1980s and the young male aesthetic

Aesthetics 2024 = lifting weights, broccoli hair, Seacow drool

I have been a college prof for a few decades. Every generation is filled with the same mix of beauty and charm on a scale of 1 to 10. Surface details and volume may change ever so slightly.

It’s nostalgia. On DataLounge, it’s always nostalgia.

Prettiness briefly mattered more than handsomeness during part of the 80s. Timothee Chalamet is somewhat of a throwback to that.

Male prettiness was a thing from the mid 60s to the mid 70s as well.

80s boys had an undercurrent of danger which is totally lacking in today's stars. Kiefer and RDJ might introduce you to blowjobs and heroin. Tom Holland wants to introduce you to pickleball.

OK I'll buy that.

There was something tactile to male stars in the 80s. I can imagine touching their hair, their skin.

I think part of this was not just the increased beauty of the boys or the new interest in homoeroticism (Obsession and Calvin Klein ads, anyone?). I think it was photography and lighting improving as well. Thus the new interest in male beauty overall.

....

Natural, unadulterated beauty (then) vs. covered in tattoos and earlobe stretchings (now). Guys back then also seemed to be less aware of how hot they were which made them even hotter. And they weren't afraid to wear crop tops and short shorts! WOOF

[quote]Kiefer and RDJ might introduce you to blowjobs and heroin.

And Judd Nelson might kick you in the head!

I can't even picture Timothee or Tom Holland fucking. Actors today seem asexual.

I like Tom Holland. I think he's great in the Spiderman films and he seems a likeable chap overall. But I agree - he's not quite sexless so much as he seems perpetually underage somehow.

Kiefer, Judd and RDJ at the same age suggested a complex (and possibly toxic) sexuality.

[quote] he's not quite sexless so much as he seems perpetually underage somehow.

Draw a Venn diagram please.

Kids aren’t fucking these days, nor are they trying to. They are pretty much sexless because sex involves other people. Their stars reflect this.

Please - Tom Holland is having dirty, sweaty sex with Zendaya as we speak

Charles Melton is the only young star to have sex appeal in the past 20 years.

Kiefer was never considered pretty or handsome. He would usually play a creep.

Crop tops and short shorts were the 70s, if I remember correctly. Not the 80s.

Did someone say crop top?

Kiefer was hot in The Lost Boys.

1980's beauty Christopher Atkins:

Long hair was in style for men. They had hairy chests and full bushes. Remember guys wearing tight faded jeans that hugged their nuts?

Everyone was naturally slim back then.

R24, they weren't necessarily in good shape, though. A lot of skinny guys/girls and people who existed on coffee, alcohol and cigarettes.

R1 it's fusilli pasta hair! LOL

[quote]Crop tops and short shorts were the 70s, if I remember correctly. Not the 80s.

Never look back.

OK what about the short shorts?

Crop tops and short shorts were indeed a 70's thing, and shorts got much longer in the 80's but cropped tops had a comeback in 80's -- Bill and Ted, Flashdance, etc. I had an Ocean Pacific cropped t-shirt in 1985.

Nylon running shorts were short in the 80s but all other shorts got longer, including tennis shorts and swim trunks.

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I'm with you, OP. I can't remember the last time I lusted after a male celebrity. Maybe it's because I was much hornier 20 years ago, but I almost never turn my head because of someone's raw sex appeal.

Cigarettes back then roughed a guy up more

Channing Tatum = sexy in 2011

Charles Melton = sexy in 2023

RDJ was exceptionally handsome as a young man and would be in any era. Kiefer Sutherland is gross. Most male sex symbols today are very average looking

Kiefer was a golden God.

[quote] Or is it just the nostalgia one feels for the time one sexually came of age?

This.

[quote]Most male sex symbols today are very average looking

Any thoughts on why this is so?

This was an era when more women were getting professional jobs, moving into non-pink collar occupations, and delaying marriage. Young women had more disposable cash than in previous generations. This, along with increased gay awareness/acceptance (prior to the AIDS epidemic) may also factor into the reason young men were increasingly objectified in media in the 80s.

It’s not them. It’s you. You’re old.

In the early 80s, young men wore tight short-shorts and crop-top t-shirts. They were sexually on display in many ways you never see much now (with everything so goddamned baggy for the last couple of decades).

And guys were "naturally fit" more often than today, where the 'hot' guys are all juiced up, ripped, and over-the-top gym-bodied. There wasn't the obsession with gyms and workouts and protein powders and fad diets among men back then... the masculinity was more natural and less forced.

This thread gave me fond memories of my self coming into my gay Awakening in the late 70s to the early 80s!

I remember my wardrobe choices from that era!

Tight Calvin Klein Jeans that hugged my glutes and showcased my 32 inch waist.

My Lacoste Izoid shirts with the knit sleeves that tightly highlighted my biceps and triceps.

My original 501 button fly jeans that I faded to perfection by putting them in my parents pool for one week . Always worn with the bottom button undone.

My white mesh briefs from JC Penny made from 100% Quiana

My ,unstructured linen jacket with the sleeves rolled up mid forearm.

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Russell Todd was 1980s young male aesthetic for me.

[quote]1980s and the young male aesthetic Inspired by recent threads, an da comment on the Kiefer/RDJ apartment scenario... Is there something that truly set off the boys of the 1980s from the prior and subsequent decades? Or is it just the nostalgia one feels for the time one sexually came of age? I look at what i am informed is the current crop of male beauty and think...there really is something missing. Is it just my own lost youth? Or is there a danger, a sexual charge, a delicacy, however one would define it and whatever it was composed of, that is now absent?

Sweet Suffering Jesus.

I miss short shorts and crop tops.

The short running shorts and the ubiquitous tube socks.

R10 Tattoos and earlobe stretching are NOT of now.

That is a mid-millennial look that died out in the early 2010s. Every guy who looks like that is between 30-40.

2005 called...it wants its tribal tattoos back.