The Evolution of the Bad Boy

When I say bad boy, I think of the 50s with the emergence of Elvis and James Dean. Leather jackets, motorbikes (even though James Dean was never seen near a motorbike in any of his films. FACT.), smoking. Rough around the edges, rebels without causes, smart ass, talks back.

All signs of douchery yet for some reason, sooooooooo totally hot. But why is this? What is it about them that makes them so appealing? Is this healthy, or right, even?

And the fact of the matter is, the bad boy image began waaaaaaaaaay before the 1950s. It can be seen in Austen and Bronte literature with broody Darcy and Heathcliff. Heck, there was most probably some broody bad boys in Shakespeare.

I think, like fashion, there are different types of bad boys and they trend in a little cycle. They branch off from mysterious bad boy to brooding bad boy to rebel bad boy etc. Right now brooding bad boy is in.

Vampires are obviously everywhere and they are the epitome of brooding bad boys. They are immortal, beautiful monsters who regret or revel in their life of killing over the years. The vampire male leads in most of the shows and movies we see today mainly spend their time hunting animals instead of humans because they try to cling on to their humanity as they mourn the loss of their soul and the horrendous murders they've done in the previous decades or centuries. And since they were "turned" in the 1800s and even before that, they have those gentlemanly quality that pays homage to the original brooders from Austen/Bronte eras.

Before that was the "rebel-without-a-cause" bad boys who defied the rules just to spite authority and broke the rules because they were bored. The boys the dads warned you about who were up to no good and would be a bad influence on their little girls. Famous examples = James Dean, Bender from The Breakfast Club (<3), Danny from Grease.

There's probably more branches. I don't know exactly where this post is going, what point it's trying to prove or what I'm trying to say. But it all kind of sounds important to me so I'll just write it down in case.