Metrosexualtwigmen who admireyour shoes are all very well in good times, but whenthe going getstough, what you actually want is a REAL man, says TanyaGold.
As I stick my head out of my window, I smell a change in theeveningair. Everywhere I look big, dark, hairy, slightly fat men arestaringat me - from advertising billboards, cinema screens and thepages ofglossy magazines.
They growl, they glower, theyexudemenace and demonic sex appeal. I wonder, could it be - coulditreally be - that the beefcake is back?
Every creditcrunchcloud has a silver lining. We are already saying goodbye tohautecuisine, ugly, overpriced handbags and £60 knickers. Why did weever payso much for a bit of ribbon and a label? What was wrong withus? Were wemad?
Brawn again: Muscular hunks like model David Gandy (above) are back
Weare kissing hello to supermarket own brands, holidays inCornwall,making do and mending, and knitting. Even Scrabble is makinga comeback.
And, best of all things - better than Christmasevery day, betterthan a pay rise, better than me - men who look asif they mightactually be men are back.
Goodbye metrosexualtwigman with yoursad little manbag - you never did it for me - andhello beefcakebeast. Where have you been?
It should comeas no surprise. Economicdepressions have always walked hand in handwith the worship of rawmachismo. That is just the way it goes.
Ask Hollywood, if you don't believe me.
Who was the No. 1 box office star of the troubled Thirties? Fred Astaire with his tiny feet and silly hats?
Notachance. It was dark, dangerous Clark Gable (he of 'Frankly, my dear,Idon't give a damn') with rugged Spencer Tracy - a man who looked asifhe'd kill anyone who wouldn't serve him a drink - right behindhim.
Thenext big recession was the Seventies, when Hollywood gave usRobert DeNiro, Gene Hackman and Jack Nicholson, none of whom you'dwant to throwa punch at.
The era also produced Burt Reynolds. He was so masculine he was just testosterone with a face stuck on.
Andthistime it's no different. Leonardo DiCaprio and Ed Norton - chinlessdrips the both of them - are ebbing away in the popularconsciousness.
They have been replaced by Hugh Jackman, themassive Australianwith the massive chest, and Clive Owen, the BritishSin City star withthe nasty growl.
SylvesterStallone (right) has seemingly risenfrom the dead to make anothermovie. Hugh Jackman (left) is the massiveAustralian with the massivechest
We also have Jon Hamm, the gorgeous one from TVshow Mad Men, andeven Sylvester Stallone as Rambo has seemingly risenfrom the dead tomake another movie.
And this time he hasbigger arms thanever. If Sylvester Stallone is part of the zeitgeist,then the beefcakemust be back. In the fickle fashion industry, thingsare changing, too.In the affluent Nineties, the men on the billboardssimply shrank.
Theywere tiny, childlike men with no body hairand spindly legs. They hadconcave faces, hollow cheekbones, juttinghips and the open, bewilderedexpressions of children.
They were the size zero men, men by genitals alone, and to me they were as sexy as toast. They looked ill. They looked dead.
By2005you could put the average male model in a matchbox and still haveroomfor all his friends. The king of the twigmen, Russian modelStasSvetlichnyy, was 6ft and weighed 10st. Ten stone? That isdisgusting.
Yet,back then, he was so popular that even fashiondesigner Karl Lagerfelddecided to lose a third of his body weight toget the 'Stas' size zerolook.
In the Nineties we had Jarvis Cocker of Pulp. Now he just looks like a girl - and not a pretty girl either.
Infact,he looks like a girl on the run from an eating disorder unit. Buthow wedrooled and screamed and tried to rip his manbag off his scrawnyframe.
Wealso had to put up with James Blunt as thepopular icon of manhood inthe early Noughties. I met him a few yearsago at a party and I toweredover him. He only came up to my knee.
And what about MichaelJackson? First, he decided he wanted a whiteface, then a woman's faceand, finally, no face at all. And don't evenget me started on DavidBeckham. A man in a skirt? What went wrong?
Butthat is allover. Fashion has spun, mutated and spat out beefcake. Yes,he is back.Back! I scream it with joy from the rooftops - back! Maleicons willno longer weigh less than me.
