There’s Absolutely No Such Thing As An Alpha Male Wolf to Emulate
Successful Leaders Share and Cuddle
The term ‘Alpha Male’ may have come to be used recently to describe the office bully or philandering husband, but its more common usage has always been to describe a figure men should aspire to be, a natural-born leader, the archetypal thrusting businessman such as the self-titled “Wolf of Wall Street”, or top sportsman pummeling his competition into the ground.
The sad part about it is that it’s all nonsense.
Just as generations earlier believed the writings of the anthropologist Margaret Mead, taking as gospel her titillating accounts of the sexual mores of the Pacific Islanders with such titles as ‘Growing up in New Guinea’ or ‘Coming of age in Samoa’ (possibly because the Obscene Publication Act would have come down hard if they hadn’t been “educational”), the theory that gave rise to this shorthand for powerful males is based on an outdated misunderstanding.
At the time, her writings were generally accepted or more accurately went unchallenged, passing even into education courses for future teachers, by readers secretly thrilled at the idea of everyone freely having it away under the full moon. It’s since been understood that the accounts were more likely the…
