Opinion
Friendly men
Taylor Swift is dating one, Zendaya too: Why we need more “Golden Retriever Boys”.
Golden Retriever: a picture of a dog.
© Getty
It’s cool among young women to compare nice guys with good-natured, somewhat loyal dogs. This is how we harm ourselves, says our author. An ode to the kind man.
The panting, a smile. The fur is sea and wheat. The look of melting dark chocolate – Golden Retriever. Nobody doesn’t like them, even dog haters capitulate to the blonde boldness of playful retriever puppies.
“Goldies,” as their fans call them, are not rebels. Gentleness is in their DNA. They wait in front of the supermarket until the day after tomorrow without barking in protest. They also wag their tails around people no one else likes and are never annoyed by children. They would dance her name if they could. Her Love is infinite.
In the USA, “Goldies” are the third most popular dog breed, the “German Retriever Club” raves: “The Golden Retriever is a harmoniously built, well-proportioned, medium-sized dog with strong bones. It has a balanced temperament and impresses with its strong will to Obedience (“Will to please”) and his easy-going nature.”
The fact that it is now becoming established among young women to refer to uncomplicated men with gentle dispositions as “Golden Retriever Boys”, or GRB for short, is not a compliment, but rather a derogation. It means: Being nice isn’t always sexy, but being rebellious is. And the thesis that it is the dark types who melt hearts is ultimately deeply anchored in pop culture and therefore in all of us. Daniel Cleaver vs. Mark Darcy (“Bridget Jones”), Mr. Big vs. Aidan (“Sex and the City”), Jess vs. Dean (“Gilmore Girls”). Jane Austen already pitted bad boys against good guys in her novels. Whoever withdraws attracts.
Which brings us to the modern paradox: friendly balance is unsexy, but at the same time “toxic” is still one of the young generation’s favorite words to describe character deficiencies. Now what? Do we want the macho back? The braggart, the barker, the biter? Never! If we compare our partners with loyal, stupid animals, we are only harming ourselves. Especially: In a present that still cries out for equality, this is regressive. For a dog is a dog, and a man is a man.
It’s time to pay homage to nice men
It’s time to pay homage to the Nice Guys. Because we can only rely on them in the long term. We need them, the kind men, the quiet feminists. Those who bring coffee in bed, look after the child lovingly, swing the cleaning rag without being asked, massage feet with devotion in the evening. Those who send messages reliably, even if sometimes it’s one too many. It’s your own fault if you cry after a bad boy on the other end of the WhatsApp chat.
Smart celebrity women like Taylor Swift have long understood this. After windy heartbreakers like Jake Gyllenhaal and Matty Healy, the music billionaire has now chosen – at least temporarily – a partner who the Internet attests to have “Golden Retriever vibes”. Football player Travis Kelce has been considered extremely social since he once tweeted that he fed breadcrumbs to a squirrel.
Zendaya isn’t into games either and has been dating fellow actor Tom Holland for ages in Hollywood, i.e. three years. The reason for this working love: Holland can only be a dog boy.
And 24-year-old Brooklyn Beckham, son of Victoria and David Beckham, is also suspected of GRB. On Instagram he shared the words he wrote to actress Nicola Peltz, who was four years his senior, on their first wedding anniversary “This year has been the most amazing year with my absolutely gorgeous wife… I’m so grateful for every single day I get to wake up next to you. Here’s to many more years, baby.”
By the way, there is already a counterpart to the “Golden Retriever Boy”: the introverted “Black Cat Girlfriend”. Dog and cat, in the world of dating terms they still find each other.