Old Fashioned Sex Symbols vs. Modern Male Stars: What’s the Difference?

King David-

Yeah, on retrospect I could’ve gone with Cruise, Downey, Jr., etc., for this article and it would’ve been a different story. Picked Clooney because he’s one of the ones I see most consistently hoisted as a heartthrob these days, but he’s got that somewhat soft/effeminate air, yeah. This seems to be a pretty common element with modern sex symbols, though, and that was one of the main things I wanted to highlight as having changed.

Connery as Bond… yeah. Actually, one of my best natural buddies (and one of my primary influences for chase framing) has a similar demeanor. He cracks more jokes and smiles/laughs more, but there’s a similar predatory coldness about him, like Connery’s as Bond. It’s absolutely catnip for girls though. I suspect it’s a kind of “Do you feel like playing with fire, little girl?” invitation many women find hard to resist. It sends some women instantly onto the defensive, because they know the guy’s dangerous and they don’t want to get sucked in, but they’re still intrigued. Other women are just ready to dive in whole hog.

In my experience it seems to work better with women who have some hang-ups or issues… I actually just came across some research recently finding that women with avoidant personality styles will chase men more if those men seem cold and aloof, while women with secure attachment styles will feel less attracted and be less interested in such men. I suspect this is what’s happening here, but I could certainly give it some treatment in an article.

Chase

Moon-

You can run Connery/Cooper with cold approach as well, but it needs more situational consideration to come across congruent.

e.g., Gosling can just walk up to a girl and start talking, and it comes across congruent because it suits his style. Whereas a Cooper or a Connery needs to do more work to set the open up – he has to catch her eye, motion her over, then open; or he needs to find himself next to her and open with a situationally relevant remark, etc. More challenging to do, but also tends to feel more like “fate”, which can give the guy a stronger reception on open, so there are plusses and minuses.

Seeming “boring” in social circle settings is not simply a result of not being a big talker. Guys often think this when they’re newer to seduction – I spent my first few years trying to dominate conversations, or quickly giving up if I couldn’t, assuming girls would see me as boring, non-dominant, unattractive, etc.

What I realized eventually though was if you can sit back and smile at the girl in a flirtatious way while some other guy does all the talking, more often than not you end up being the guy who gets the girl.

As a matter of fact, I learned to do this to outfox a wingman of mine who continually out-talked me; once I accepted I wasn’t going to out-talk him, I decide to let him do ALL the talking, and I’d just kick back and smile at girls and wink at them, and what happened was they’d start to cut him off and chase after me (to the point it was driving him a little crazy and he began to complain to me about it / ask our mutual mentor what on Earth I was doing to make girls ignore the guy doing the talking and come talk to me instead).

There are many kinds of value in social situations; being the talker is only one of them.

Chase

Guest-

Best way I've found is to simply put yourself into as many awkward / challenging situations as possible. Once you've pushed yourself to be open and forward in more challenging scenarios, the less challenging ones are natural, and you come across very unguarded.

Essentially, seek out high tension situations, and get comfortable with them. Comes naturally after that.

Chase

Mischief-

Absolutely, masculinity has been treated like a bad thing, particularly the past 20 to 25 years in the West. There’s been some real blowback mounting from a variety of different angles the past few years – I’m seeing more women openly reject effeminate/nice men, and openly state they want to be feminine and want to be with masculine men, and more men pursuing/embracing masculinity – so it seems like the zeitgeist is turning. Been an odd couple of decades though, historically-speaking, I’ll tell you what.

The Byronic man’s always been an attractive guy – your examples (Hiddleston’s Loki, Craig’s Bond) are great ones, and if you look at the guys here in the sex symbols article, they’re mostly portraying Byronic heroes as well (Gosling, Connery, and Dean are all Byronic in their roles here). The man who’s strong-but-damaged is an alluring mix of attractive + attainable; it’s a timeless mix.

Chase

SZ-

Only one way I know of: go out and fail.

That’s how I did it. You get tired enough of that fear, and finally you say to yourself, “You know what? I’m tired of being afraid. I’m going to go fail until I don’t fear failing anymore.” And then you just go let your pussy-ass ego get beat the heck up.

Hurts in the short-term, but in the long-term, man is it liberating.

I suggest you go find something you can fail at today, and go do it right now. I bet you’ll feel free after.

Chase

Trueteller-

Yes, Brando's another great one.

I left some key guys off this list, simply because I just plum forgot.

But I guess the good news is, that leaves more guys open to cover a little later on down the road :)

Chase