It is a strange fact that 42,778 women are currently followers on Twitter of a 26-year-old man who by his own admission is only useful from his belly button to his knees.
James Deen is not especially tall, especially handsome, or especially interesting as far as anyone can tell, but he has no problem in the wood department, as they call it in porn. This fluke of nature calls himself the luckiest guy alive because he can put his attribute to commercial use in the kind of movie that needs neither plot line, script nor character development. Whether he knows how to hold a knife and fork, likes gardening, or has any other interest in life is of no concern to his admirers, who Only Want One Thing.
I pause here because this is exactly what women have always moaned about with men; real men, that is, the ones they actually meet in person. We have never before had our choice of fantasy men who we could watch vicariously in action, should we have a few spare moments left over from earning a living and washing our smalls.
But now porn is all the go among thinking women, and the big intellectual question is whether it's patronising to women to assume they like the odd exchange of dialogue and display of tenderness as opposed to full-on chains and padlocks and biff.
Count me out. Too tired. But I will observe that Deen has a damn cheek going by almost the same name as the iconic James Dean, the 1950s actor who died in a pranged Porsche. My hunch is that Dean's image will endure for a good few years yet as a symbol of archetypal masculine attractiveness - and he achieved this not only by being fully clothed, but also by being dead. Deen's fame will be a flickering match in a dirty old ashtray compared to that.
