Mr. Performative
The neon sign of the café flickered, casting a bruised purple hue over the rain-slicked pavement. Inside, the air smelled of oat milk and expensive bergamot. That was where I first saw Julian. He was wearing a soft, cropped lavender knit sweater that hugged his frame in a way that felt intentionally defiant. He was scrolling through his phone with a beaded charm strap made of bright pink hearts and faux pearls dangling from his wrist.
To me, a woman who had spent years navigating the jagged edges of men who thought vulnerability was a design flaw, Julian looked like a dream curated by an algorithm. He was the “female gaze” brought to life. He was everything the modern discourse promised. He spoke fluently about intersectional feminism, dismantled the “manosphere” over avocado toast, and carried a canvas tote that read The Future is Fluid.
For a while, I felt like I had finally found a man who truly understood.
But as the months bled together, a quiet, cold question began to take root in the back of my mind.
Was Julian a revolution, or was he just a very well-executed art installation?
Julian’s apartment was a sanctuary of curated pastel aesthetics, a space that felt more like a gallery than a home. There were no posters of gritty movies or neglected weights in the corner. Instead, the walls were adorned with framed botanical prints and soft-focus photography. Dried eucalyptus bundles were hanging from the doorway, a collection of limited-edition Sonny Angel figurines standing in a neat row on his bookshelf, and a dedicated skincare fridge stocked with serums I couldn’t even afford.
“I just think colors shouldn’t have a gender, you know, Maya?” he said to me one evening. He was carefully painting his nails a shimmering shade of seafoam green while we watched a documentary on fast fashion. “Why should I deprive myself of beauty just because some Victorian patriarch decided blue was for boys?”
I smiled, leaning against his shoulder and breathing in his sandalwood scent. “It’s refreshing, Jules. Really.”
And it was. At first. He was a man who lived and breathed the idea that fashion is a genderless playground. His wardrobe was a dream of textures: silk button-downs in dusty rose, oversized mohair cardigans, and those signature crop tees that sat just right above his waist. He didn’t just wear clothes. He styled them with the precision of a professional.
His jewelry was another layer of his carefully built identity. Julian was never without his silver Vivienne Westwood pearl necklace or his stack of beaded bracelets. He loved the contrast of a heavy, masculine watch paired with a delicate, “unyu” “imut” charm bracelet featuring tiny characters. He had a specific obsession with Cinnamoroll and My Melody, claiming that their soft energy resonated with his own rejection of traditional masculine hardness. He would clip plushy keychains like Labubu or Fuggler to his designer bags, insisting that we should all embrace our inner child regardless of our gender.
He was the kind of man who would notice my earrings before my cleavage. He knew the difference between a claw clip and a scrunchie. He didn’t just tolerate my interests. He co-opted them. Every morning was a ritual of self-adornment for him, a performance of breaking boundaries.
He was the performative male archetype perfected. But I started noticing the performative choreography of his life.
Whenever we were out in public, Julian was hyper-aware of his silhouette. He would lean into the feminine aspects of his posture, like the crossed legs or the delicate handling of a teacup. It wasn’t that he was hiding. It was that he seemed to be broadcasting. Every time he adjusted his crop tee to show a sliver of midriff or jingled his cute keychains while waiting for his dark chocolate, his eyes would dart around the room to see who had noticed his bravery. He wasn’t just wearing the clothes. He was waiting for the audience to applaud his subversion.
The cracks began to show not in what Julian did, but in how he talked about what he did. He didn’t just support women. He championed us in a way that felt like he was waiting for a trophy.
“I had to check a guy at work today,” he told me over dinner, his voice laced with a practiced, weary-warrior tone. “He made a comment about the secretary’s outfit, and I just had to step in and explain the power dynamics of the male gaze. It’s exhausting being the only one who sees it.”
I paused, my fork halfway to my mouth. “That’s good, Jules. How did the secretary feel about you stepping in?”
Julian blinked, looking confused. “Oh, I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I was too busy making sure he understood why his behavior was problematic.”
It happened again when we discussed a popular feminist essay. Julian didn’t just discuss it with me. He explained it to me. He used words like deconstruction, heteronormativity, and performative allyship with the precision of a surgeon, yet he never seemed to listen when I talked about my actual lived experiences.
