14 DAY TRIAL // Hollywood, and the celebrity world in general, is constantly fascinated and occupied with setting and then promoting absolute values. They usually go by the name of trends and, as fans must know, they range from the latest “It” bag to the hottest “It” leading man or woman. As far as the former is concerned, as of late, the industry has shown a clear refusal to promote what one might refer to as “real men,” choosing instead man-boys who all look the same, and are just as androgynous as acceptable without falling in the wrong category.
As a new piece in the Daily Mail also points out, stars like Al Pacino, Robert De Niro or Sean Penn are no longer wanted on the scene, having been replaced by a series of identically looking young men the likes of Ashton Kutcher, Zac Efron, Chace Crawford, Robert Pattinson or Orlando Bloom. They all have in common the soft, delicate, feminine features, full lips, dreamy eyes, carefully coifed hair, and an impeccable and very keen fashion sense. They are the exact opposite of the male model of the previous generation and, what’s more, can be easily interchanged one for another, the Mail claims.
This is the type of man that Hollywood is now promoting because it favors quantity over quality, and because it has come up with a solution that has, so far, proven very lucrative. Clearly, when something makes money, Hollywood will make sure it sucks it dry before throwing it out the window. “Certainly it’s simpler for them to have a posse of indistinguishable lookalikes to choose from. If, as happened recently, Zac Efron pulls out of a remake of the dance movie ‘Footloose,’ Chace Crawford can be hired without pausing for breath: the same hair, well-defined eyebrows, full lips and light eyes. It’s much more convenient for producers to buy by the yard from a stable of pretty boys than to have to deal with the idiosyncrasies of strong individuals. In the era of the focus group, the tendency for the cynical world of commerce is to find a successful formula and then stay with it; and the more homogenous the better. Individuality and creativity are, it seems, no longer celebrated; making money is all.” says the Mail.
Money is not the only thing that can explain for the longevity of this type of male celebrity model, the same publication argues. The constant search for youth, admittedly most noticeable in women, has led to the realization that if one can’t personally have youthful looks, the least one can do is surround oneself with youth and beauty. This phenomenon, the Mail stresses, is now known as the rise in popularity of boytoys, younger men who date older women, to the detriment of guys the same age as the ladies in question. On the same note, gone is the fascination women once had with older men, since they all want now someone who might be in their 20s but doesn’t look older than 18.
“These days, no one wants to grow up, and where once the adage for a man was that he was as old as the woman he feels, it’s now a case of women finding youth in the arms of boys. If you can’t hold on to youth for yourself, you can at least wear it on your arm and hope in some vampiric way to absorb it into yourself.” the Mail writes, offering the example of the marriage between Hollywood stars Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore.
