The Rise and Fall of Charm in American Men

[Divernan]

17. Remember to always insert "American" before "men" in this article.

As a graduate student, back in the 60's, I met, worked with and socialized with men and women from many countries and cultures. That's when I experienced social graces and charm far beyond any slight examples of those I had experienced in American culture. (I grew up in considerable financial comfort in the Midwest and I had seen kindness and generosity - but those are not the same as charm.) Throughout my adult life, up to and including recent travels to the EU and Asia, I continue to see charm in social and business settings. Meanwhile, back in the States, men (and women) have become increasingly either pushy, brash and greedy or insecure, frightened and needy. Charm would just get in the way of those whose focus is material gain - mortgage brokers and hedge fund traders don't need no stinkin' charm! For those at the other end of the income spectrum, finding employment, paying off student loans, etc., leaves no time or energy to develop or practice charm. Since many of them have never even been exposed to charm, they have no idea of its existence.

On the whole, I treasure people with charm. The exceptions are sociopaths and politicians.
I've worked with hundreds of politicians at local, state and federal levels. The higher they rise, the more of them have achieved prominence through a smooth glibness & faux sincerity which should not be mistaken for charm. At best, it's a corrupted subset of charm, easily distinguished by the fact that their "charm" is limited to their promise-filled speeches, but not carried through in their deeds or actions. Sociopaths are similarly quite charming and manipulative but untrustworthy.

More excerpts from the OP's linked article:

Grant had developed a new way to interact with a woman onscreen: he treated his leading lady as both a sexually attractive female and an idiosyncratic personality, an approach that often required little more than just listening to her—a tactic that had previously been as ignored in the pictures as it remains, among men, in real life. His knowing but inconspicuously generous style let the actress’s performance flourish, making his co-star simultaneously regal and hilarious.

Charm is a quality that is tantalizing because it simultaneously demands detachment and engagement. Only the self-aware can have charm: It’s bound up with a sensibility that at best approaches wisdom, or at least worldliness, and at worst goes well beyond cynicism. It can’t exist in the undeveloped personality. It’s an attribute foreign to many men because most are, for better and for worse, childlike. These days, it’s far more common among men over 70—probably owing to the era in which they reached maturity rather than to the mere fact of their advanced years. What used to be called good breeding is necessary (but not sufficient) for charm: no one can be charming who doesn’t draw out the overlooked, who doesn’t shift the spotlight onto others—who doesn’t, that is, possess those long-forgotten qualities of politesse and civilité. All of these acts can be performed only by one at ease with himself yet also intensely conscious of himself and of his effect on others. Another word for the lightness of touch that charm requires in humor, conversation, and all other aspects of social relations is subtlety, which carries both admirable and dangerous connotations.

Male charm is all but absent from the screen because it’s all but absent from our lives. Most men hold charm in vague suspicion: few cultivate it; still fewer respond to it; hardly any know whether they have it; and almost none can even identify it. Women commonly complain about the difficulty in gaining any conversational purchase when, say, trying to engage the fathers of their children’s classmates or the husbands of their tennis partners. The woman will grab from her bag of conversational gambits—she’ll allude to some quotidian absurdity or try to form a mock alliance in defiance of some teacher’s or soccer coach’s irksome requirement. But the man doesn’t enter into the give-and-take. The next time they meet, it’s as though they’ve never talked before; the man invariably fails to pick up the ball, and any reference the woman might make to a prior remark or observation falls to the ground. Men don’t indulge in the easy shared confidences and nonsexual flirtations that lubricate social exchange among women. Even in the most casual conversation, men are too often self-absorbed or mono-focused or—more commonly—guarded, distracted, and disengaged to an almost Aspergerian degree. (Garner’s futile efforts to engage the unengageable—be they flinty triggermen from Detroit or by-the-book feds—is a running gag in Rockford.) Men consistently fail to meet the sort of obvious standards set by guides to etiquette and to the art of conversation common 50 years ago.