Goodbye Leo DiCaprio, hellooooo Mark Carney
The men we choose to lust after are an intriguing sign of women’s changing status, finds Zoe Strimpel
When I was 15, I decided I was going to marry Leonardo DiCaprio. I’d seen Titanic, found the fictional demise of Jack Dawson unspeakably sad, and knew the only way to get over it was to meet and marry the man who played him.
Embarrassing though the object of my affections appears to me now, we know that fantasy crushes play an established role in the imaginative lives of teens. But, as a new book on the history of heartthrobs by University of Sussex historian Carol Dyhouse suggests, the unattainable men we lust after are more than just psychological puzzle pieces – they’re clues to the status of women in a wider sense, acting as a kind of feminist barometer over time.
“As women get stronger, they are freer to think about heartthrobs, rather than husbands,” says Dyhouse. “Where women are powerless, they tend to look to powerful men as protection. But the stronger they get, the more they can be interested in men as individuals.”
So the panting over Sherlock’s Benedict Cumberbatch, say, actually reveals women’s social and economic progress. Despite his emotional dysfunctionality in character, and his strange, atypical features, Cumberbatch appears alluringly clever and companionable in real life. He’s not going to carry us up a mountain on his shoulders, but that’s OK, because we can carry ourselves, thanks.
Fashions in female passion changed particularly sharply in the Sixties, when they detached from the idea of “husband material”. By the Seventies, as more women went to university, the more they were liberated to pant after odd, sexually mysterious men who daringly walked the line between masculinity and femininity – think David Cassidy and Bowie. And today, girls’ fascination with the likes of One Direction’s Harry Styles or Justin Bieber owes much to their curiously erotic mixing of masculine and feminine.
Hollywood has always had a big hand in shaping our lusts. Thus the post-war period brought stoic, strong, chiselled male leads – think Cary Grant or Gregory Peck. Now it’s the Ryan Goslings of the world who the sexually and emotionally liberated modern woman wants; what a Hollywood screenwriter friend calls “the total package arena” – sensitive hunks, with an arty flair. It seems we want men like this in real life, too. A recent survey of the most popular Tinder profiles shows soulful, sensitive-looking men with good bodies, searching expressions and a job in the arts. (NB: The most popular women are a little more predicable: young, thin, big breasts.)
So if our crushes tell us something about our place in history, what do they say about us as individuals? According to Edinburgh-based relationships therapist Val Sampson, boy-band crushes among young women provide a “good transition to adult sexuality”, prior to actually being ready for a sexual relationship. As we get older, we can use heartthrobs as fantasy to be incorporated into a healthy sex life. “The brain is the sexiest organ in the body,” says Sampson, “and a heartthrob can play a useful role in maintaining connection with your sexual self.”
Many of us fancy men who fit certain tried and true types: hunks; strong, silent types; troubled geniuses; talented crooners. But our libidos can go offpiste in surprising ways. For instance, a recent study from the University of Amsterdam found that many women fancy portly, older, divorced men. Having got the “not-husband-material” types out of their system, the appeal of someone domesticated can be strong.
Then there are the soft spots many women have for the likes of Andrew Marr, Louis Theroux and Michael Palin. When, after the Brexit vote, I posted on Facebook a newfound crush on Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, I was told to “join the queue”.
But there’s still a logic to our lusts. Carney was a figure of calmness and strength in the post-referendum chaos. Theroux and Marr have brains and character: cleverness is hugely attractive to a woman confident in her own intelligence. Paul Hollywood from Bake Off (a guilty pleasure particularly among older women) may look like a silverback, but has a creative, domestic skill. And it’s Gosling’s combination of vulnerability and hidden talent in La La Land that makes him irresistible.
In fact, notes Sampson, the ability to play the piano is a good indicator of crushability in pretty much any man. Heartthrobs: A History of Women and Desire by Carol Dyhouse is published by Oxford University Press (£20). To order a copy for £16.99 plus p&p, call 0844 871 1514 or visit books. telegraph.co.uk