The narrative of men rejecting metrosexuality and reclaiming their manhood makes perfect marketing sense.
Every decade or so, a new trend, be it aesthetic or otherwise, emerges to challenge the status quo of what it means to be a man. From the mid-90s up until now, the neologism of the moment was "metrosexual", which was often used to describe men who take pleasure in spending their disposable income on fancy hair gels.
But now, spurred on by the popularity of Mad Men and made timely by the onset of the he-session, the metrosexual is being pushed aside in favour of the menaissance. A brave new era of manhood in which men are putting their feet down and reclaiming their manliness from whoever it was that thieved it from them. So far the trend has been limited to adverts and sales gimmicks, but is expected to leak out into the public sometime round Halloween.
What were once the radical feminist ideals of the 60s have now become commonplace. Both in the US and the UK, females have long outperformed males in school, and are now beginning to dominate the workplace as well. And last week it was reported that young, single, childless women are earning higher salaries than their male counterparts in the majority of US cities. Many men have welcomed such news, others barely noticed, some were indifferent, while a troubled few have desperately clung to the whole pie.
In the face of this gender turbulence and economic uncertainty, the narrative of men reclaiming their manhood makes perfect marketing sense. Whether packaged in an aerosol can or in the form of an affordable line of menswear, one's fleeting sense of "man-ness" is just a Banana Republic away.
But this creeping man-panic isn't limited to advertising campaigns and middle management redundancies. Earlier this year, the lower depths of academia also got into the mannish market when an American college opened up a "male studies" department to counteract what members of the discipline perceived as a feminism's "denigration of male-ness".
These phenomena and the associated chicanery help to explain the hysterical levels of anticipation that surrounded Don Draper's return to the BBC this week. And series four started off with a rather difficult question: "Who is Don Draper?" Perhaps a more pertinent question would have been "what". As in – what is it that makes Don Draper so irresistible to both men and women and why?
In her book, Mad Men Unbuttoned, Natasha Vargas-Cooper theorises about the root of Draper's appeal, beyond his movie star good looks: "Though he rarely flaunts it, there is a sense of safety about Don. It's clear that he has a sturdy, protective embrace."
Don, né Dick, is such an endearing character because he represents the quagmire of 21st century manhood. He is at once paternal and predatory, a man in transition who is falling apart piece by piece as he drunkenly stumbles towards the future. He is the masculinity crisis personified, and conveniently enough, he's also the solution. At least until the next aftershave marketing craze comes along.
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