He had mastered the lexicon of liberation, but he used it as a shield to ensure he was always the most enlightened person in the room. He was anti-toxic masculinity, yet he dominated every conversation with his theories on why masculinity was toxic. He was mansplaining feminism to a woman, and the irony was completely lost on him.
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One afternoon, I stayed over at Julian’s while he was at the college, which was a gender-neutral boutique studio, of course. I found myself looking at his vanity. There were dozens of keychains, including Sanrio characters, glittery bears, and beaded tassels. Many of them were gifts from brands or bought at trendy markets.
I picked up a small, glittery Hello Kitty charm. It was covered in a thin layer of dust.
I realized then that Julian didn’t actually care about these objects. He didn’t have a hobby that involved them, and he didn’t have a nostalgic connection to them. They were props. His softness was a costume he put on to signal that he was safe, that he was different, and that he was evolved.
The pinks and purples, the crop tees, and the constant “yas queen” energy were not an internal expression of his soul. It was a brand identity. He had looked at what women found attractive and safe in the current cultural moment, and he had built a skin out of it.
I felt a pang of guilt. Was I being cynical? Perhaps he truly did like these things. But then I remembered the party last week. A group of his old college friends, who were traditional types, had shown up. Julian didn’t change his clothes, but his energy shifted. He didn’t challenge their borderline-misogynistic jokes. He didn’t talk about deconstruction. He just stood there in his sheer shirt, silently enjoying the fact that he was the unique one.
He wasn’t fighting the patriarchy. He was just decorating his corner of it with lace.
The revelation came on a Tuesday. I was stressed about a promotion at work that I felt I was being passed over for because of a male colleague’s aggressive networking.
I went to Julian for comfort. I needed a partner, not a lecturer.
“It’s just… I feel like no matter how hard I work, the ‘boys’ club’ always wins,” I sighed, tucking my face into my hands.
Julian sat across from me, wearing a baby-blue hoodie and sipping matcha. “Well, Maya, you have to understand that the structural integrity of the patriarchal workplace relies on the marginalization of the feminine. If you read more bell hooks, you’d see that…”
“Julian,” I interrupted, my voice trembling. “I don’t need a bibliography. I need you to be angry for me. Or just hold me.”
He looked uncomfortable. The soft persona was great for aesthetic photos and intellectual debates, but actual, messy, female emotional labor was something he hadn’t programmed into his routine. He liked the idea of supporting women, but the reality of a woman’s pain was an inconvenience to his curated peace.
“I am being supportive,” he said, his voice thinning. “I’m giving you the tools to analyze your oppression.”
“You’re using my oppression to hear yourself talk!” I snapped. “Do you even like that hoodie? Or do you just like that people think you’re brave for wearing it?”
The silence that followed was heavy. For the first time, I saw the performative mask slip. Julian didn’t look enlightened. He looked caught.
“I like the way it makes me look,” he said finally, his voice devoid of the usual melodic softness. “I like that I’m not like them.”
“But you are like them,” I whispered. “You’re just using a different filter. They use strength to dominate. You use sensitivity to center yourself. It’s still all about you. Your feminism is just another way for you to be the main character.”
I left that night. As I walked to the subway, I saw a young man in a leather jacket laughing loudly with his friends. He was crude, perhaps, but he was honest. I realized I’d rather deal with someone whose flaws were visible than someone who dressed their ego in chiffon.
A week later, Julian appeared on my social media feed. He had posted a photo of himself in a new, sheer pink blouse, holding a bouquet of peonies. The caption read: Exploring the vulnerability of the masculine spirit. Flowers don’t bloom for themselves; they bloom to be seen.
I hit the unfollow button.
The beads on his keychain might have been bright, but the man holding them was still living in the dark. He wasn’t a new kind of man. He was just a new way for an old story to tell itself. I realized then that true deconstruction doesn’t happen in a wardrobe or a vocabulary. It happens in the quiet moments when the audience is gone. And Julian, for all his lavender and lace, was still too busy rehearsing his lines to ever just be.
