In historian George Mosse’s The Image of Man, masculinity in western culture is closely tied to the fears and hopes of modern society. As our own hopes become more amorphous, so too does the “purpose” of masculinity. Young men have given up on the dream of the job-for-life, house, kids, Alsatian and quadruple gold-plated pension, and for older men this once-inevitable set of circumstances appears increasingly shaky. It’s a cultural shift with very real repercussions. A report by the Office of National Statistics, published last month, shows that male suicide rates are at their highest since 2001 and have increased steadily since the recession of 2007; in England and Wales, men are more than three times as likely to kill themselves than women. Men still feel under immense pressure to be the breadwinners, whether or not that’s expected of them, and the most at risk are 45- to 59-year-olds – those more likely to have been raised with entrenched traditional values, and to have been in the full bloom of their careers when the credit crunch struck.

Charities such as Calm, Muted, Sane and the Movember Foundation exist to fight the stigma surrounding depression and mental health, but men remain far less likely to talk to someone about their feelings (be it a professional or their mates) than women. So perhaps this, above any antiquated notion of manliness, is what we need to address. Both the gym bunnies and the faux woodsmen are acting on the same impulse: to find an identity and a set of values they can subscribe to. “When people talk about a ‘crisis of masculinity’ they’re usually talking about their own,” says Simpson. “They’re dealing with the fact that modern masculinity isn’t what they want or expect it to be. It’s changed. Tremendously. And it’s going to change even more.”