For centuries, mankind has subdivided itself into categories of sexual orientation.
Asexual, bisexual, heterosexual, homosexual, omnisexual, transsexual (in alphabetical order).
What I propose is this: All of us heterosexual men out in the world have that little corner in us that harbors a Mancrush.
A Mancrush is exactly what it sounds like. It is a crush that a heterosexual man has on another, usually more famous, man. It can vary in degrees, from Man
I would love to be friends with Vito Corleone and therefore also Marlon Brando to This feels so right it can't be wrong
James Bond. I myself have harbored Mancrushes on several different actors in my time. Batman, Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman and Marlon Brando are pretty consistent entries on my list, although Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Smith, Frank Miller, Sting and Joss Whedon are contenders for Brando's spot. I'm sorry, Marlon, I just didn't care for your performance in Apocalypse Now. Maybe if you'd have learned your lines ...
But why would we be led to label ourselves as having a Mancrush? Because it is the utmost respect that one man can have for another. To say, If anyone could make me like dudes
it would be [Mancrush]
is the highest praise that one man can give to an actor or celebrity (football players are often included on the lists). For example, the male population of the Academy (as in the Academy Awards) apparently had pretty big Mancrushes on the Coen brothers, Javier Bardem and Daniel Day-Lewis this year, because I heard a lot about them and didn't really hear George Clooney or Michael Cera getting much of the love. It's a shame.
Where did this phenomenon we call Mancrush originate, anyway?
As far as my extensive research shows, the Mancrush was ushered in with the maturation of my generation (those of us in college right now are a good sample population) when we began to watch movies that didn't involve purple dinosaurs and freaky alien things with televisions in their stomachs. I need to give you a visual here: I'm shaking my fist in promised vengeance at Barney and the Teletubbies. Those are several hundred half-hours of my life that I will never. Get. Back.
I thought about dropping down to my knees and shouting a KHAN! at the Flying Spaghetti Monster, for that is how you tell him that you are angry.
The first recorded Mancrush that I could find should have been obvious to me from the beginning of my research and somehow, he was not: Morgan Freeman. And yes, in case you were wondering, part of my research was watching The Shawshank Redemption last night. Something about his voice-over narration takes a movie that is essentially Escape from Alcatraz with no Clint Eastwood and makes it a movie that I can't help but get adrenalized at the ending. Like the end of the first two Rocky movies. [SPOILER ALERT] In one of them (dramatic pause), Rocky wins. [End of spoilers].-
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Nick Philpott
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