In fashion,twigman has gone, tobe replaced by David Gandy, the male model of now.I find it hard to payattention to male models - I always forget apretty face - but evenI can see that Gandy, the Dolce & Gabbanamodel from Essex with thetiny white pants, looks like a Mexican banditon steroids.
Helooks as if he'd cut your throat for 10pand a packet of crisps and thengive the entire female readership ofthe Daily Mail a fireman's liftinto work.
I have alwaysfancied men like him. Even when I wasa tweenager, I yearned not forRick Astley, but for Orson Welles as MrRochester in the Fortiesversion of Jane Eyre.
Yes, he wasfat - he apparently hadto take a steam bath every night and wear acorset to squeeze him- selfinto his costume - but he stomped aroundThornfield like a dog withtoothache, his cloak flapping in the wind.
A new heart-throb from the world of TV, Mad Men's Jon Hamm
Ican't imagine Jarvis Cocker doing anything in the wind, exceptfallingover and getting his mummy to bandage his head. But why has thebeefcakereturned? Why has Bruce Banner become Hulk again? What hasbrought himback?
It's simple. It's so simple even DavidGandy couldunderstand it. The 'rise of the drip' was clearly anexpression of ourcollective affluence.
In the last boom, we had computers, call centres and automation - and money, so much money, to do everything for us.
Welivedin a highly sophisticated, fantastical, touch-screen culturewherebeefcake man was surplus to requirements. (OK, you mightoccasionallysee one in a garage, stuck under a car, wielding aspanner, but it wasrare.)
Everyone seemed to want to begay and middle class, eventhe men who were straight and working class.You couldn't squeeze into abar without being slapped with anover-styled Paul Smith suit and anoxious cloud of girl cologne.
Inthis sexless world of moneyand style, beefcake was nowhere. Becauseyou don't need a beefcake ifyou live in a penthouse with blinds thatgo up and down at the touch ofa button.
Beefcake looks weird in such a setting. Beefcake looks sad. Beefcake has nothing to do. He doesn't belong and he knows it.
Better to have a girl-man who looks like Keira Knightley and can discuss all your consumerist junk with you.
'Look,' says the perfect Nineties man. 'Shoes!' Ugh. It was not a good time for dating.
Butthingshave changed. Our economy is splintering, our seas are risingand houseprices are falling. Look away from the page and look back.Yes, yourhouse just lost another £50 in value. We are afraid, and weshould be.So what do we do?
We should choose beefcake.Fashion hasdecreed it. In times of hardship and uncertainty, what sanewoman wantsto cuddle up to a man she knows she could beat in a fight?
Who needs a sensitive accountant when all the money is going? Who needs a man to talk shoes when all the shoes have gone?
Intimes of hardship and uncertainty, what sane woman wants to cuddleup toa man she knows she could beat in a fight? (Above Daniel Craig asJamesBond)
It is better to have a man who can mend things foryou. And butchersheep. And build houses and grow vegetables and makethings out of bitsof wood.
Won't you feel safer? Won't youfeel better,knowing that there is a serious lump of muscle between youand thecold, cruel world outside?
Then there is sex. Shoppingmaybe dead, but sex is one of the few commodities that is booming. Allthesupermarkets are reporting increased condom sales. Because sex isacheap form of entertainment and it is also comforting.
Ibelievethe boom and all the aspirational rubbish that went with itwasessentially about denying who we were. Look, I have ahandbag/dress/car/tiara fit for a princess! Except I wasn't a princess,I was ajournalist. And now I am a journalist in a lot of debt.
Andnowwe can't afford to pretend to be other people, we can havebetterrelationships. A real person with another real person? Whocouldbelieve it?
Hardship gives great love, if you let it.
Do you remember the Blitz? Everyone had great sex in the Blitz, even my Auntie Marie, who hated men.
And who do you have sex with? Big, brawny, hairy men, proper men, that's who.
Whendidwe start thinking masculinity was threatening? Probably when Mummysaidwe had to marry a lawyer/accountant/doctor to buy us all therubbish wenow can't afford, and we don't need anyway
Now asensible Mummywill say: 'Marry a man who is nifty with a drill,darling. A man who candig a well. Because in the dark times coming,you won't need someone todo your VAT returns. There probably won't beany VAT.'
Post time 20-12-2011 03:26 PM
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