by For generations, popular culture taught audiences that the desirable man had to look unmistakably masculine.
He was broad-shouldered, physically imposing, emotionally controlled and conventionally rugged. His clothes were supposed to communicate authority rather than softness. His beauty was permitted, but usually only when it was accompanied by signs of strength: a strong jaw, muscularity, confidence, toughness and an almost effortless refusal to appear vulnerable.
Then something changed.
Men began appearing on magazine covers wearing pearls. Pop stars painted their nails. Actors arrived at premieres in silhouettes traditionally associated with womenswear. K-pop idols built enormous international followings while embracing elaborate skincare, delicate styling, jewellery and expressive fashion. Latin music stars blurred masculine and feminine visual codes. Young men on social media began treating beauty routines, softness and experimentation not as embarrassing exceptions, but as ordinary parts of personal style.
The important cultural development is not simply that some men now wear traditionally feminine clothes.
It is that femininity itself is becoming less automatically incompatible with male desirability.
That distinction matters.
The rise of feminine-presenting men does not mean masculinity has disappeared, nor does it mean every woman or every audience member has suddenly developed the same preferences. Attraction remains intensely personal, culturally influenced and shaped by countless factors. Research has never supported the idea that there is one universally attractive form of masculinity. Studies have found that preferences for masculine and feminine male characteristics can vary according to context, culture and individual differences.
What is changing is the cultural menu.
The modern media landscape is giving audiences more versions of what a desirable man can look like, sound like, wear and emotionally communicate.
And once people see more possibilities, the old rules can begin to feel less inevitable.
Masculinity Was Never One Universal Look
The idea that masculinity has a single visual language is itself historically constructed.
Different societies have always produced different ideals of male beauty.
In some periods of European history, elaborate clothing, jewellery, decorative fabrics, powdered faces and ornate hairstyles were associated with elite men. In other eras, military strength and physical toughness dominated the masculine ideal. Across South and East Asia, theatrical traditions, cinema, music and fashion have produced male figures whose beauty does not always correspond to the rugged Western template.
Even the contemporary image of the hypermasculine man is relatively specific.
It is associated with particular social expectations: toughness, dominance, self-reliance, emotional restraint and the rejection of characteristics coded as feminine. Psychologists studying masculinity have repeatedly identified these expectations as socially learned rather than simply inevitable expressions of male nature.
That is why the appearance of feminine men in mainstream media can feel surprisingly disruptive.
The disruption is not necessarily the skirt, pearl necklace or eyeliner itself.
It is the suggestion that a man can possess those qualities without surrendering his social desirability.
That challenges an old equation:
masculinity = male worth = attractiveness.
The emerging cultural equation is more complicated:
masculinity can coexist with softness, beauty, emotional openness, ornamentation and ambiguity.
That does not erase masculinity.
It expands it.
From “Pretty Boy” to Global Cultural Force
The “pretty boy” has existed for decades, but his cultural position has changed.
Earlier versions were often treated as exceptions. A beautiful male actor could be admired, but the narrative frequently reassured audiences that he possessed traditionally masculine qualities underneath the beauty.
The contemporary feminine-presenting male celebrity does not always require that explanation.
Consider Harry Styles.
His significance lies not simply in wearing traditionally feminine clothing. It lies in the scale at which that visual language entered mainstream celebrity culture.
For his December 2020 Vogue cover, Styles wore a Gucci dress and became the magazine’s first solo male cover star. In the accompanying interview, he described gendered clothing boundaries as barriers that limited experimentation and spoke about the pleasure of treating clothing as a creative playground.
His cultural importance is therefore less about a particular outfit than about who was wearing it and where it was being shown.
A man could be presented as glamorous without being presented as ridiculous.
He could be visually delicate without being framed as weak.
He could embrace femininity without needing to apologize for it.
That is a powerful shift in representation.
K-Pop and the Globalization of Soft Masculinity
If Western audiences often associate the recent conversation about feminine men with Harry Styles, East Asian popular culture provides an even larger and more complex case study.
The global rise of K-pop has introduced millions of viewers to male celebrities whose presentation frequently incorporates elements that traditional Western masculinity has historically coded as feminine.
