crush

When men admire men and man crush takes over | NEWS.com.au Entertainment

IT WAS the moment Tony Blair unzipped his man crush on George W. Bush and let it fly, free as a bird.

"Yo, Blair," Bush called to his loyal British ally during a break in the 2006 G-8 Summit in Russia. "Thanks for the sweater - it's awfully thoughtful of you."

"It's a pleasure," gushed Blair, with "aw shucks" affability.

"I know you picked it out yourself," Bush said.

"Oh, absolutely - in fact I knitted it."

It was a classic man crush moment: two heterosexual males letting their guards down; both aware of Blair's one-way affection for his headstrong and occasionally lonesome Texan cowboy.
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A weak-kneed Blair, it seemed then, was sold on the freedom mission to Iraq more by Bush's fully formed smile than his fully informed politics. At first glance, the man crush appears a product of the 21st century, an era where George Clooney talks about being transfixed by Brad Pitt's eyes and Pitt takes a full-page ad out in Variety magazine saying, "Dear George, congratulations on being named People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive".

It's blokey banter born of brotherhood; one man's non-sexual appreciation of another.

It's Richie Cunningham's feelings for The Fonz. It's Robert Plant swaying in ecstasy to Jimmy Page's Stairway to Heaven guitar solo.

It's the twinkle in Craig Emerson's eye as Kevin Rudd talks fiscal policy in Mandarin. It's the feelings of every man who ever rode a horse alongside The Duke.

Who do you like among men? Share your man crushes in the box below.

The man crush goes way back. Aristotle was transfixed by Plato's inherent cool. Jesus's last supper was a feast overflowing with man crush tributes to the charismatic JC.

Zealous Nazi propaganda pioneer Joseph Goebbels had a deep, perhaps unsettling, man crush on Adolf Hitler.

"I love you because you are both great and simple at the same time," he once wrote to the German Fuhrer. Some historians suggest he finished the letter off with, "You had me at 'Sieg Heil'."

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Man crushes should be embraced, says Dr She Hawke of the University of Sydney's Department of Gender and Cultural Studies. "What's the harm in having a crush on anybody?" she asks. "This is not a new thing. Look at the whole gymnasium thing in ancient Greece. Society tends to over-sexualise things. We're all human beings. Any man can admire another man and it doesn't have to be in a sexual way."

Website Mancrush.com defines the term "man crush" as "the highest level of attraction a man can have for another man, without having any sexual want towards that man".

A Shane Warne leg spinner ripping around Mike Gatting's legs gives me goosebumps, but that doesn't mean I can stomach seeing Warne in his underpants.

Brisbane is awash with bloke crushes.