Male Sexiness in this Modern Age: What's a "Real Man" These Days, Anyway?

In the past few years, Hollywood has recast the male Adonis as slim, bookish, and emotionally available. Some men aren’t happy about it. Where does that leave you?

On April 13, 2021,

Mitchell S. Jackson of Esquire writes:

"You might’ve noticed that Hollywood has been remaking, or at least diversifying, the attributes of male sex symbols and, you could argue, manhood itself right alongside them. Exemplars of this en vogue masculinity are less the musclebound, taciturn, and seldom-emotive men of yore but slim, bookish, sometimes awkward, and empathic types, some of whom are daring against gender boundaries: Timothée Chalamet, Harry Styles, Shawn Mendes, etc. 

Let’s unpack a bit, shall we?

The fact that Hollywood’s new standard-bearers of masculinity are young white men shouldn’t be no big old surprise. (Jaden Smith and Tyler, the Creator touted as equal paragons? Not so much.) This goes back to eighteenth-century art-history pioneer Johann Winckelmann, who extolled the beauty of whitewashed Greco-Roman statues. “A beautiful body will be all the more beautiful the whiter it is.” But it’s also a response to prime cultural forces: the #MeToo reckoning; the cultural, political, and social capital of the LGBTQ+ movement; and the most recent wave of feminism.

If you’ve spent any time on Reddit or, in the pre-Covid days, at a barbershop, gym, or watering hole, you can fathom the anxieties this revisioning has begotten.

And I understand some of the angst. Sometimes when I’m shopping the website of my favorite brands, the androgyny of the styling makes me double-check, a bit bemused, whether I’m browsing the men’s or women’s section. Truth—I still covet a bench press on par with my late homie Blass’s. Part of me values emotional strength—at times a form of impenetrableness—for having helped me endure certain crucibles. In my work life, I’m often asked to identify my gender pronouns, and though I do it because I recognize what the act means especially to trans allyship, my inner voice sometimes chides me that my identity should be obvious.

But there’s a difference between the mild anxieties of the average man and a man’s man bristling over these changes.

Who’s this man's man’?"

Find out by reading more at Esquire. Click here for the full story...

 

 

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