Richard Cohen, after agonizing over whether he's a "metrosexual," has offered the gratuitous socio-labelers a new category: "RETROSEXUAL."

Howard Dean pronounced himself a metrosexual and then characteristically said he wasn't sure what that was -- but whatever it was, he wasn't. Among politicians, Arnold Schwarzenegger may be the most metrosexual of them all, since no man ever paid more attention to his body -- except maybe Richard Simmons, another category altogether. Ronald Reagan is a metrosexual and so was Kemal Ataturk, a regular clotheshorse and ladies' man who single-handedly modernized Turkey.

Saddam Hussein, a dapper dictator in his salad days, was a metrosexual but emerged from his hole a pure heterosexual. Tim Russert is not a metrosexual, George Stephanopoulos is, Bill Clinton is an omnisexual, Ann Coulter is a psychosexual and Strom Thurmond was just a pig.

As for myself, I am still perplexed. I am a fervid fan of the late Cary Grant, who was the best-dressed actor ever to appear on the screen. (Just watch how his trouser pleats don't open when he crouches on a rooftop in "To Catch a Thief.")

In the interests of full disclosure, though, I should point out that I never liked the word "metrosexual" -- and I flunked the official metrosexual test. My results?

You're an average Joe. Almost wallpaper. You shop at the mall, furnish your home at the department store and spend your weekends watching sports. If you were any more plain, you'd be Al Gore.

Our advice: Get a life, get a personality and get some style.
Or get a love interest who can do it for you.

(From Andrew Ian Dodge, via Dean Esmay.)

I am glad I have never been a metrosexual. "Retrosexual", however (notwithstanding Mr. Cohen's definition), is evocative of sexual nostalgia, and I am not sure I am ready for that.