Guys on the sensitive side

By Leslie Goldman
Special to the Tribune
Published August 20, 2003

Ladies, please, Paul Stroili's begging you--don't call his house during "Monday Night Football."
That's when he vacuums.

Stroili, a Los Angeles-based actor, is a card-carrying member of that stereotype-breaking, gender role-blurring group dashing through the media lately: metrosexuals--cosmopolitan straight men unafraid to embrace qualities and pastimes traditionally associated with women. He's a Dermalogica apricot facial scrub junkie. He knows ecru from eggshell. He cooks. He gives his wife fashion advice. And she loves every minute of it.

"We hang out in a way that wouldn't be possible if he just sat down for three hours to watch Sunday afternoon baseball," said Stroili's wife, Monica Kaiser, a social sciences researcher. "It makes for a really neat friendship and love relationship--and I'm better dressed as a result."

For Stroili, finding that perfect gender equilibrium has been a journey. He acknowledges he began honing his feminine side as a tactic to woo the opposite sex. Unfortunately, reading "The Feminine Mystique" one too many times left his feminine side "way overdeveloped. It scared women off romantically and they'd end up romancing the football player."

But his self-education was not for naught. Besides a healthy marriage, Stroili has parlayed his experience into a one-man touring comedy production. It's called "Straight Up With a Twist" and is set to come to Chicago in November.

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