I should know this because it’s my major… but Da Vinci did the Vitruvian Man, which I think was about man being of perfect proportions, and a circle within a square and all that. Well, this guy is my vitruvian man. The complete ideal.

I should be studying postmodernism for my exam tomorrow. But I figure, for the time being, this is quite important. This is Leonardo di Caprio. I don’t know anything about Darwinism and the evolution of man (monkeys and trees to men and briefcases) but if Darwin could, I’m sure he would make a full new chapter devoted to this guy. The ideal man has been defined!! … In the form of a character in Catch Me if You Can which is a great film, and I don’t know anything about its specifics.  But it’s that era in America where being a con artist was glamourous, and maybe Vietnam was happening, and men were men.  This is Leo as a con artist playing a pilot. Story line aside, this is manhood right here.

And again… more of what a man should be. But in a perfect world, the airhostesses would be airbrushed out and I’d be there. But the uniform, the aviator sunglasses, this is what should be on the market and isn’t. Forget the financial recession, there’s been a deficit in the male species for YEARS. Our mothers married the last good ones.

And even in the film when he is not pretending to be a pilot, the casual side is still good. Today we’ve got guys with their pants hanging around their backsides, baggy jeans, huge tshirts, unshaven. Below we have, again, the ideal. He wears a wrist watch. A wrist watch. I think a wrist watch says a lot about a man. He’s probably forward thinking, aware. Not relying on his phone for the time. It shows diligence and activity in life. Non-passive. Also, notice how although his pants fit perfectly, he still wears a belt. Belts are a plus. As is the collared shirt, tidy hair and shaven face.

Shame we can’t all revert to a time when it looked like the above and when words like “swell” were used, and “gee whizz”; and where “god damn it” was a hard swear word. Men that don’t get drunk, pull their pants down on their balconies, hold AND scream about their own genitalia, aren’t smoking pot, doesn’t get told the score by their mothers when they’re meant to be adults, doesn’t curse at you, can hold a door open, and if there isn’t enough room on the pavement for both of you to walk on, he’ll step off and walk on the road. Chivalry.

If the Bridget Jones generation (those 25 and over) out there is searching for perfect, I would say that this variation of the ideal, pictured above,  is a high contender.