BTS and numerous other K-pop artists have helped popularize what scholars describe as forms of “soft masculinity.” Academic research describes this aesthetic as a hybrid construction that can combine Korean traditions with global influences, including beauty, politeness, emotional expression, fashion and carefully constructed visual elegance.
This is particularly important because K-pop does not merely export music.
It exports an entire visual ecosystem.
Male idols may be shown with carefully styled hair, luminous skin, jewellery, colourful clothing, coordinated outfits, delicate accessories and elaborate beauty looks. They can express affection toward other men without necessarily performing the emotional distance expected in some traditional masculine cultures.
For international audiences encountering this representation through music videos, dramas, concerts, fan communities and social platforms, the effect can be cumulative.
A teenager who grows up seeing only one type of male beauty may initially perceive another type as unusual.
But repeated exposure changes familiarity.
And familiarity can change what feels socially possible.
This does not mean exposure automatically changes someone’s sexual orientation or personal preferences. It means media can influence the boundaries of what people recognize as attractive, fashionable, respectable or socially acceptable. UNESCO similarly notes that media both reflects and influences understandings of gender norms, roles and stereotypes.
The K-Pop Effect Is Not Simply “Asian Men Are Feminine”
There is an important cultural caution here.
Calling K-pop men “feminine” without context can reproduce the very stereotypes that the phenomenon complicates.
Soft masculinity is not simply the absence of masculinity.
Nor is it synonymous with femininity, homosexuality or weakness.
Researchers have emphasized that contemporary Asian masculinities are hybrid and culturally specific. One study of BTS, for example, describes their global presentation as a form of versatile masculinity shaped through transmedia culture, while warning against reducing Asian masculinity to simplistic East-versus-West comparisons.
That distinction matters enormously.
A Korean male idol wearing jewellery does not necessarily represent an attempt to become feminine.
He may be performing a different version of masculinity altogether.
The same visual element can communicate different meanings in different cultural environments.
Eyeliner on a Western male rock star, a K-pop idol, an Indian actor and a Japanese performer may be interpreted through completely different cultural histories.
Globalization has not erased those differences.
It has placed them in conversation.
Japan’s “Bishōnen” Tradition and the Long History of Male Beauty
The current global fascination with beautiful, delicate male celebrities also has deeper roots in Japanese popular culture.
The concept of the bishōnen—often translated as “beautiful boy”—has played a major role in Japanese artistic and popular traditions. Manga, anime, theatre and music have long provided space for male characters whose appeal can be associated with elegance, beauty, slenderness, emotional complexity or visual ambiguity rather than straightforward physical dominance.
That history matters because it demonstrates that the Western muscular ideal was never the only possible model of male attractiveness.
Contemporary global audiences increasingly encounter multiple traditions simultaneously.
A viewer might grow up with Hollywood action heroes, Japanese anime characters, Korean idols, Indian cinema stars and Latin music performers appearing on the same social-media feed.
The result is an unprecedented collision of aesthetic languages.
A masculine ideal that once seemed universal begins to look culturally specific.
Harry Styles and the Normalization of Gender-Fluid Fashion
Styles’ cultural contribution is particularly interesting because his own explanation has generally emphasized creativity rather than prescribing a new form of masculinity.
In a British Vogue interview, he argued that masculine and feminine categories could be treated less rigidly, describing their boundaries as something that could be played with.
In another Vogue profile, he discussed his admiration for flamboyant performers such as Prince, David Bowie, Elvis Presley, Freddie Mercury and Elton John. He described clothing as something to experiment with rather than a rigid system of gender rules.
This creates an important distinction.
He is not necessarily telling men, “You should dress femininely.”
He is communicating something broader:
You do not have to avoid something simply because society has labelled it feminine.
That is a much more consequential cultural message.
Because inclusivity is not about replacing one beauty rule with another.
It is about reducing the number of rules.
Timothée Chalamet and the New Male Heartthrob
Timothée Chalamet represents another side of this transformation.
His public image has often occupied the space between traditionally masculine celebrity appeal and deliberately unconventional fashion.
