Paleo Retiree writes:
Some ads that caught my attention as I’ve made my usual rounds in NYC in recent days:
Twinks are in? And even black guys now open their mouths like women and wear buns?
Of course we who visit this blog are far too awesome to let our brains and tastes, let alone our self-images, be influenced by media imagery, but … Well, say that we were. What would we be taking our fashion industry to be telling us about masculinity today?
Some reminders of the examples of maleness that used to appear in American ads:
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
The feminizing of men has an upside — more females available for authentic males.
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Noticed on Wheel Of Fortune episode last night, the winner exhibited some of these traits. Men aren’t just becoming more feminine but they’re becoming androgynous.
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It doesn’t seem like feminization / androgyny is what’s going on. Those guys don’t look voluptuous, nurturing, or maternal — quite the opposite.
And if you go back to the Midcentury, it wasn’t just the men who had short unfussy haircuts, simple monosyllabic names, and basic control over their emotions. Was a woman of the Fifties masculinized or adrogynous because she had short un-frilly hair, went by Peg, and showed restraint when smiling for the camera and by not melting down every five seconds over life’s daily problems?
It’s like with racial differences — black men and black women are more alike than black men and white men or black women and white women. Racial groups are adapted to different geographical environments, while generations are adapted to different historical periods.
The big cultural change going on is lack of emotional restraint, although disregulation might be a better term — the blank stares on the faces of internet addicts in public places like Starbucks, libraries, etc., doesn’t look unrestrained but more like faulty, broken, and abnormal. This trend shows up in male and female forms, but they’re variations on a theme. Likewise for the trend toward emotional regulation during the Midcentury that came in both male and female versions.
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Paleo Retiree recently used the term “caricature,” which gets closer to what I mean. The trend nowadays is toward amplifying your persona, whereas in the Midcentury it was toward dampening it. Not the average persona shifting toward the male or female end of the spectrum.
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Our gay overlords are in charge now. Get used to it.
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Are gay men actually attracted to what we see above? If so, their taste has gone to Hell, as well, just like everything else in this country. Back in the 1980’s, most of the gay guys I knew would have been much more attracted to Steve McQueen, Bond, or Dino.
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Gay men don’t just want to be attracted to the men in advertisements, they also want to see themselves represented in advertisements.
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