At 1 p.m. last Wednesday, Chess Plaza filled with the pungent aroma of matcha as over 40 tote bag-wielding competitors arrived to fight for the title of UTD’s most performative male.
The competition was held by Indigo Magazine, UTD’s student-run creative magazine, to make fun of the recent “performative male” social media trend. The term “performative male” refers to men who outwardly adopt conventionally “feminine” traits and interests such as drinking matcha, reading feminist literature and listening to music by artists such as Clairo and Beabadoobee to make themselves romantically enticing to women. Marketing senior Manjiri, the Editor-in-Chief of Indigo Magazine, said the attendance of the competition far exceeded their expectations.
“We did not expect this many participants,” Manjiri said. “We had a Google Form and it only had 17 to 20 actual sign-ups, and then people just kept showing up.”
The competition featured a gauntlet of challenges designed to determine which competitor was the most performative. Manjiri said the competition had four rounds: the first round involved competitors having to plead their case, the second round was a pickup line battle and the third round was answering questions related to performative male aesthetics or “just questions that girls would know [the answers to],” according to Manjiri. And finally, she said, the last round was a crowd vote.
The victors of the competition were computer science juniors Ethan Scherwitz and Prabhas Gade, who were both crowned UTD’s most performative male. Scherwitz said they were allowed to compete together under the banner of a single performative male after begging the organizers.
“[Originally] we were two separate contestants, and then after the first round when they were kicking people … they were going to select [Gade] and not me, but [then] I begged them,” Scherwitz said. “I was like, ‘It should be me,’ because they were going to let him go because he had a digital camera, but it was my camera, so I was like, ‘It should be me.’ And they’re like … you guys [are now competing] together as one man.”
The prizes for winning the competition included tampons, a knockoff Labubu and CDs of songs by artists such as Clairo, Fiona Apple and Fay Webster. According to Gade, however, the most valuable things the victors received were not the prizes, but the relationships they formed with other like-minded competitors.
“[The competition] was really lively, and we met so many cool people from that,” Gade said. “It doesn’t have to be a performer male contest, but it could be anything with that demographic of people and I’ll go again. Indigo Magazine, they pulled through.”
While Indigo Magazine hasn’t decided whether they will continue the competition for upcoming school years, they plan to continue hosting similar events in the future if the opportunity arises. Manjiri said that if people want more events like the performative male competition, they should contribute to campus culture by getting involved and planning the events they want to see.
“I think a lot of students at UTD forget that you don’t just have to complain about the culture that you might feel is lacking,” Manjiri said. “Like if you’re given lemons, truly you can make some damn lemonade, you know what I mean? As [creatives], we feel like maybe there isn’t as much of a presence at UTD, but you just have to create that community [here].”
