The archetype of this ideal man is Mr Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce. Maybe Swift is on to something
H
ow do you like your men? Yes, obviously, we shouldn’t be dismissively taxonomising a whole gender like boxed Barbies. But in the era of tradwives and nu-gen gold diggers, in which the manosphere remains alive and kick(box)ing, telling teenage boys lies about women, I reckon there’s a way to go before we reach reductive objectification parity. Does that make it OK? No. Am I going to do it anyway? Yes, a bit.
So, returning to the question, my answer is “like my coffee”: small, strong, dark and highly over-stimulating, brewed by my sister’s boyfriend in Scarborough … No, hang on, this is falling apart. Regardless, my ideal man is wildly at odds with the zeitgeist and my husband needs to punch up his protein intake and stop having opinions, because the New York Times claims a new dream man has dropped and he’s “beefy, placid and … politically ambiguous”.
What do we know about the nouveau-neutral hunk? Well, apart from the essential 1:1 neck-to-head ratio and thighs like sequoias, he’s “sweetly naive, simple, almost oafish … unfazed by the byzantine requirements of modern masculinity, largely because he doesn’t know or care that they exist”. Grazia agrees, issuing an appreciation of what it is calling the “Woke Jock”: “As unremittingly blokey as he’s gentle”, the Woke Jock is comfortable with vulnerability and happy to be out-earned.
