Bowies Legacy to the new man
With the death of David Bowie a little while ago now I got to thinking of his legacy on culture and how men are perceived. It seems that men today in their twenties especially have taken a step backward and indeed even men of my generation. It seems the neanderthal man of watching football, grafting, expecting their dinner on the table from the little woman when they get in from work and staying in the pub are alive and well.
When I think back to David Bowie in the 70's and 80's a man who wore make up and wore outrageous garments which could have been and probably were perceived as either gay or affeminate by the traditionalist view of men and yet Bowie fought against that view of men marrying twice and having kids one son and a daughter that's why I think in many of today's men we have taken a step backward.
Many men of my generation and those in their twenties are still the generation that think men must go out to work and provide for their families. Many of these men today do not have manners and are decidedly ungentlemanly and their neanderthal image of what a man is supposed to be are underscored by women who love this kind of man rather than the man of breeding and manners and intellectualness as portrayed by David Niven and Roger Moore.
Before Bowie and people like David Niven, Roger Moore and even Duran Duran and Adam Ant in the 80's who were pioneers for men there were the foppish men of the 18th and 19th Centuries that wore make up and probably to some did dress affeminate. Yet they were still men who fought duels and loved their women and produced the next generation but alas seem to have given way to the silver back gorilla like men of today which as I said to me is a step backward for malekind.
In the image of David Niven and Roger Moore and David Bowie and into the 80's with the New Romantic movement which produced the likes of Adam Ant, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet etc men who had manners and wore foppish clothes and acted like fops and then in the football world with people like David Beckham how a man was perceived changed. Suddenly there were loads of products for men like moisturiser and shaving baum and 'Just for Men' hair dyes pioneered by these men.
Men became stay at home dads and were not afraid to do the house work and become house husbands while their female partners/wives went to out to work quite happy to leave what were female roles to their men.
The whole thing of what it was to be man had changed to a certain degree, men who wore make up, dressed outlandishly were getting away from the traditional Beau Brummell what men should look like and leaving the raising of the kids, cooking, and housework to women had changed. Suddenly real men did these things as I have described and did not walk away from their pregnant girl friend or wife because they were afraid of standing by their child and woman and facing the responsibility of both. These men did not beat their wives and keep getting their women folk pregnant while they had little to do with the women they had their wicked way with and not raising the kids had gone. These men were and are caring men, the best men, who love their women and their kids and will still work if needs be but their not afraid to let their women folk work and provide while the man stays at home and spends time with his kids and does the house work and cooking. These men take an active interest in how they look with the products now available to them and you can call them new men or metro - sexual but their still men not gay as heterosexual as any man could be.
If men still want to be traditionalist either my or the younger generation that's fine but there is an alternative man who is like the men I have described above and long may it continue and may their revolution change the way men are perceived both by women and in society at large.
A plethora of magazines for men.
In the metrosexual world of the modern man as described above there are now a plethora of men's magazines now just as there have always been women's magazines like Cosmopolitan.
These men's magazines like their female counterparts feature interviews with modern male celebreties in the world of sport, music and other genres. They also feature articles on men's products from the latest aftershaves, deodourants, and also men's fashion.
One of the most popular men's magazines in the UK now is 'Esquire' which as well as featuring all of the above that interest modern men there are also interviews with women that are pin ups and admired by men of today.
It seems even on the magazine front men's modern habits, beliefs, and way of life is being catered for.
