How men became the new glamour models

You may have noticed that male bosoms appear to have supplanted the female variety lately. Whether it’s a ‘hench’ Cristiano Ronaldo stripping for Armani, a ‘ripped’ Justin Bieber for Calvin Klein, a sensually beefy David Gandy for pretty much everyone, or a heavily inked David Beckham for H&M, naked men and their pecs are everywhere to be seen.

You may also have noticed that the world's most popular men’s magazine, Men’s Health, doesn’t have a topless, pouting, pneumatic woman on the cover – as FHM and the other ‘lad mags’ now tasting MH’s talcum powdered dust always did. What does the magazine use instead? A picture of a topless, pouting, pneumatic man. Turn the page and you find the inside is rammed with ‘pro tips’ on how the reader can turn himself into a cover model.

And if you happened to be in London last month, around the time The Sun did or didn’t wave goodbye to female breasts, you could hardly have failed to notice a poster for Bulk Powders, a sports supplement company, busting out all over the London Underground. Depicting a perfectly-formed, perfectly-naked young man stepping out of a tube carriage, proudly displaying his depilated man-knockers and pixelated man-bits, it exhorted commuters to ‘REVEAL YOURSELF’.

Men are the new glamour models. And you don’t even have to turn to Page 3 to ogle them and their big, busty bosoms.

^{Justin Bieber looks coy as he models for Calvin Klein}

You may consider this a terrible feminist conspiracy. Or a gay one. Or a sign of the End Time. Or just very confusing. Or, like me, you might think it's just bloody brilliant.

But the chances are that even if you’re a resolutely heterosexual male with no interest in working out, you are not averting your gaze from all that pumped, prime man-flesh assaulting you on billboards, television and at the multipex (the ‘l’ is superfluous now that Hollywood movies, whether ‘action’ or ‘chick’, ‘Thor’ or ‘Grey’, are so choc full of pecs and abs).

According to a widely-publicised new study of 180 self-declared heterosexual men and women by the University of Technology, Sydney, whatever straight men say, they notice and react to adverts featuring semi-naked, coquettish men. At least, that is, if they consider themselves less attractive than the shirtless young men in the ‘sexually suggestive’ images they were shown.

Dr Eugene Chan, the study’s author and a lecturer in marketing, wasn’t interested in sexual arousal, however. Instead, he was interested in proving that men exposed to images of sexy men take more financial risks to try to become wealthier and thus more attractive to women, despite their puny ‘bis’ and ‘tris’. To Dr Chan, we’re all still ‘in the cave’, competing for ‘reproductive success’.

Having seen how today’s men behave in front of the smoked wall mirrors in my gym – and how fastidiously trimmed their pubes are in the changing room – I’m not so sure. Unless that cave has got a really great, well-stocked wet room.

^{Abercrombie & Fitch's male models shun T-Shirts}

Perhaps the non-humpy men in this study took risks after looking at Abercrombie & Fitch models because they realised they needed to make enough money to afford a subscription to Men’s Health, gym membership, all those supplements that guy on the tube poster was advertising, and a really shredded personal fitness trainer. Or a very good freelance Photoshop editor.

I’m not being entirely facetious. It’s one of the hallmarks of our visual, spornosexual age that you can reproduce yourself instantly with a tartphone – sorry smartphone – and a Twitter account. And if your selfies are really hot and hench you will go viral and global. You might even end up in your pants grinning out from the cover of Men's Health, on the side of buses, or – the very acme of masculine success in the 21st Century – with your own fragrance.

Another recent academic study at Ohio State University found that today’s men tend to objectify themselves in much the same way as women do. Unfortunately, this finding, which the author seemed to be most interested in, was almost universally obscured by headlines that screamed ‘MEN WHO TAKE LOTS OF SELFIES ARE PSYCHOS!’ – because she also claimed to have found a higher than average level of anti-social traits in selfie-obsessed men.

^{Former rugby international Thom Evans in a campaign for D. Hedral}

But you don’t need an academic study to know that young men today are eagerly objectifying themselves and one another. They’re doing it right in front of us. Just as the media has increasingly objectified them they have responded in kind – causing a furious, flirty feedback loop.

Perhaps the most surprising thing – or possibly only surprising thing – to emerge from Dr Chan’s Sydney study is that a significant number of the men in his cohort rated themselves as more attractive than shirtless Abercrombie & Fitch models. I’m not sure whether this makes me want to book a flight to Sydney immediately or make sure I never, ever visit.