One’s tradition is another’s novelty. That’s the tea.
Matcha, on one hand, evokes the centuries-old ceremonial and ritualistic sado (the Way of Tea). The other, being… Matcha 24K Labubu Dubai Chocolate Crumbl Cookie Almond Milk Latte.
Matcha has been popular outside of Japan as both a drink and flavor for as long as I can remember (I remember ordering a matcha drink from Starbucks in Connecticut when I was seven or eight). But this past year has seen a global matcha shortage, and matcha has suddenly become the go-to drink people carry in hand as they walk down the street with a bit of sass.
Want to actually learn more about tea? Check out our Traditional Japanese Tea Guide: Beyond Matcha.
Photo from the Metropolis Japan team
Predictably, some people are quick to dismiss new trends as fads. There is the usual eye-rolling, TikTok skits about a grumpy barista throwing coffee at a girl who dares to order this matcha nonsense at his old-school Italian cafe. Others offer more culturally sensitive critiques, comparing the deep Japanese tradition of tea to its mass-market consumption with no genuine appreciation.
I saw it as just another cycle of Japanese foods and drinks that explode in popularity abroad, then settle into the low-key mainstream after the hype fades. Hardly a crisis, I did not want to make it a storm in a teacup over another cultural export.
Other than the real inconvenience of shortages, most Japanese people do not care about how matcha is hyped overseas. Modern uses of matcha, whether in French-style confectionery or unusual flavor combos, have all originated in Japan, so it is safe to say no one here would think twice about your iced blueberry matcha latte with almond milk. Not to mention, Japan is notorious for creative, and sometimes questionable, takes on culinary culture, both its own and abroad, from prosciutto sushi to Taiwanese braised pork burritos.
That was until I saw that matcha had become the go-to drink for a new demographic, the performative male. These men walk around carrying tote bags, reading books by bell hooks and sipping matcha. Performative males are also called matcha males, and they are not referring to men who aspire to be the next Sen no Rikyu.
Who Are Performative Males and Why Matcha?
You could say that the performative male is a reiteration of the hipster, an alternative yet “mass” trend-following kind of persona. Some describe him as a close cousin of the softboi, but the performative male encompasses more ideological aspects, not just fashion or aesthetics. They are feminists and their progressive socio-political views, as well as emotional intelligence and sensitivity, are their distinguishable traits, positioned as the opposite of toxic masculinity, a phrase that itself became mainstream a few years earlier. Performative male refers to men who are comfortable with things, behaviors or ideologies that are considered or more often associated with femininity.
However, the term “performative male” is used critically and pejoratively. The idea echoes Japan’s soshoku-kei danshi (herbivore boys) from the early 2000s, which was originally coined as a way to describe a new masculinity that is “more soft and can relate to women naturally and equally” but later got misused pejoratively, as seen in a 2012 interview of former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell with Japanese media where he said “Japan can’t afford to have its young men become herbivore boys,” and that “the youth need to get stronger and build muscle.”
More importantly, the negative framing of the performative male centers on the “performative” part, intentionally done to impress others, specifically to attract women (though performative anything is still preferable to being anti-feminist and emotionally unavailable). The behavior or aesthetics of the performative male, which are often seen as more proximate to femininity, are understood as a way to attract women by sharing interests or ideologies with them.
The word “performative” already echoes Judith Butler’s gender performativity, which argues that people learn to copy and act in particular ways to fit into society. This means the behavioral differences we observe in genders are not inherent, and that gender is more of a doing rather than a being.
Hence, all men (or women) are performative in their gender performance. However, the term performative male suggests that they are performative on another layer, intentionally constructing their traits of being a man on top of their “authentic” gender performance. It reduces their subjectivity and falls into the same trap that feminism critiques in the male gaze, where women’s sexuality or beauty is reduced solely for consumption and attractiveness to men.
So why is matcha specifically associated with this persona? The Guardian put it:
According to performative male trend pieces, drinking a matcha latte indicates to women that you are soft, feminist-leaning and worldly (after all, it is from Japan).
Exoticism, Trendiness and the Long Story of Tea
Unpacking the “worldly” part, it is true that foreign things outside of their original location guarantee a sense of nicheness. Someone in Japan using a Muji pen is basic, but maybe considered a little hipster in Europe. Or how Trader Joe’s shopping bags appear in countries where the chain does not exist. It is no different from hipsters listening to foreign records in a Brooklyn apartment, whether that is Maghreb funk music or Indochine disco.
Exoticism is not to be equated with a genuine interest outside the familiar. Still, reducing a whole culture into an online trend or treating it as something niche and alternative for a hipster lifestyle, is usually not celebrated by the critical bunch.
Not only matcha but tea in general was once an exotic and trendy drink in Europe. In Japanese high school I was assigned to read Sakae Tsunoyama’s Cha no Sekaishi (World History of Tea), which examines not just the history of tea but world history through tea (The book is published in Japanese only. English readers can refer to Beatrice Hohenegger’s Liquid Jade or A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage for a similar account). Reading this was an introduction to the post-colonialist view on history for me.
