpson, Mark. "Here come the mirror men", The Independent, 1994. 
4. ^ Simpson, Mark. "Meet the metrosexual", Salon, 2002. 
5. ^ wordspy.com entry for "retrosexual"
6. ^ http://www.out.com/detail.asp?id=18728 Haskell, David. "THE 6th ANNUAL YEAR IN IDEAS; Sporno (subcription required)", NY Times, December 10, 2006. Retrieved on 2007-01-11.  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2521758,00.html
7. ^ palu. "Metrosexual man invents Sporno", In The Mix, December 18, 2006. Retrieved on 2007-01-11. 
8. ^ Granger, Ben. "This Alarming Man", Spike Magazine, 2004. 
9. ^ Collard, James. "Salon vs. Details", Times Online, May 24, 2006. 

• Mark Simpson's website
• Mark Simpson's blog

• Salon interview with Mark Simpson
• 3am Magazine Interview with Mark Simpson