While men's taste in women has barely changed in the last few decades, if not centuries (slim, beautiful and preferably submissive), women have shown a remarkable ability to evolve their idea of the ''perfect man". The all-action heroes, led by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, have made way for a more intelligent (and often somewhat geeky) set of male idols - muscles have given way to brains.
当男人对女人的审美品味（苗条、美丽、顺从）在过去几十年（甚至是几百年）里都一成不变时，女人却赋予了“完美男人”新的定义。阿诺·施瓦辛格和西尔维斯特·史泰龙塑造的英雄被更睿智（有时看起来有点傻）的男性形象所取代——肌肉让位于头脑。

Back in the 1970s, Superman was flying into the movies; brave, heroic and honourable - but definitely not attractive. His alter-ego Clark Kent's glasses, nervous demeanor and all-round geekiness have never been considered the attributes of someone "attractive". Yet now, Spiderman swings onto our screens (with three movies in seven years), exhibiting the same painful social awkwardness… and women fall for him. Harry Potter, in spite of his glasses, scar and general plainness, has young girls around the world going crazy for his geeky appearance unconventional bravery. These are not exceptions to the rules - they are the pacesetters of the new generation of Hollywood heartthrobs.
70年代突然飞入电影银屏的《超人》红极一时；勇敢、无畏、可敬——但并不是那么魅力四射。而克拉克·凯特（生活中的超人）那老气横秋的眼镜、神经兮兮的举止和浑身的傻气可从来都不是构成魅力的要素。现在，活跃在银屏上的是《蜘蛛侠》（7年拍三部），影片展现了社会的黑暗面……当然，女人们迷上了他。还有哈利·波特，尽管戴着笨重的黑色眼镜、脑门上有个伤疤、而且平凡无奇，在现实中依旧有很多年轻女孩为他的相貌和非凡的勇气而疯狂。无一例外，他们都是好莱坞新一代柔情男的先行者。

So what changed? When did the old-fashioned musclemen and fighting men lose their power of attraction over women? It clearly hadn't begun by the Mid-90s. 90s television was dominated by the series Friends, which followed the relationship ups and downs of three guys and three girls in New York. Perhaps the most watched series ever made, the three male leads belonged to each key stereotype of man - the funny man, the intelligent man and the masculine man. And while Chandler, the funny man, made the women laugh, and Ross, the intelligent one, gained their sympathy, it was without exception Joey who got the girl - and the female audience's heart (despite the fact he could barely string a sentence together).
究竟何时往日的肌肉男和勇士们已风光不再，无法吸引女人的目光了呢？到底是什么在改变呢？很明显，90年代中期是一个新的开始，《老友记》独霸电视荧屏，它讲述了在纽约工作和生活的三男三女以及在他们之间所发生的故事。这可能也是最长的电视剧，三个男人三种类型——幽默、睿智、强壮。钱德勒，幽默，经常逗得女人开怀大笑；罗斯，睿智，能博得女人的同情和爱慕；但显然，乔伊赢得了女人和女性观众的心（尽管事实上他连句完整的话都说不清楚）。
So when did it change? As so often happens, television seems to have been the starting point for these changes in the movie industry. In 2003, The O.C burst onto American television and instantly became a cult classic, working its' way through four long series. While Ryan, the handsome "bad kid made good" outsider was the original focus of the show, the creators soon realized the viewers preferred the less conventional Seth Cohen. Frizzy-haired, friendless, neurotic and a collector of comic books, Seth broke the mold on modern day protagonists. His dry wit and sarcasm won over both the high school prom queens on the show, and the female audience watching from their sofas - perhaps proving once and for all the idea that women just want a man who can make them laugh. Breathing new life into the Jewish stereotype that had been for too long attached to the likes of Woody Allen, Adam Brody (the actor who played Seth) has continued to find similar roles in the movies, always playing the neurotic geek, and always gaining the affection of the female viewers.
但又是什么时候开始改变的呢？显然，电视里的这些更改好像也引发了电影产业中的某些变化。2003年《橘子郡男孩》火爆荧屏，成为一部经典作品。英俊、绝望、“心地好的坏孩子”赖安本该是全剧的焦点，但是制作人很快意识到观众们更偏爱剧中另类的赛思·科恩。卷发、孤僻、神经质、喜欢收集漫画，赛思打破了现代主角的固有模式。他的才智和玩世不恭为他赢得了高校舞会皇后的芳心，当然还有电视前坐在沙发上的女性观众的喜爱——可能调查一下会发现，女人们只是想要一个能够逗她们开心的男人。像艾迪·伍伦热衷于给犹太文化注入新的活力，亚当?布劳迪（赛思·科恩的扮演者）继续出演神经质的怪人，也一直受到了女性观众的欢迎。

