Celebrities

The decline of man: the steady emasculation of our role models

THE decline of Man: modern man is in a state of crisis, reared on a diet of creams, depilated, patent skin and self-tanning unguents. Here, Anorak looks at the fall of manhood.

“I never fixed my eyes, but I spent more money to stretch the skin of my testicles. I did not like the wrinkles. It’s a new technique, many people in Hollywood have done it. It’s called ‘ball ironing’.”

It is generally assumed that George Clooney was joking when he delivered the above quote. One thing is true, though: ‘ball ironing’ (or ‘male laser lift’) is available at the Beauty Park in Santa Monica for just under $600, and it is proving very popular.

Clooney may not have had the treatment himself, but his familiarity with it is cause for concern. It’s just the latest in a series of milestones in the steady emasculation of our role models. And the rot set in, as it so often did, in the 1950s.

Dennis Compton

Compton (second left, with Burt Lancaster and Frankie Vaughan) was a brilliant batsman with a Test average of 50 (including over 200 runs in one match against South Africa using an antique bat borrowed from the cricket museum). He also found time to play football for Arsenal, with whom he won both the league championship and the FA Cup. Unfortunately, he also became the face of Brylcreem, and set the tone for future generations of sportsmen to dabble in the darker corners of male grooming.

Elvis Presley

Presley offended people in numerous ways –not least with his habit of wearing eye makeup. None of which stopped him from being drafted into the US Army. Here the prospective GI sits his written military exam, in slightly more discreet slap.

Henry Cooper

As deodorant manufacturers attempted to broaden their appeal to the male half of the population, they recruited macho sporty types like Our ’Enery (’ere wiv’ ’Arvey Smiff) who here advertises Brut with the immortal slogan ‘Splash it all over’.

Ron Atkinson

Big Ron: The Sunbed Years.

Graham Gooch

In his playing days as opening bat for England, ‘Goochy’ sported an imperial moustache and resembled an officer at Rourk’s Drift. His subsequent hair transplant came as something of a shock – and led to a series of rather defensive gestures. Defensive, not about the fact of the transplant, but the quality of the weave itself.

Here Gooch, as the official caption puts it, ‘test[s] his hair replacement treatment in a Central London health Gym, to disprove claims that the treatment does not work. The former England captain is at the centre of an disgreement, after a client of AHS (Advanced Hair Studio) along with the Advertising Standards Authority claimed that adverts claiming that Gooch could swim, shower, and play sport with his hair treatment were wrong and misleading.’

David Beckham

The signs were there as a young boy, when he enjoyed wearing knickerbockers and ballet shoes. Later we had his own take on Brylcreem advertising (above) and experiments with sarongs. His nomination here, however, is for his championing of the ‘back. sack and crack’ – the logical conclusion of the waxing mania that overtook British manhood in the twenty-first century.

Luis Figo

Deserves his place here for his role in the general poncification of older men, with his truly terrible Just For Men advertisement – a product for disguising grey hair and beards and allowing old men to kid themselves that they are attractive to women half their age.

Cristiano Ronaldo and Rio Ferdinand

AKA: Ronaldo and Rio in hotpants hell. What were they thinking? Seriously?

Shane Warne

He held his hands up to the hair transplant, and fair play to him for that, but Shane’s explanation for his subsequent transformation into a taught-faced waxwork is altogether less convincing: he attributed it to ‘good moisturiser’. Others spoke of botox, facelifts and teeth whitening. Wherefore art thou, Warney-o?

Leinster Rugby

The citadel falls. Once upon a time the best you could hope for in a rugby union changing room was a bar of coal tar soap and a turd in your kit bag. Now you are more likely to find a range of hair and skin care products. Leinster Rugby are now sponsored by Nivea for Men. Or should that be ‘Men’?

O tempora, o mores!

ENDS

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