Just one short month ago on October 30, 2014, the team at GearJunkie coined the term “lumbersexual” and it’s exploded as a cultural phenomenon and Internet meme ever since. Within hours of its publication, writers at Jezebel, Gawker, The Guardian, and TIME began to use the term as well. Now, in a brilliant new essay, writer Willa Brown dissects the psychology that lies beneath the biggest new trend in the male sexual spectrum.
Brown writes: “Americans are currently enduring another prolonged bout of unease, stretching back at least six years. Since the Great Recession began, there has been a general handwringing in the media about the state of men—even the End of Men. The economic downturn disproportionately affected men, and it is clearer than ever that the single-breadwinner family is finally dead. The “traditional” role of the man as the primary provider is now firmly out of reach for most Americans. Which is why it seems particularly apt that (mostly) white, young, urban, middle-class men have once again picked up a symbol invented in the early twentieth century by men very much like themselves, a symbol that has long been gathering dust.”
You can read Willa Brown’s essay “Lumbersexuality And Its Discontents” in full by visiting TheAtlantic.com. And to read GearJunkie’s original article “The Rise Of The Lumbersexual”, which sparked the craze to begin with, be sure to visit GearJunkie.com. (Photo courtesy of FunCheap SF).
