Where have all the real men gone?

The other day when reading some artciles, I noticed a strange trend. Well, in our minds anyway.

You see, we couldn't work out whether the men we were watching – many of whom had shaved legs, were sporting short, slightly see-through shorts and sunglasses so large they could have rivalled Nicole Richie's – were gay or straight.

Sure, they were chatting up girls. But, really, what the heck has happened to the blokey Aussie bloke?
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"We don't want shaved legs," said one of my girlfriends, pointing out those who stood in droves in front of us.

"We like hair. Maybe not so much on the chest, but definitely in the leg region. We definitely like it in the other region too. Yes, men, we like your nether regions unshaved. Otherwise it's too feminine."

Really?

"Yes, I don't mind a bit of hair in my teeth. And we like shorts that don't show their package and that cover their region."

(Apologies to all the men we encouraged on this forum to get waxed. Seriously.)

"Oh, and the sunglasses?" she ranted on. "We like to actually see your face. And my personal sentiment? Enough of the tattoos."

In short, she says the message to men should be this: "We like men hairy. We like them masculine. And we want the caveman back!"

To discover exactly where we're at in terms of the man trends (who can forget the technosexual or the retrosexual in 2007?), consulted Mark Simpson, who invented the word "metrosexual" in 1994.

Yep, the forward-thinking British journalist had seen the future of the male species when he visited an exhibition put on by GQ magazine in London in 1994.

"I'd seen the future and it was moisturised," he told me. The exhibition prompted him to coin the term in an article he penned for The Independent newspaper and suddenly the trend spread faster than the hot wax the men were using to wax their nads.

"It seemed to me that in the early '90s, male beauty came out of the closet. Man felt no more shame in his appearance."

While the concept didn't fully take off until the early noughties – "In the '90s people were in a little bit of denial about what was happening to men and why they were spending so long in the bathroom, but in the noughties it was impossible to ignore" – suddenly metrosexuals were everywhere.

Simpson pointed a well-manicured finger at metrosexual pin-up boy David Beckham, who wore a sarong, painted his nails and posed for a semi-nude photoshoot in a gay magazine.

"At the time, this kind of behaviour by a football hero was unheard of in the UK. But when he started projecting metrosexual behaviour so openly, we quickly went from denial in the '90s to metrosexual mania in the early noughties when the word was overused … and men got a bit obsessed with facials and flip flops."

Nowadays, he says, metrosexual men are pretty much the norm.

"So many things metrosexuals do have just become acceptable and hardly worthy of comment that these days it's not enough to draw attention to yourself."

Hence, these days, in order to get noticed, Simpson says some men are going one step further. He's termed the new bloke on the block the "Alphaesthete", with pin-up boys being the likes of football player Cristiano Ronaldo and comedian Russell Brand.

"Because metrosexuality is so commonplace, the new bloke manages to stand out despite that. What makes him stand out is generally the fact that he is not terribly concerned with what other people will say."

Apparently this new bloke is not just concerned about looking good and taking care of himself but he is not ashamed of being self-obsessed, pushing boundaries and ensuring that his outlandish behaviour isn't indicative of his sexuality.

"He is not worried about whether something is masculine, gay or straight; he just does what he wants. He doesn't need a product with the word 'man' in front of it – manscara or a manbag. Instead he just wears and does what makes him feel good about himself. He is cutting edge, avant-garde."

So is that what's happening to our Aussie blokes? Are they so bored of being termed metrosexuals that they've gone one step further?

Of course the dudes we saw at the Ivy Pool are a small subset of men who (we hope) aren't exactly indicative of where the entire male species is heading.

While we can applaud these sorts for being so fearless that they don't give a toss what others think (or at least they purport to be that way), when it gets to a point at which women can't work out whether they're gay, straight or somewhere in between … perhaps something needs to be done.

Perhaps, as my friend says, we need an intervention. Perhaps we need a movement. Perhaps we need to encourage blokes to bring their inner caveman back.

Either way, I think I'll start hanging out at a pub instead of a designer pool bar where sport is on TV and the only thing they're serving is beer. No designer cocktails or wet chiselled bodies (sans hair) in sight ...

STOP PRESS!!

Thanks goodness Movember is back! Men are encouraged to grow a moustache in November with the sole aim of raising vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and depression in men. Perhaps when the Aussie men start to grow their Mos, we'll start to see the re-emergence of the caveman after all … and nothing could be sexier. Especially a dude who also does good for mankind while looking good doing it …