Illustration by David Stroud.

A decade or so ago -- ancient history in pop culture terms -- America's trend-happy editors and sales-seeking advertisers discovered the metrosexual, that breed (real or imagined) of modern man who embraced, perhaps too eagerly, his feminine side.

Metrosexuals went to spas and got manicures. They lasered hair off of their bodies, set their TiVo for "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" and did all sorts of things prior generations of American men would find mildly effeminate, if not downright girly.

So who didn't see it coming that those same trend-happy editors and sales-seeking advertisers have discovered the retrosexual, the metrosexual's (real or imagined) polar opposite?

Retrosexuals, we're told, have fashion sense that extends no further than matching their baseball cap with their T-shirt, wouldn't recognize the "Queer Eye" guys unless you put football jerseys on them, think Chuck Norris is a god, and consider steak and potatoes the perfect meal.

Trendies say the arrival of the retrosexual represents a backlash to the over-metrosexualization of America and heralds a return to the manly, traditional, guy's guy.

Maybe. Maybe women are tired of fighting with their boyfriends for the moisturizer every night. Maybe men are tired of spending a week's salary on body waxes and manicures. Maybe retrosexuals really are the latest step in the continuing evolution of the American male.

Or maybe it's just a bunch of Madison Avenue hooey served up by the usual suspects.

"Metrosexual" is the self-described "bastard child with perfect skin" of British writer Mark Simpson, who coined the word in the mid-'90s to describe a guy who "has clearly taken himself as his own love object."

The word was a hit. In popular usage, it came to mean a male, usually heterosexual, who has an undue preoccupation with fashion and lifestyle concerns. In 2003, the American Dialect Society honored "metrosexual" as "word of the year."

Then, that same year, Simpson coined "retrosexual" as the antonym of "metrosexual" to describe "men who were not metrosexual, men who refused to get with the programme and pluck their eyebrows and cultivate their cuticles."

"Retrosexual" is a hit, too. Today, Web sites offer rules for retrosexuals ("A retrosexual eats red meat and sometimes kills it himself.") Newspapers are lauding the return of the guy's guy and advertisers are jumping all over retrosexuals -- figuratively, we mean -- as a new marketing demographic.

A year ago, the Leo Burnett Worldwide ad agency released a study, "Metros Versus Retros: Are Marketers Missing Real Men?" to explain who these guys are and, even better, how to make money off of 'em.

But this is weird: One of the study's findings was that 60 percent of men don't consider themselves either retro or metro and, instead, "live by a more traditional set of standards for assessing their masculinity."

It's slippery stuff, even to guys such as Arnie DiGeorge, creative director at R&R Partners, whose job it is to make sense of such things.

DiGeorge guesses that if retrosexuals really did grow out of a metrosexual backlash, it started happening not long after metrosexuals became hip. Take the incredible popularity of the metrosexually friendly "Queer Eye" a few years ago.

"I think there were some women watching those shows who would say (to a boyfriend or husband), 'You know what, you could be a little more like that. What would it hurt you?' " DiGeorge says.

"Maybe there was a backlash among some women, saying, 'I don't want a guy who's prettier than me showing up at a party.' Maybe after four or five guys showing up with a perfect shirt and perfect hair and perfect skin, they'd say, 'I've got enough competition with women.' "

But the retrosexual "was always there," DiGeorge adds. "I think maybe they got up off the couch, went outside and said, 'I do not like this whole thing,' and went back to the couch and sat back down again."

Steven R. Schirripa knows retrosexuals, and the actor ("The Sopranos"), pop culture reporter ("The Tonight Show" and "Today") and author ("The Goomba Diet" and others) is convinced that retrosexuals are back.

"I just did a piece for the 'Today' show on how women don't want metrosexuals," Schirripa said during a recent telephone interview. "I talked to women all over New York City, and most women like a guy they can feel secure with, a guy who's a gentleman, not a slob -- we're not talking about slobs.

"I think they like guys that aren't so vain. They treat you nice, they take you to a nice place and open your car door for you."

Schirripa's "Goomba" guides extol his conviction that real guys live life to the fullest. And that, he says, is the true hallmark of the retrosexual.

"I think (retrosexuals) are very comfortable in their own skin," he says. "They may be skinny, they may be tall, they may be short, they may not be great-looking guys, but they're very comfortable and very confident, and I think that's what's attractive to women."

On the other hand, Montana Miller, an assistant professor of popular culture at Ohio's Bowling Green State University, wonders whether this retrosexual trend is less than it's being made out to be.

"It's interesting how everyone wants to pinpoint a trend and say, 'OK, see how the tide is turning? There's a new trend,' " she says.

"You just can't do that kind of generalization. Most of these articles about trends are like picking and choosing their statistics and taking different anecdotes and really building a case for something that they could just as easily build the other case for."

And retrosexuals? "I'm not buying it," Miller says, "although it's very interesting.

"Sometimes, when a word becomes part of our cultural discourse, the word can actually encourage the behavior. So once 'metrosexual' became something that people knew what it meant and we had articles about it, everyone was, 'Oh, yeah. Metrosexual. That's normal' and people felt a little more secure behaving that way."

Now that "retrosexual" has made its way into popular culture, Miller says, "will a real movement follow? Because I think that's what's happened with metrosexual."

Weird, too, is how things that seem to be reliably retrosexual may not be all that retrosexual when you look closely at them.

Old-time barbershops are retrosexual, right? Indeed, says Irene Alanis, owner of Anthem Hills Barber Shop, 12231 S. Eastern Ave., Henderson, billed in its Yellow Pages ad as an "authentic men's barber shop."

"The larger group of customers that come in here come in here just for the haircut," Alanis says.

But the shop also offers such metrosexual touches as manicures, too, and there are, Alanis says, "some guys who come in for the haircut and the manicure, too."

On TV, the retrosexual's reign is represented by the popularity of such manly heroes as Jack Bauer on "24." But, Miller says, "look at who's really on the rise: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are really big now, and they're not manly men. They're kind of effeminate. They're definitely in touch with their feminine sides."

Retrosexual deity Chuck Norris is hotter than ever on the Internet. But, Miller notes, "the whole trend has an element of irony to it. So I wonder if part of this sort of yearning back to the manly man is a little bit ironic."

How about Maxim and other such magazines, which seem to wallow in average-guyness? "If you look at Maxim and look at how much product is being spewed at you, a lot of it is very much kind of metrosexual products," DiGeorge notes.

Tricky stuff, this is, as Yoda might say. (Retrosexual. No reason. Just seems to be.)

Maybe the real story, Miller offers, is that middle 60 percent of maledom that doesn't want to be thought of as either metrosexual or retrosexual. Maybe, she says, "it's just that people don't like to be labeled or don't like to be swept into a category."

It makes sense to DiGeorge. That's why R&R's ad campaign for Las Vegas features messages aimed not at retrosexual or metrosexual men, but a guy R&R refers to as "Mr. Saturday Night" who, DiGeorge says, is "the biggest fan of Vegas."

"I don't know if you'd call him retro or metro," DiGeorge concedes. "That's the thing: It's tough to define that, because there are so many different versions of him."