If you live in a major city, you might have seen what looks like a hipster drag show playing out in a park or on a sidewalk recently: a parade of young men strutting with tote bags, holding up feminist literature, and showing off their newly purchased vinyls.

That guess wouldn’t be totally wrong. Over the past month, Gen Z has been holding public contests all over the country, and even internationally, awarding the best impressions of a “performative male,” the latest meme taking off on TikTok.

The slang is a bit misleading. A “performative male” doesn’t perform traditional masculinity à la a “gym bro.” Rather, he’s curated a notably alt, intellectual, and, in Gen Z terms, “soft” aesthetic, often with the purpose of attracting progressive women. Other markers of a “performative male” include drinking matcha, reading bell hooks, listening to women singer-songwriters, and carrying emergency tampons. Think Jacob Elordi when he was photographed with three different books on his person, or Paul Mescal publicly admiring Mitski.

The trend seems to be largely in good fun, poking fun at men who do, in fact, genuinely like matcha and Mitski. It’s partially inspired by the slew of celebrity lookalike contests last year that highlighted people’s enjoyment of dressing up in silly costumes, as well as their desire for a public square. As Seattle’s “performative male” contest winner, Malik Marcus Jernigan, told me, most of the men participating, including himself, casually embody the joke.

“My friend had sent me the flyer saying I had a good chance at winning, so I decided to participate to make them proud,” says Jernigan, a 24-year-old musician. “I feel as if for the most part it is either ‘performative males’ poking fun at themselves or women poking fun at them online — all lighthearted in nature.”