A new creature was spotted at Karachi’s Nusserwanji Park on Thursday. It stood out from the art students and joggers who usually hang around the garden. This was the performative male.
Wearing baggy jeans, carrying tote bags over their shoulders and clutching books of all kinds, a group of them showed up for Karachi’s first Performative Male Competition. The event was put together by filmmaker Shehzad Malik and visual artist Eman Siddiqui as both a celebration of softer masculinity and a satire of men who try a little too hard.
“The idea was to talk about masculinity as a spectrum and to focus on the sensitive side of men, the side that is often seen as something you shouldn’t show,” Malik explained.
Ayan, a participant, won the crowd over when he addressed them with his Labubu figurine in hand.
Winners With Half a Certificate
The winners were chosen by a show of hands. True to the spirit of the event, one certificate was ripped in half and shared between two people. Huda, an art student, and Zaim, a DJ, received their halves as the crowd cheered them on.
“Let men do what they wanna do,” Huda said. She explained that it only becomes a performance when someone is “trying too hard to be someone they’re not. That’s just being a poser.”
Zaim had his own take. “Being a performative male means pretending to follow trends you don’t care about. You pretend to dress a certain way, to act woke, and you do it all for female validation.”
Performances And Pick Me Males
Aaryan, a medical student, said the idea wasn’t really new. “‘Performative male’ may be a fresh phrase, but we’ve been calling them ‘pick mes’ for years. These are men who act a certain way not because it’s real but because it appeals to women.”
He added that most men actually perform for other men. “It’s this aggressive style of masculinity that is meant to impress the boys. Performing for women is better than that, but both are still inauthentic. The competition was making fun of all that and reminding us to just be ourselves.”
Wali, a law student dressed as a punk rocker in a Green Day tee with long curly hair, gave his own definition. “A performative male is someone who dresses for the female gaze. The idea has become a meme and a fashion statement. That makes it easy for actual performative men to brush things off and avoid accountability.”
But not everyone saw it so seriously. “It’s just good fun, like a cosplay competition,” Ayan said. “I’m a performative male for the day.”
The competition started as a social media trend but quickly turned into a real-world event. It gave a chronically online generation a chance to log off and touch some grass. Similar contests have been held in Islamabad and Lahore, where men tried to outperform each other.
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Karachi’s edition was just as lively. One contestant was heckled off stage for only knowing a single flavour of matcha. Another performed in silence, later explaining, “I’m a performative male. I don’t speak, I just listen.”
Wali won applause when he referenced American anthropologist Gayle Rubin. Later, he and Ayan debated whether Labubu dolls were harmless collectables or “a manifestation of capitalist greed and consumerism.”
There Is More To Life Than Validation
For Malik, the mix of satire and sincerity was the point. “Some men take it too far, and that’s what this competition was trying to make fun of. It’s about being self-aware as a man.”
In the end, it wasn’t about who played the role best; it was about the small but spirited community that came together. Many stayed long after the certificates were handed out, chatting, laughing and making new friends.
They may not all have left as Karachi’s most performative male, but they did leave with something real, too, from a competition about being pretentious.
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