Men lost their charm ... maybe we never had it?

Easy there, before you draw your weapons.  Calm down.  Don't jump to conclusions, yet.

First, consider this excerpt:

Most men hold charm in vague suspicion: few cultivate it; still fewer respond to it; hardly any know whether they have it; and almost none can even identify it. Women commonly complain about the difficulty in gaining any conversational purchase when, say, trying to engage the fathers of their children’s classmates or the husbands of their tennis partners. The woman will grab from her bag of conversational gambits—she’ll allude to some quotidian absurdity or try to form a mock alliance in defiance of some teacher’s or soccer coach’s irksome requirement. But the man doesn’t enter into the give-and-take. The next time they meet, it’s as though they’ve never talked before; the man invariably fails to pick up the ball, and any reference the woman might make to a prior remark or observation falls to the ground. Men don’t indulge in the easy shared confidences and nonsexual flirtations that lubricate social exchange among women. Even in the most casual conversation, men are too often self-absorbed or mono-focused or—more commonly—guarded, distracted, and disengaged to an almost Aspergerian degree. 

No, not the time yet to draw your weapons.  Put them back. Especially if you are a woman; "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" :)

The essay, from which I excerpted those few lines, comes at an interesting time in my life.  (Yes, every post is always about me.  It is my blog!)

You know, who better than me--a divorced, single, middle-aged guy who occasionally stirs out of his home to wonder how the world outside is--to ruminate on the male charm and how much it has disappeared!  "If I were charming" is a line that reminds me of "if my aunt had balls, she would be my uncle" ;)

I mean, we don't refer to Prince Charming as a yardstick for nothing!  Well, it is also a fictional character for all the compelling reasons!

No, put that weapon down. Behave!

Back to that excerpt.  I, as a straight guy, agree that there are very few men who I find to be charming.  If it were not for his utterly atrocious treatment of women, former president Bill Clinton would be way up there.  But, "no cigar" in more ways than one, unfortunately.

When it comes to personalities on the screen, which is what that essay is mostly about, I am not that different from most when I think of George Clooney or Bradley Cooper.  Though, when discussing the movie that we watched, my daughter thought that Cooper was overrated in this category.  Maybe charm, too, is in the eye of the beholder.

In the old days, the phrase a charming man was often code for “a gay man,” and undoubtedly the undying but unfounded speculation about Grant’s bisexuality is based on the suspicion that no man so charming could possibly be heterosexual. There is no getting around the basic womanliness of charm.

Maybe.  As one Seinfeld episode put it, we live in an age when a guy who is not bad looking, has healthy habits, and keeps a clean home, is easily thought of as a "gay man."  "Not that there is anything wrong with that" as the episode kept up the theme, remember?  Now, think about me: I cook, keep a relatively clean home, have healthy habits, without any protruding beer gut ... thank heavens I am far from good looking!

You worked up enough?  Calm down by watching Charade, which brings together a charming man and one of the best looking women to ever be a movie star--the one and only Audrey Hepburn.

If you are worked up even after watching it, then you may draw your weapons ;)