Here comes the macho sexual
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction: as in the laws of physics, so it is in the world of masculine style and attitudes. A mere week after Prince Harry was spotted wearing pink nail varnish, heralding the girlification of the male gender, the "machosexual" man muscles his way to the fore to redress the balance.
According to Jeremy Baker, trend expert (love that job title) at London Metropolitan University, recession has killed the high-fashion, spa-loving, gym-frequenting metrosexual. His evolutionary successor, the machosexual, favours a more down-to-earth sartorial style based on comfort, durability and quality rather than throwaway fashion.
He prefers rugged outdoor pursuits to Pilates. The machosexual is a protector and hunter-gatherer, more concerned with looking after his woman than elbowing her away from the mirror so he can apply his guyliner.
Even sensible John Lewis has based its new summer menswear campaign - revealed exclusively today in the Standard - on the machosexual, and hired the suitably butch 26-year-old model Matthew Avedon to front it.
The grandson of photographer Richard Avedon, Matthew is renowned for shunning high fashion events and spending all his free time skateboarding. Indeed, shattered ankles and road-rash have on occasion kept him off the catwalks.
The trend expert and the department store are surely on to something. We see the machosexual in the rise of muscular, no-nonsense sportsmen like hoodie-wearing Cesc Fabregas and thunder-thighed cyclist Chris Hoy, in place of girly-men like David Beckham.
We see him in the shape of Bear Grylls and his fellow survivalists who, dropped into the rainforest with only a Swiss army knife, could probably knock up a shelter, dig a latrine and kill, skin and gut several endangered species by nightfall.
We see him, even, in the face of newly divorced Guy Ritchie, rolling out of his pub at 2am with his cigar and his flat cap, but ready for a karate knockabout with his mate Jason Statham at the crack of dawn. Last Friday scores of London males turned up at Victoria Park to fish with angling champion Bob Rudd, and reassert their right to spend time on manly pursuits.
Personally, not being over-fond of physical activity, I think I'll follow the other visible sign of machosexuality - as modelled by just about everyone from Joaquin Phoenix to Esquire editor Jeremy Langmead to the non-nail-varnished Prince William - and grow a beard. Arise, ye men, and join me. You have nothing to lose but your chins.
