The now ubiquitous image of a heavily muscled Daniel Craig emerging from the waves in the remake of Casino Royale has left many women gasping in appreciation. For the physique he spent six hours a day knocking into shape before filming, is more than just well made like, say, David Beckham's; it is chiselled, bulky, imposing, almost threatening. It is what body builders term 'ripped' - devoid of fat, and comprised of layers of toned, protein-fed muscle.
As one who has spent the past 25 years lifting weights, I suspect, or at least I hope, that Craig's Bond might signal the return of the beefcake over the androgynous metrosexual as the new paragon of manliness. I am sticking my neck out here, but I suspect that muscles never really went out of fashion. Women have for years been throwing their underwear at the sculpted chests of Chippendales.
And Mills and Boon novels, where the heroine invariably finds herself snuggling up against the broad and hairy chest of her brooding paramour, have been bestsellers for years. And it is no accident that Craig is being dubbed the best Bond since Sean Connery. The 6ft 4in hairychested Connery, like Craig, was a hell of a physical specimen when he played Bond.
Although big muscles never went out of fashion, too robust an appreciation of them by both sexes was culturally incompatible in the 1980s and 1990s with militant feminism, the subsequent war on masculinity and physical competitiveness, and the emergence of the emotionally and physically feminised metrosexual male. I left school in 1980 devoted to rugby and athletics and already able to bench-press my friends as an amusing party trick. But along came the New Romantics with their floppy hair and soppy lyrics.
It was hard to cultivate a macho exterior when the style icons of the time were the likes of Duran Duran and Wham!. Whereas I, at 18, was drawn to wearing T-shirts, my then girlfriend (now wife) kept cramming my bloated frame into the New Romantic uniform, comprising pointy shoes, baggy pinstripes, voluminous white shirt, raincoat and even a trilby.
I looked like Charlie Chaplin on steroids. And then the weight training culture was hijacked by the gay community, women, and finally rappers. The muscular look, when accompanied by a short haircut, became the gay look.
More recently it has become the rap look, associated with gang warfare, 'pimped rides' and 'busting a cap' in someone's 'ass'. And on both sides of the Atlantic it was women who transformed themselves, in the words of Tom Wolfe, into 'boys with breasts'. I remember going to a gym in New York in the mid-1990s and seeing two young women engaged in a press-up competition, while their friends gathered around shouting encouragement.
This was a fundamental social reversal. Still I persisted. My wife became worried at the singlemindedness with which I pursued my hobby.
She hated the way clothes looked on me. I am famous for asking my colleagues, as I went to the gym one lunchtime, to tell my wife, if she called, that I was in the pub. But above all, big muscles were deemed to be somehow common, confined to building sites, boxing gyms and converted basements.
Body builders had to be thick, moronically fixated, their hobby something to be embarrassed about. And the dictats of feminism centred on 'strong women' rather than manly men. But is lifting weights as a hobby any more pointless than gunning down unarmed feathered beasts on a grouse moor, or sitting for days on a river bank, holding a piece of string with a hook and a worm on one end?
And why do those long distance runners, with their weedy frames, fluorescent singlets and too-high shorts escape censure? They exercise ceaselessly and have nothing to show for it but shin splints and the washed-out look of a heroin addict. Think running, and you get Chariots Of Fire, Oscar acclaim and Vangelis soundtracks.
Think body building and you get the monosyllabic Arnold Schwarzenegger in Hercules In New York or Conan. Is this fair? Craig has liberated us 'lumpies'.
His character, I hope, signals the return of the sophisticated manly man, well-dressed, cultured, stoical and sensitive, but also able to hand out a good kicking should the need arise. He surely has to be a healthier and more robust example of the male form than, say, Russell Brand, with his nine-inch hips and toothbrush frame, or Pete Doherty, with his skinny, drainpipetrousered legs, and his vulnerable, thousand yard stare. I have conducted a swift straw poll, anonymous of course, of the wives living in my small Kent community.
When asked why Craig emerging from the waves is such a hit with women, the responses tended to boil down to one central theme: That they like their men to look like men. I will have fun over the next few days identifying and appraising their husbands. For men, a powerful frame means a powerful presence.
There is an unspoken solidarity between workout nuts. I remember going to interview President Bush, still a formidable athlete, in Washington prior to his UK visit. The only time the great man really registered my presence after an hour of basically fruitless questioning, was when he reached out, felt my upper arm, and asked 'Do you work out?
' But is there a more serious side to the emergence of the heavily built manly man as a physical role model? Three months ago the Daily Mail reported on a study in the U.S.
which suggested the physical attributes of a Craig or a Beckham might lead to young men feeling inadequate or acquiring eating disorders. 'Men see these idealised, muscular men in the media and feel their own bodies don't measure up,' said Dr Tracy Tylka, assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University. This may be true, but I do not see it as a new phenomenon.
Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Tom Cruise have been all over our cinema screens since the 1980s (though I could never accept Stallone's spectacular Rambo mullet as in any way manly). If there is a resurgence of concern about male role models, I think it is probably more to do with the decline of strident feminism and the reemergence of traditional manliness, which, in the end, is about emotional, rather than physical attributes. As for females, I suspect their taste in men changes as they grow.
My daughter, when 13, wrapped in the bosom of a protective and loving family, adored the effeminate Johnny Depp. Now that she is approaching 17, she has moved onto the muscled and macho Sawyer from the American series Lost. Every time I need to log onto her computer, I find Sawyer immortalised as her screensaver, staring back at me against a jungle backdrop, machete in hand.
I preferred it when she fancied Depp, frankly. 27 people have commented on this story so far. Tell us what you think below.
Here's a sample of the latest comments published. You can click to read all comments that readers have sent in.
- Linda, Victoria, Canada
I think we are all missing the main point here.
. Daniel Craig is such a consumate actor, he whipped himself into shape for the movie not vanity. Bond is a hired killer NOT a playboy.
I hope that in many years to come (as I'm sure he does) that the scene of him in his La Perla shorts is not the ONLY thing we remember of him. - Caroline Greenman (Brit), San Diego, CA
What a wonderful article! I think Daniel Craig as Bond is STUNNING.
I went to see the new Bond movie last weekend - the first time I have seen one for twenty years - and it was sensible, engrossing and the icing on the cake was Daniel Craig emerging out of the sea. I still had a smile on my face thinking of that scene the next day! - Linda Duncan-Adam, Dallas USA
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