Then you have the recent wave of movies about geeky unsuccessful guys; The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), Knocked Up (2007), and Superbad (2007) to name but a few. In each of these movies the protagonist is anything but a hero; unsuccessful at everything they try their hands at; going nowhere in life, they fail continually at everything but winning the hearts of the movie's audience. One other similarity between the main actors of each of these movies is that they are not attractive, not necessarily ugly, just nothing beyond ordinary. Most of them are not even physically healthy, but rather a bit overweight, hairy where they shouldn't be and prone to laziness and heavy drinking/smoking.
你会发现最近有很多关于失意的孤僻男人的电影：《四十岁的老处男》（2005）、《一夜大肚》（2007）以及《男孩不坏》（2007）只是其中的几个例子而已。在这些电影中，主角们都平凡无奇、一无是处，在生活中四处碰壁却赢得了观众的心。这些主角都有相似点，那就是毫无魅力可言、不美不丑、只是平常人。甚至其中有些不仅身材走样还超重、体毛多、懒散、嗜酒、抽烟。

So was it a new appreciation for less conventional looking actors, or the better roles they were being given that changed the way women perceived "geeks"? Tobey Maguire is not attractive, not even slightly attractive, but as Spiderman women seem to forget this. Likewise Daniel Radcliffe (who plays Harry Potter) would never stand out from a crowd unless he'd appeared in one of the hottest movie properties of all time. Therefore, there must be something about the way television and the movies are now portraying geeks. Traditionally, storylines would begin with the hero as a downtrodden nerd/geek/weakling. As the story progressed, the hero would learn important lessons and grow into an amazing new and handsome individual (or they are already handsome, but are an outsider who is gradually accepted by society after proving their worth). But nowadays plots instead see the geeks keep their geeky ways - but still getting the rewards. It seems that in the movies at least, the caterpillar no longer needs to change into a butterfly to be beautiful.
到底是不符合传统审美观点的演员开始走俏了，还是他们所扮演的角色改变了女性对这些“新男性偶像”的认知呢？托比·马奎尔并不是很迷人，甚至毫无吸引力，但迷恋蜘蛛侠的人似乎没发现这点。丹尼尔·雷德克利夫（哈利·波特的扮演者）如果没有出演这部热门的电影，他绝对是被湮没在人群中的普通人。因此电视和电影在描绘这些人物时起到了很重要的作用。基本上，故事都是从一个受蹂躏的英雄开始。随着故事的发展，英雄们会学到人生中重要的一课并迅速蜕变成一个魅力四射、英俊的人（尽管他们本身就很帅了，但却是通过证明自己的价值逐渐被社会接受的局外人）。但现在这些“新男性偶像”只要保持“异样”、就依然能够受到追捧。看起来至少在电影里，毛毛虫是无需蜕变成美丽的蝴蝶的。

