Intelligent is the new sexy.
The strong, silent type…
Whatever your media preference, there seems to me to be a veritable glut of the deep thinking introverted seemingly heteronormative male lead for you to pine after. And I don’t mean anything bad by that. It is just interesting to me how we are so drawn to the socially inept, no that’s the wrong phrase, for these chaps aren’t inept, they’re… socially indifferent. Their inability to interact easily on a social level is not a source of overwhelming concern for them, it is more of an inconvenience.
Forever these leads, Rick Blaine, DCI Tom Barnaby, Sherlock Holmes (all the Holmes’s), Dr Cox, Hercule Poirot, Iron Man, Wolverine, all had a single, driven, focus fed by their overly inflated ego. All struggled to fit in in normal social situations, all had bizzare or damaged relationships with everyone in their lives.
Their characteristics include being blunt, unsentimental, unrelentingly obtuse, and controlling. They lack empathy, display obsessive compulsive behaviours, and have infrequent, brief, physical relationships. Most of all they have a trying, perplexing, relationship with their ever-devoted long-suffering main sidekick.
And why are they so prevalent in crime dramas and true crime shows?
Why are we so attracted?
With all this going on, why are we so attracted to them, (probably apart from Poirot – but I don’t judge)? I’ve asked my binary and non-binary friends, regardless of gender-preference, and also looked at chat rooms, internet followings/likes and twitter discussions on these male leads, and the upshot is: we just love them! We’re addicted to their shows. Their brooding, silent, intelligent perception draws us in.
Why? Again I ask: Why do we love the dark, brooding type? Is it because, as many discussion threads suggest, they normalise our own social and emotional anxieties? Or, in the case of women who prefer men, do we just want them to shut up and be more thoughtful?
I question the latter, I want to dispel it because I’ve been on dates and in social situations with, and in fact a friend of mine was (past tense) married to, the silent type, and here’s the truth of it – the ones I have met might be physically strong, albeit frequently wiry, but they’re not silent because they are deep in philosophical or scientific thought, they’re silent because they have nothing to say. Myth dispelled.
I prefer to think the former, as someone who has had difficulty in social situations myself, these character portrayals regularise this. Show there are different ways to demonstrate societal value (albeit niche), and demonstrates to us, sometimes without even saying it explicitly in narrative, what is going on behind the silent front.
The new sexy
And that’s why we love them. We are hearing what we want to hear. We are hearing that, beyond the stern exterior, the social inability, these male leads we find attractive are clever, deep thinkers, and we find that very sexy.
To me, it is a clear demonstration that our hero-worship has evolved beyond the hunky, hot, strong, stud that rides to our rescue in his pulsing charger. The guy with those v-shaped muscles above his groin that make smart-girls dumb (according to Beth Behr’s character Caroline in Two Broke Girls).
For it is us, the audience, who have evolved. We are finding nerds sexy, we are looking for more, and TV has provided that in spades.
But just in case we want a bit of heat, they kindly oblige by throwing in shirtless scenes, such as Rupert Penry-Jones in Whitechapel, Benedict Cumberbatch (Sexiest man of the year 2012) in Sherlock, Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man, Sherlock Holmes - anything really, to transcend our thinking-woman’s attraction, and seal the deal with some eye-candy.
Love them or hate them intelligence is the new sexy. Then again, with the way these guys are portrayed in this world of political correctness maybe they just say the things we’ve always wanted to say.