But the ban on bulk is also something he takes personally.
Although never overweight, he started running and in just over a
year has lost 30 pounds. Now that cutting-edge designers are
churning out super-skinny suits, he needs the physique to match.
“I don't have a stomach at all,” he says. “And because I run up
a mountain, my ass is really tight and my legs are really tight
– and there's nothing that feels better than a pair of pants
that fit right.”
Men preoccupied with style are hardly the only ones to notice
that the new male silhouette no longer accommodates bulging
biceps. From the impossibly wiry Tour de France competitors
cycling across TV screens this week to the latest crop of
scruffy indie rockers to Entourage heartthrob Adrian
Grenier, less is more. Rumour has it that even man's man George
Clooney has shed 20 pounds in recent months.
The big question is why: Is society simply bowing to the
latest fashion dictum? Or, in an era of epidemic obesity, aging
boomers and buff men fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, does
getting slighter have a heftier significance?
Cyclical culture
Of course, like fashion, popular culture is cyclical. Just as
the Mods did in the Sixties, today's hip recording artists –
Justin Timberlake, Maroon 5 front man Adam Levine and bad boy
Pete Doherty – bring together youth, fashion and thinness.
The oldest of the bunch is 30, but that makes them ancient by
fashion-industry standards. Just as many female models are still
girls, their male counterparts now seem barely out of
adolescence.
As a result, their bodies have not yet filled out – much to
the delight of designers who have streamlined the suit so
dramatically that nothing short of a diet overhaul would allow
men to buy off the rack. Go into any mass retailer and the
selection of men's denim will inevitably include a skinny jean.
And the latest shows in Milan and Paris suggest that fashion's
immediate future will be more boyish and androgynous than ever.
“If you've got quads,” says George Chaker, referring to the
upper leg muscles, “you can forget about wearing a cigar pant.”
As a popular DJ and co-owner of Diesel Fitness, a sleek
boutique gym in downtown Toronto, Mr. Chaker, 34, can't avoid
being exposed to the latest trends. His fitness clients range in
age from 26 to 62, he says, and “one of the comments I hear most
often from men is, ‘I want to get lean.' ”
Even he has changed the way he works out. “I like stylish
clothing, but I couldn't fit into it. And if you want to look
fashionable, you can't build as much bulk any more.”
The trend may help to explain why yoga continues to convert
men who never before considered intense stretching an effective
workout. Weightlifting produces larger-looking muscles, but yoga
makes you more sinewy as well as stronger (Sting is the poster
boy).
And the desire to downsize appeals to heterosexual and gay
men alike. A recent article in a journal published by the
American Psychological Association compared what 253 Australian
men of both sexual orientations consider the ideal body and
found that being both thin and muscular is the ultimate. (Gay
men prefer a slightly thinner and more muscular physique.)
One apparent holdout is the business world. “We're not
getting a lot of executive types,” says Campbell McDougall,
owner of Komakino, an avant-garde men's wear shop in Vancouver
that no longer carries much of a selection in large and
extra-large sizes. “But we're not actually interested in those
men. We do it to some extent, but it's challenging to help
them.”
Komakino's “aesthetic,” he explains, “is skinny, black and
edgy. … It's all about being smaller, smaller, smaller.”
However, Mr. McDougall also points out something paradoxical
about slim fashion: “If you have money, you're not super-skinny
because you work in a business that typically requires meetings
and lunches. But if you're too young, you can't afford the slim
suits, even though you can probably fit into them.”
One exception to the theory is Galen Weston Jr., executive
chairman of Loblaw Cos. Ltd., who at 34 is lanky and always
exceptionally attired – not surprising, perhaps, given that his
family also owns Holt Renfrew, which happens to be ground zero
for the leaner ideal.
However, from the company's corporate office in Toronto, Alon
Freeman, who helps to identify industry trends as the store's
“men's wear market editor,” notes that there's a fine line
between being fashionable and not alienating long-time
customers. “You don't want to be known for dressing one
particular guy,” he explains. “We're not the ‘skinny store.' ”
Perhaps that's because “skinny” is not something men want to
be called, even if they are. In her book She Loses, He Loses,
Karen Miller-Kovach, chief scientific officer for Weight
Watchers, says women don't mind being described as thin, but men
feel it somehow implies they're not healthy. They would much
rather hear that they look “fit” or “in better shape.”
James Bassil, editor-in-chief of the Montreal-based online
portal Askmen.com, suggests using “natural” because it also
speaks for a total lifestyle – organic food, hybrid cars,
greener living, etc. — and it's light-years away from an apt
description of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bruce Willis.
Mr. Hylton sees it almost as a class distinction. “Honestly,
when I see a bulked-up guy, it's like seeing a girl with big
silicone tits,” he says. “It's so disgusting, and it's really
like a social-status thing. You'd never find a guy with good
breeding with a body like that or a girl from good breeding with
silicone tits.”
