Move aside Rodent Man: Hollywood has a new masculine archetype

Somewhere between Rodent Man and Rebel Without the Cause of Climate Change, a new masculine archetype was born: the James Clean man. He’s rugged but rinsed, chivalrous but curated, and always wearing denim that looks like it’s seen heartbreak but never mud. If grunge was about not caring and Gosling-core was about pretending not to care, James Clean is about looking clean while pretending you work with your hands. It’s masculinity in recovery — a man detoxing from irony. According to an article in the New York Times , the “James Clean” aesthetic is “a way of dressing built like so: something old, something new, a trucker hat and bluejeans too.” The look, the paper notes, draws from classic Americana — aged Levi’s, cowboy boots, soft plaids, and the kind of rugged simplicity that rec