Men And Women Have Very Different Ideas About Masculinity

There once was a time when big muscles and an even bigger, you know, were your one-way ticket to man land. But in 2017, what is means to be a ‘proper bloke’ means different things to different people. To the movies, it’s still about being able to fight off a group of 20 with your bare hands. Your mates tell you it’s in the number of beers you can down in one night. And your boss insists it’s being able to pull an all-nighter (funny, that.) No wonder everyone’s confused. Perhaps the biggest difference, however is what masculinity means to men and women. According to a survey of 1,000 people by hair transplant specialists at the Crown Clinic, each sex has its own ideas about the key traits of a ‘manly’ man. Chalk it up to prehistoric genetics but the majority of women were revealed to rate being physically strong as the biggest indicator, followed by caveman-like aggression. Guys on the other hand, think their manhood relies on being ‘thick-skinned’ and bottling up emotions, followed by intellectuality. Overwhelmingly, the fairer sex rated physical attributes as the highest, whereas men were shown to think its emotional aspects (or lack thereof) that define the modern alpha male. It’s no bad thing that today’s definition includes more than simply owning a penis, but with male suicide the biggest killer of men under 45 in the UK, isn’t it time we accepted that the world doesn’t need tough guys anymore? (Related: Men, Isn’t It Time We All Accepted That We’re A Bit Inadequate?)