In a documented British Vogue conversation with Styles, Chalamet rejected the idea that masculinity required a particular body, clothing style or performance. He emphasized the possibility of being masculine without conforming to a fixed visual formula.
His importance is particularly visible in the evolution of the Hollywood heartthrob.
The traditional heartthrob was frequently designed around physical power.
The newer “artthrob” can be desirable because of a combination of beauty, intelligence, sensitivity, fashion, individuality and emotional expressiveness.
This does not mean physical strength has become unattractive.
Rather, physical strength is no longer the only socially prestigious route to male desirability.
The Female Gaze Is Not One Thing
The phrase “female gaze” is often used too casually.
There is no single female audience with one unified definition of attractiveness.
Women differ dramatically in what they find appealing.
Some prefer rugged masculinity. Others prefer softer facial features. Some are attracted to men who are highly fashion-conscious. Others prefer conventional presentation. Many people are attracted to combinations that cannot easily be categorized.
So it would be inaccurate to claim that women are universally abandoning masculine men for feminine ones.
The more interesting shift is that women can increasingly encounter men outside the traditional masculine template without those men automatically being excluded from the category of desirable romantic figures.
That is different.
Research into facial attractiveness itself has produced mixed findings around male masculinity. Some studies have found preferences for masculine male faces, while others have identified circumstances in which more feminine characteristics can be preferred.
Attraction is therefore not a simple biological scoreboard.
It is influenced by social meaning.
A characteristic can become more or less desirable depending on what it communicates.
A soft voice might once have been coded as weakness.
In another context, it can communicate warmth.
A man who enjoys skincare might once have been mocked.
Today, in many online communities, it can communicate self-care and aesthetic awareness.
A pearl necklace can be perceived as feminine in one environment and fashion-forward in another.
The object has not changed.
The cultural meaning has.
Emotional Openness Is Part of the Attraction Shift
The transformation is not happening only through clothes.
It is also happening through emotional representation.
Traditional masculinity has often rewarded emotional restraint. Psychological research has documented how men can be socialized to restrict vulnerability, avoid dependence and suppress emotional expression.
A study examining perceptions of emotional intimacy found that men expressing intimacy could receive more negative evaluations, highlighting how gender stereotypes influence judgments about vulnerability.
This helps explain why emotionally expressive male characters and celebrities can feel culturally significant.
A man who cries, talks openly about friendship, expresses tenderness or admits uncertainty challenges the idea that emotional distance is inherently masculine.
And there may be an attraction consequence—not because women collectively prefer “weak men,” but because emotional openness can make interpersonal connection easier.
The larger cultural shift is from:
“A desirable man should never need anyone.”
toward:
“A desirable man can be strong and still be emotionally available.”
Those ideas are not opposites.
That is the key.
Femininity Is No Longer Automatically a Threat to Male Status
Historically, femininity has often functioned as something masculinity had to distance itself from.
The rule was not merely “men should be masculine.”
It was frequently:
men should not be feminine.
Psychologists studying traditional masculinity have identified avoidance of femininity as a central component of conventional male-role ideology.
This creates a hierarchy.
Masculine traits become valuable.
Feminine traits become devalued.
And men are expected to prove their masculinity partly by demonstrating that they are not feminine.
The emergence of feminine men in global media disrupts that hierarchy.
When a successful actor can wear a skirt, when a male pop star can appear in pearls, when a K-pop idol can openly participate in beauty culture, femininity becomes less of a social disqualifier.
The underlying message becomes:
feminine does not automatically mean inferior.
That is a body-inclusivity issue as much as a gender issue.
Because appearance inclusivity is ultimately about expanding who is allowed to be seen as beautiful.
The Beauty Industry Is Paying Attention
The cultural transformation is also visible in the beauty market.
Men’s grooming has expanded far beyond traditional shaving and hair products. Skincare, fragrance, nail care, cosmetics, hair styling and fashion experimentation increasingly occupy mainstream male consumer culture.
The significance is not that men have discovered beauty.
Men have always participated in beauty cultures.
The change is that beauty practices once associated almost exclusively with women are becoming more publicly accessible to men.