Tea, originating in Southern China, symbolized the East’s cultural power and influence over the West. Alongside other produce and crafts, tea positioned Asia as a desirable region for Europeans, both abundant in resources and technologically advanced in manufacturing. The British wanted tea so badly that they fought wars for it, the Opium and Arrow Wars, brutally killing roughly 50,000 Chinese people, as a direct result. Such exotic goods with violent histories became embedded in the British identity itself as something purely cultural over time. Tea wasn’t just a drink; it held significance not only in value but also as a social signifier. Not only the powdered green kind but also tea in general was once an exotic item, hence luxury and trendy, and having a taste for tea distinguished you from the others. Tea itself has a loaded history.
The original tea craze shows that the social media fixation on matcha is not a Gen Z anomaly, nor is it any more shallow or “problematic” than earlier waves of enthusiasm. As with any trend and its “agglutination,” timing matters, and matcha happened to be one of the most vogue drinks of its moment. But is matcha associated with performative masculinity only because it’s trendy, just like hipsters drinking fancy craft coffee in an industrial-chic cafe? Beyond the reduction of a foreign culture into a hipster trend, what concerns me more is the association of matcha drinking as something “performative” for men, but not for women. This implies that matcha itself is being framed as a “feminine” drink. It raises a simple question: is there a link between femininity, trendiness and exoticness?
Femininity and Matcha
The author of the Guardian piece, referring specifically to the latte format of matcha, makes a compelling point about how the milkiness of lattes, from iced latte to chai latte, is often coded as girly. The contrast sits well beside the idea that “real men” drink black coffee.
With or without milk, “trendiness” is often associated with women. As I noted with the correlation between hipster culture, trendiness and exoticism, certain foreign cultures are also labeled or interpreted as more feminine when exported elsewhere. In the U.S., “girlies” going out for sushi is more imaginable than straight bros doing the same. Scholars often claim that women are more likely to consume international or unfamiliar foods, and new or exotic dishes are often more popular among women. This was also a known phenomenon in Japan, where Thai and Vietnamese food, often awkwardly classified as esunikku (ethnic) cuisine, were treated as something young women especially favored, in the early stages of their popularity.
Women are frequently described as more “open-minded,” and femininity is linked with taste cultivation. One explanation is that women’s limited social mobility historically made cosmopolitan tastes a form of symbolic capital in a Bourdieusian sense. Additionally, there is the Orientalist aspect of Asian things being feminized. The Orientalist perspective historically constructed the Orient as feminine, passive, exotic and inferior in opposition to a masculine, rational and superior West. This framework, theorized by Edward Said, feminized the Orient and its people broadly, including Asian men. Anne Anlin Cheng develops this further in her framework of Ornamentalism, which examines the objectification of “yellow women” and how this racialized femininity has been discursively constituted through beautiful Oriental objects such as dolls, fans, tea cups and kimonos.
East Asia, particularly China, has long been seen as the place of treasures in European trade, including porcelain, silk and of course, tea. Exotic goods that were intricately crafted and desired by the European bourgeoisie. Once imported into Europe, the ornamental objects became associated with high-class women and the domestic sphere, where fashionableness shaped social hierarchies.
While coffee, which originated in West Asia, became a hit among high society in Europe in the 17th century, most coffeehouses, especially in England and France, excluded women as guests and treated them as masculine spaces. Meanwhile, tea, which arrived later than coffee and was brewed in domestic spaces, became a socializing activity for aristocratic women. Hence, tea for women and coffee for men.
Not to mention, tea arrived with porcelain, or china, a material Europe long envied but could not replicate. The delicate look and white translucency often served as a poetic expression of women’s skin. The social setting of tea, associated with women, also became synonymous with gossip.
Trendiness and exoticism have long been coded as feminine. Additionally, tea itself carries feminine associations in the West, all while Asia is feminized within the orientalist frame. Meanwhile, the non-traditional traits of the performative male are read as feminine within the binary structure. All of that combined, a man identifying matcha as his cup of tea signals either a failure to meet masculine norms or an act of performance.
Matcha or Macho?
Matcha in Japan is a very traditional and conservative drink. Sado is intimidating even for average Japanese people. With different schools and aesthetics, it takes years to master, and the philosophy has both Zen Buddhist and Shinto influences. Tea masters, chajin, were historically predominantly male. Sen no Rikyu is the most renowned figure who shaped the current sado, and then shoguns, samurai and emperors practiced it. In modern times, sado became more associated with women because of its gracefulness. Still, matcha, for its bitterness, is seen as a more acceptable masculine flavor in confectionery. Media often describe certain desserts as dansei demo tabeyasui, meaning suitable for men because they are not too sweet (perhaps similar to the stereotype that girly cocktails are sweet).
Matcha travels from tea gardens in Uji to plastic cups with blueberries in Shoreditch. Someone in Seongsu orders it from an American coffee chain, while someone online posts that it is overhyped. One thing can carry a very different meaning and feel depending on time, place, context and who encounters it.
In that sense, matcha males are not really about matcha. They are about what people project onto it, from the normativizing force around masculinity to the baggage of a long intercultural history. Matcha’s association with the performative males can be explained by its fashionable trendiness of exoticism, which is associated with women as well as the gendered binary of Orientalism and tea’s historical feminine image.
A problem larger than the matcha shortage or the “non-traditional” uses of matcha is how restrictive the idea of the performative male becomes for men. The discussion all brews down to this: let men enjoy their matcha.
Enjoyed this article? You might be interested in reading “Are Japanese Men Afraid of Independent Women?”
