Matcha, Clairo, and Labubus have become synonymous with two words recently: performative males. Over the summer, TikTok and Instagram were populated with what started as celebrity look-alike contests, but quickly transformed into “performative male” contests. Participants in these contests tried to emulate—in an extremely satirical way—the kind of men you might find drinking matcha, listening to Mitski, and discussing feminist literature. But ironically, as Dr. Lisa Harper, an English teacher and Heartbeat moderator, pointed out: this ‘new’ trend “is not new; what is new is the performance of it on social media.” Yet despite all this coverage, even as jokes and discussions on this trope populate SHP classrooms, the type has not appeared on our Sacred Heart campus. It begs the question, what type of men do we see on our campus?
Women’s Group leader Evelyn Knestrick ‘26 explained that, “We emphasize sports like, you know, football, water polo, lacrosse…which definitely deserve to be celebrated, but some people that are artists and filmmakers can be lost in that image of Sacred Heart.” The culture and charisma behind sports at the Prep can be attributed to one source: the number of student-athletes at SHP. With such a close-knit community, where around 80% of students participate in a sport, it is challenging to break away from the athletic conventions that define the majority of men’s style.
When asked about this commonality, ASB President Andre Freccia ‘26 noticed how what guys wear “depends on the grade. From freshman year, our grade has definitely made an effort to dress nicer.” Because of maturity and age, male students in the younger half of the school may feel a stronger urge to conform to an athletic look as they transition from middle school to high school. Andre reaffirmed, “Oftentimes, I’m just trying to get through the day or trying to get through my sport,” so it makes sense that “at the high school level… people don’t care about [this trend] as much.”
In reality, SHP has a small student body, mostly from the same region of the Bay Area. A lot of what students are influenced to wear is a result of their surroundings. So it comes as no surprise that the highly saturated image of “performative males” has not shown up on our campus.