This is especially visible in East Asian beauty culture, where male celebrities have helped make skincare and meticulous grooming part of mainstream celebrity presentation.
The commercial lesson is straightforward:
If audiences accept a wider range of male appearances, brands can sell a wider range of products.
But the cultural consequence is deeper.
Advertising does not simply sell products. It teaches consumers who is permitted to use them.
When a man appears in a skincare campaign, the advertisement is quietly answering a social question:
Is this product for someone like me?
Representation can make the answer yes.
The Risk of Creating a New Beauty Prison
But inclusivity can become another form of conformity if the cultural pendulum swings too far.
There is a danger in replacing one narrow masculine ideal with another.
The “soft boy” can become an aesthetic category with its own rigid expectations: flawless skin, carefully styled hair, fashionable clothing, emotional intelligence, artistic interests and a carefully curated appearance.
Suddenly, men who are naturally rugged, messy, traditionally masculine or uninterested in fashion may feel equally excluded.
That would miss the point.
Body inclusivity should never mean:
“Now this is the correct way for men to look.”
It should mean:
“There is no single correct way for men to look.”
A muscular man should not be shamed for enjoying traditionally masculine aesthetics.
A delicate-looking man should not be mocked for appearing feminine.
A man who loves makeup should not have to justify it.
A man who hates makeup should not have to adopt it to be considered progressive.
The goal is freedom rather than reversal.
Social Media Has Accelerated the Change
Traditional media once had enormous control over which male images reached mass audiences.
Today, the gatekeeping structure is fragmented.
TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and fan communities allow ordinary users to circulate and reinterpret celebrity aesthetics.
A male beauty trend can travel from Seoul to Karachi, from Tokyo to London, from Mexico City to New York within hours.
That creates a much faster feedback loop.
A celebrity wears a pearl necklace.
Fans recreate the look.
Creators explain how to style it.
Viewers comment that they want one.
A fashion brand notices.
Another celebrity adopts the aesthetic.
The look becomes commercially viable.
Then the once-unusual becomes ordinary.
Media influence therefore works not only from celebrities downward.
It also works horizontally.
Audiences imitate one another.
This is particularly important for young people, whose understanding of gender can be shaped by peer communities as much as traditional institutions.
UNESCO has emphasized that gender stereotypes in media can influence how people understand their own possibilities and the roles available to them.
Attraction Is Becoming More Contextual
Perhaps the most interesting psychological development is that attraction itself increasingly operates within a wider context.
People are not necessarily choosing between “masculine man” and “feminine man” as two opposing categories.
They may be responding to combinations:
- masculine confidence with emotional tenderness;
- physical strength with delicate fashion;
- traditionally male clothing with jewellery;
- masculine identity with skincare;
- assertiveness with vulnerability;
- conventional sexuality with unconventional aesthetics;
- cultural tradition with global fashion.
The categories overlap.
That makes contemporary attraction harder to describe—and potentially more interesting.
The old model relied on clear boundaries.
The emerging model is more comfortable with contradictions.
A man can be tough and gentle.
A man can be glamorous and grounded.
A man can enjoy football and nail polish.
A man can be physically imposing and emotionally sensitive.
A man can love tailoring while also wearing traditionally feminine accessories.
None of these combinations needs to cancel the others.
Latin Music Is Complicating the Picture Too
The shift is not limited to Europe, North America or East Asia.
Latin popular culture provides another important example.
Bad Bunny has repeatedly incorporated traditionally feminine-coded fashion and visual symbolism into his public artistic presentation.
Academic analysis of his work has specifically examined how his gender performance challenges normative masculinity in the United States while operating within the racialized and colonial history of Puerto Rican identity and reggaetón culture.
That context matters.
It demonstrates that gender-fluid aesthetics do not belong exclusively to wealthy Western fashion culture.
They can also emerge from musical traditions historically associated with hypermasculinity.
This creates an especially interesting cultural contradiction.
When a performer associated with a genre historically coded as masculine embraces feminine visual language, the result can challenge assumptions about what masculinity in that culture is supposed to look like.
Again, the important question is not:
“Is this man feminine?”
