And manly men are less mature somehow. Today's masculine archetype is actually cruder than it once was - it's younger and not so civilized. I blame wartime and cultural reaction - the lad movement, evo-psych, so-called retrosexuals...
The trend to caveman psychology argues that cool is subject to fads, but gender isn't. This is a way of simultaneously denying fads and enshrining them.
Not what I was saying. Guys like McQueen were manly in comparison to today. They were rough around the edges; would fight for a woman's honor; ride motorcycles and horses; wore men's clothing, etc. I don't think they worried about being manly, they just were. Today, it's almost unacceptable to be such a man. It's politically incorrect. After all, women can open the doors for themselves you know! I happen to like that era in some ways. There was a clearer divide between men and women - of course, not all of it was good, and many things have rightly changed for the better.
There's a different kind of "manly" today that you may not be paying attention to when focusing on the PC issue. Jesse James is an example: a great big kid who's been running on ego and hormones so long he probably no longer knows he's play-acting.
I ignore guys like him. He's not my idea of manly whatsoever. Those guys have always existed. Never liked them. Never will!