At the same time, men are loath to be described as
“metrosexual,” a term that is, according to Mr. Bassil,
“archaic” but not totally off the mark. The word may be passé,
he explains, but “the residual effect is that average guys
started buying male-specific cosmetics and clothes and thinking
about how they look and acknowledging that they put extra time
into their presentation.”
Ben Barry, who runs a Toronto modelling agency, calls the
drive to be thin a “destabilizing concept of masculinity” that
is actually more inclusive. “You can be healthy and toned, but
you don't have to be in the gym every day pumping iron. It's
more of a balanced approach.”
On the other hand, the 24-year-old author of the recent book
Fashioning Reality concedes that persistent images of
perfect, youthful men could lead to increased body
dissatisfaction and, contrary to popular belief, anorexia is not
strictly a women's issue. The term “manorexia” may sound
trivial, but the desire to be thin can be just as dangerous for
men.
How dangerous? Male silence makes it hard to say. “By talking
about it,” Mr. Barry says, “men think they're jeopardizing their
masculinity.”
But by refusing to talk, they also make it difficult to pin
down where the influence of fashion stops and thin takes on a
deeper meaning.
Professor Michael Kimmel, a specialist in men's gender
studies at State University of New York, sees political factors
at work and calls the new leanness a “critique” of the status
quo. Clearly, it has yet to reach the mainstream, he says –
witness summer blockbusters such as Transformers and the
latest Die Hard – but “we're looking for some
alternatives.”
According to Prof. Kimmel, “The kinds of models of
masculinity that have been held up to us over the past decade or
so” – steroid-fuelled archetypes from Rambo to baseball's Barry
Bonds – “have been completely discredited,” and the backlash
even reaches the White House. “It's a reaction against the Iraq
war and against militarization of culture, and it's looking to
Europe rather than away from Europe, which is, after all, what
[George W.] Bush keeps telling us to do.”
However, the president of the American Men's Studies
Association credits a much more basic instinct for the rise of
the thin man: sex. Lean men, says Robert Heasley, who teaches at
Indiana University of Pennsylvania, are inherently more
“sensual” because too much muscle interferes with male-female
interaction.
“If you're a machine body, you can't let yourself relax and
move,” he says. “I find men are increasingly making conscious
decisions not to give into it and women are seeing what happens
to them when they buy into a mechanized masculinity and the
person that goes with it.”
So skinny is what women really want?
Not as far as SUNY's Prof. Kimmel is concerned. “Guys are
confused as hell,” he says. “The message we think we're getting
is [women] want us to be kinder and softer in presentation – and
more fashionable – but when we are, what women fear is that we
will also sacrifice masculine sexual passion.”
But Phillip Jai Johnson, a doctoral student in psychology at
McGill University, says that in reality people are much more
realistic.
“Studies show that women feel men expect them to be thin and
men tend to feel that women expect them to be muscular – and
it's not actually that way for either of the sexes. Normal
ideals are more appreciated.”
Besides, Prof. Mr. Kimmel says, men are now expected to play
a bigger role in the family, which eats into their personal
time. It's assumed “that men will participate in child care from
the get-go,” he explains, “so if they're not getting to the gym
as regularly, there's a reason.”
But that's not necessarily a good enough excuse, says Rick
Marin, author of the 2003 cult hit CAD: Confessions of a
Toxic Bachelor. Today, he lives in Los Angeles with his wife
and two kids. While dropping off his son at preschool recently,
he saw a dad in a “full Tour de France outfit” and felt badly
that he wasn't in such top form himself.
Mr. Marin says North Americans won't equate being thin with
being healthy until enough of them spurn fast food and
rediscover walking as a means of transportation. But the aging
population's desire to stay young could speed the process.
“People are postponing their lives longer,” he says. “I think
that's how you look young is by being skinny.”
It's a rationale that works for Mr. Hylton, the Ports exec
who dropped 30 pounds.
While he was back in Toronto, he ran into an old friend who
could hardly believe his eyes. “You're like Dorian Gray – you
keep getting younger,” he said. “Man, you look fantastic.”
At 42, Mr. Hylton gets his motivation by considering the
alternative.
“I see these guys from high school that look like a freakin'
heart attack waiting to happen,” he says, “and I'm single and I
intend on having more children [he has a 10-year-old son] and I
want to be able to run around behind them.”
With that in mind, he sticks to his daily regimen and refuses
to let down his dietary guard. When tempted by forbidden foods,
he thinks: “I didn't run for you this morning.”
He has also invested in a new wardrobe. “One day, I just
emptied my closet, literally every single piece,” he says. “It
means that this will not be temporary; this is the way it's
going to be.”
An expensive incentive to keep the weight off, but his new
suits don't have enough room for deep pockets anyway.
Amy Verner is a style reporter with The Globe and Mail.