It is:
“Why did we assume femininity and masculinity could not coexist in the first place?”
South Asian Audiences Are Part of This Conversation
South Asian media adds another layer because male beauty has never been entirely synonymous with ruggedness.
Indian and Pakistani cinema have long produced male stars whose appeal includes grooming, elaborate hair, romantic softness, fashion and carefully constructed beauty.
At the same time, conventional masculine archetypes remain extremely powerful.
The interesting contemporary development is therefore not the disappearance of traditional masculinity.
It is coexistence.
Global streaming platforms and social media have intensified exposure to international aesthetics. Young audiences can simultaneously consume Bollywood, Turkish dramas, Korean dramas, Hollywood, anime, Western fashion and South Asian social-media creators.
The result is a much broader visual vocabulary.
A young Pakistani woman might find different qualities attractive in different fictional characters or celebrities without experiencing those preferences as contradictory.
A young Pakistani man might experiment with skincare or jewellery while still identifying strongly with traditional aspects of masculinity.
Culture rarely changes in clean lines.
It layers.
The “Feminine Man” Label Itself May Eventually Become Less Useful
There is also a linguistic question.
Why do we need to call a man feminine simply because he likes something associated with femininity?
The label can be useful for analyzing cultural patterns, but it can also unintentionally reinforce the binary it is trying to describe.
If a man wears eyeliner, is he necessarily “feminine”?
If he wears a skirt, is he necessarily rejecting masculinity?
If he cares about skincare, is he participating in femininity?
Not necessarily.
The future may involve fewer assumptions about what individual behaviors mean.
This is especially important because appearance does not determine sexuality or gender identity.
A man can wear feminine clothing and identify as heterosexual.
Another can wear traditionally masculine clothing and identify differently.
Another may reject gender labels altogether.
The visual appearance tells us what someone is wearing.
It does not provide permission to invent a private identity for them.
That is why responsible media coverage should describe documented presentation without turning clothing into speculation about sexuality, relationships or private life.
The Male Beauty Standard Is Expanding—and That Has Consequences
For decades, discussions about beauty pressure have understandably focused heavily on women.
But the expansion of male beauty culture means men are increasingly exposed to their own appearance expectations.
The ideal may now involve flawless skin, fashionable hair, perfect teeth, curated clothing, grooming, fitness, emotional intelligence and photogenic features.
That can be liberating.
It can also become exhausting.
Research into sexualized media has found that men can experience self-objectification effects as well, while noting that male beauty ideals have traditionally emphasized muscularity, strength and dominance.
The solution is not to discourage men from caring about appearance.
It is to ensure that the new beauty culture remains pluralistic.
Men should be able to care deeply about fashion without being required to look fashionable.
They should be able to enjoy skincare without needing perfect skin.
They should be able to embrace softness without performing vulnerability for an audience.
And they should be able to remain traditionally masculine without being accused of being outdated.
Representation Can Change What Younger Generations Imagine for Themselves
Representation matters most when it expands imagination.
A child who sees only one kind of man may unconsciously learn that other possibilities are unacceptable.
A child who sees men expressing tenderness, wearing jewellery, caring about appearance, being artistic, showing vulnerability or rejecting traditional gender boundaries receives a broader message:
There are many ways to grow into adulthood.
That does not mean every child will imitate those examples.
It means imitation is no longer the only route to belonging.
This is one of the most powerful aspects of inclusive media.
It does not tell audiences what they must become.
It shows them what they are allowed to become.
But Visibility Does Not Equal Equality
There is another necessary caution.
A famous male celebrity wearing a dress may receive enormous attention and praise, while less privileged people who challenge gender norms can still face discrimination.
This distinction was highlighted in discussions surrounding Styles’ fashion experimentation: celebrity visibility can make boundary-breaking appear glamorous while obscuring the very real social risks faced by people who have been challenging gender conventions without celebrity protection.
That means representation should not be confused with social equality.
A luxury fashion campaign can celebrate gender fluidity while ordinary people still experience ridicule for the same aesthetic.
A celebrity can be applauded for nail polish while a teenage boy can be bullied for wearing it at school.