This isn't to say that the great and the beautiful have been losing their leading roles, just that their characters now have to be both good looking and intelligent if they want to gain a female fan club. Prison Break has become one of the most popular programs of recent years, relying heavily on an incredibly hot lead actor who combines Brad Pitt good looks with a Stephen Hawkins - level intellect (and Gandhi-like integrity). Quitting his job as an architect and getting himself thrown in prison in order to rescue his brother from death row, Michael Scofield is a new breed of hero. Smart, loyal, and handsome, he ticks all of the right boxes, but it is his boundless intelligence and the ingenuity of his plans that make him particularly special to female viewers.  
当然，这并不是说帅气英勇的男主角们已经没有市场了，只是说他们的角色必须“色艺俱全”才能获得女影迷们的追捧。近年来，《越狱》成为了最受欢迎的电视剧之一，而这很大程度上是依赖于一个拥有布拉德·皮特的相貌和史蒂芬·霍金的头脑（甘地的人品）的男主角。为了营救被关在死刑区的哥哥，他辞去建筑师的工作故意入狱，迈克尔·斯科菲尔德塑造了新的英雄形象：睿智、忠诚、英俊，他几乎拥有女人们所要求的全部品质，但也正是他无穷的智慧和极具创造性的越狱计划使得他在女人眼中尤为特别。

And it is not just the geeks that are rising to challenge Arnie and Sly. Pretty boys like Orlando Bloom have become increasingly popular in the West. Starting with his role as Legolas in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and then as Will Turner in Pirates of the Caribbean (also now a trilogy), Bloom has played many different action heroes, but all his roles have been distinctly girly. In his movies, Orlando's attempts to rescue the damsels in distress always seem to go wrong, and more often than not it is he that needs the rescuing. Maybe this can help explain the lack of strong muscular heroes? Perhaps with the growing level of gender equality in the word, women no longer feel a need for a protector. In the 50s and 60s men were expected to be masculine and the breadwinner. In the 60s and 70s it was about women having the freedom to be whatever they wanted to be. Perhaps now it is about women being the stronger, more dominating one…or perhaps not.
不仅仅是这些新生代的男性偶像向阿诺·施瓦辛格和西尔维斯特·史泰龙发起了挑战，像奥兰多·布鲁姆这样的漂亮男人也在西方开始流行起来。从《指环王》三部曲中扮演的莱格拉斯以及《加勒比海盗》三部曲中的威尔·特纳开始，布鲁姆就开始出演各种类型的英雄，但所有的角色看起来都有点儿柔弱。每当奥兰多要去营救一个悲惨的少女时，总让人感觉需要被拯救的是他自己。有可能是为了给肌肉不发达的英雄们解围才塑造一个不够强壮的英雄形象吧？亦或现在的世界男女平等，女人们不再需要保护者了。在五、六十年代，男人们都希望身强力壮好养家糊口，而六、七十年代的女人们则开始追求自由独立。或许现在的女人们更为强大专横……也许不是。

The "Pretty Boy" craze is not just happening in Europe and America. In the East, boy pop singers from Japan and Korea are so beautiful - in an androgynous way - that they could just as easily be female pop singers. Their immaculately tailored clothes, perfectly styled hair and youthful faces have scores of teenage girls professing their undying love every day. Rain, the "Justin Timberlake of the East", is one of the most successful of this breed of pin-ups - being voted one of Time magazine's "100 most influential people" of 2006. While he may be a great performer, there is no doubting it is his allure to women that makes him so apparently influential. A South Korean, singing in Korean, he would not have been able to have gained such a following in China, and the rest of the world, without poster boy good looks.
这种“美少年”热不仅仅在欧美盛行。在东方，来自日本和韩国的年轻男艺人们甚至美丽到雌雄莫辨，将“中性美”发挥到极致，很容易被人误以为是女性。他们得体的穿着、完美的发型、年轻的脸庞，使得每天都有无数的女孩向他们表达爱慕之情。Rain被称为“东方的贾斯汀·汀布莱克”（超级男孩主唱），是最受欢迎的新生代偶像，被《时代》杂志评为2006年“最具有影响力的100人”。他也许是个不错的演员，但毫无疑问，他如此有影响力源于他对女性的吸引力。试想一下，一个韩国歌手，只在韩国发展歌唱事业，如果不够俊美，显然是无法在中国甚至是全世界拥有如此多的拥趸的。


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