The word übersexual is a term claimed to be coined by the authors of the book Future of Men (O'Reilly, Matathia, Salzman, 2005) and is a variant of metrosexual. The word seems to have been inspired by the phrase "uber-metrosexual", used by the creator of the metrosexual Mark Simpson to describe David Beckham. Salzman appropriated Simpson's work on the metrosexual in 2002 to sell another book.

Simpson has pointed out that the book contains several deliberate misrepresentations of him, his work, and the history of the metrosexual, including the assertion that his coinage of the term in 1994 was "derisive", when in fact the article "Here come the mirror men" was clearly welcoming. The academic David Coad's book The Metrosexual (Suny, 2008) confirms this, and documents other misrepresentations by the marketers.

Many of the "top ubersexuals" named by Salzman, such as Bono, Bill Clinton and George Clooney were on her list of "top metrosexuals" in 2003. The authors of Future of Men argue that the übersexual is not derivative of the metrosexual man.

The future of men, proclaim the authors, is "not to be found in the primped and waxed boy who wowed the world with his nuanced knowledge of tweezers and exfoliating creams. Men, at the end of the day, will have to rely on their intellect and their passion, their erudition and professional success, to be acknowledged and idealised in contemporary society. Called the 'übersexual'—-a degree of greatness and perfection, an acknowledgment that this is an evolved species of man—he is so perfect as to leave little margin for error and fallacy."

Some, including Simpson and Armistead Maupin, have suggested that behind this congealed marketing-speak there was something rather simple going on: a homophobic attempt to stop the metrosexual being so "gay". Or, as Salzman herself put it proudly, the ubersexual (unlike the metrosexual) "doesn't invite questions about his sexuality".

Simpson has argued that from the beginning the appropriation of the metrosexual concept by American marketers such as Salzman in 2003 was always about trying to straighten him out. His original definition of the metrosexual was sexually ambiguous, or at least went beyond the straight/gay binary; marketers, in contrast, insisted that the metrosexual was always "straight" – they even tried to pretend that he wasn't vain.

However, they failed to convince the public – hence their attempt to create the uber-straight ubersexual.

Despite a large global PR push for their "new", completely "non-gay" metrosexual – and a largely uncritical press, which failed to notice that the list of top ten ubersexuals was essentially the same as the ones they had published two years previously as the top ten metrosexuals – the "ubersexual" failed to catch on with the public, as Salzman herself later admitted.