A K-pop idol can be celebrated globally for beauty while Asian men elsewhere can still confront racialized assumptions about masculinity.
The cultural shift is real.
But it is incomplete.
The Backlash Is Part of the Story
Every expansion of acceptable identity tends to generate resistance.
The backlash against feminine male celebrities is revealing because it demonstrates how closely masculinity can be connected to social anxiety.
When a man violates traditional masculine rules, some observers interpret the change as evidence that masculinity itself is disappearing.
But masculinity is not a finite resource.
Allowing one man to wear pearls does not prevent another man from wearing a leather jacket.
Allowing men to cry does not eliminate strength.
Allowing male celebrities to experiment with femininity does not force anyone else to do so.
The resistance often exposes an underlying assumption:
if masculinity becomes less restrictive, perhaps it becomes less valuable.
But the opposite possibility is more productive.
Perhaps masculinity becomes more valuable when it is voluntary rather than compulsory.
A More Inclusive Definition of Male Beauty
The most promising future is not one in which feminine men replace masculine men.
It is one in which neither group needs permission from the other.
The future male beauty landscape could contain the bodybuilder and the dancer.
The rugged actor and the delicate fashion icon.
The man with a beard and boots.
The man with painted nails and pearls.
The man who spends twenty minutes on skincare.
The man who does not own a moisturizer.
The man who loves suits.
The man who prefers traditionally feminine clothing.
The shy man.
The flamboyant man.
The emotionally expressive man.
The emotionally private man.
None of these should automatically be treated as more enlightened, more attractive or more authentic than the others.
That is what genuine inclusivity looks like.
It does not create a new hierarchy.
It dismantles the assumption that one hierarchy is necessary.
What This Means for Attraction
So, are attraction preferences really changing?
In some ways, yes—but the answer is more nuanced than “women now prefer feminine men.”
The evidence does not support such a universal claim.
Instead, global media appears to be expanding the range of male traits that can be publicly associated with desirability.
Beauty can coexist with masculinity.
Softness can coexist with confidence.
Fashion experimentation can coexist with male identity.
Emotional openness can coexist with strength.
And femininity no longer has to function automatically as a warning sign that a man has somehow failed to be masculine.
That is a profound cultural change.
Attraction does not happen in a vacuum. People learn cultural associations about beauty from families, peers, entertainment, advertising, celebrities and social media. Media can influence the categories through which people interpret gender and desirability, even though individual attraction remains personal and unpredictable.
The real shift, therefore, may not be that everyone is becoming attracted to the same new type of man.
It may be that more types of men are being allowed to be attractive.
The Future: From Masculinity Versus Femininity to Human Expression
Perhaps the most important development is that younger generations increasingly encounter gender as a spectrum of expression rather than a strict instruction manual.
That does not mean gender has become irrelevant.
It means the relationship between gender and appearance is becoming less rigid.
A man does not have to prove his masculinity every time he gets dressed.
He does not have to demonstrate toughness by suppressing tenderness.
He does not have to reject beauty in order to be taken seriously.
And he does not have to adopt femininity to participate in a more inclusive culture.
The future of male representation may therefore be less about “feminine men” specifically and more about men being permitted to exist outside a narrow visual and emotional template.
That distinction is crucial.
Because once society stops treating femininity as the opposite of male worth, men gain something that women have long been denied in a different form: the ability to be visually complex without having every detail interpreted as evidence of failure.
The rise of feminine men in global media is ultimately not a story about skirts, makeup or pearls.
It is a story about permission.
Permission to be beautiful without apology.
Permission to be soft without being weak.
Permission to be masculine without being emotionally inaccessible.
Permission to experiment without explaining.
And, perhaps most importantly, permission for attraction itself to remain diverse.
The cultural future does not have to choose between the traditionally masculine man and the feminine man.
It can make room for both—and for countless versions that exist between them.
That is where the most meaningful form of inclusivity begins: not when one beauty standard wins, but when beauty stops requiring a single definition.
Sources: Vogue, British Vogue, The Guardian, UNESCO, American Psychological Association, ScienceDirect, Taylor & Francis, Korean Journal of Humanities
