AskMen.com, the world’s largest lifestyle portal for men with more than 11 million visitors monthly, revealed its highly anticipated fourth annual reader-voted list of the Top 49 Most Influential Men of 2009. The survey ranked Don Draper, Mad Men’s fictional character, as the most iconic male personality of the year above Usain Bolt, President Obama, and Mark Zuckerberg. The list assembles a diverse collection of men from around the world and from a variety of industries including entertainment, politics, technology, and sports. All the honorees had a direct effect on the way men see the world, and notably in 2009, many reflect classic values that are most meaningful to the male identity today.
“In a turbulent 2009, men are seeking the stability of tradition in the masculine qualities that they imagine their fathers and grandfathers to have had,” says James Bassil, Editor-in-Chief of AskMen.com. “The character of Don Draper brings all these traits together, and in doing so speaks directly to the modern man. He’s a man whose time has come.”
Others on the list embody a host of classic qualities; Usain Bolt as the personification of competitive and athletic ability, President Barack Obama as the male portrait of classic statesmanship, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs as pillars of entrepreneurial spirit and determination. The top 49 most influential men in order are:
1. Don Draper
Don Draper may be a fictional character on AMC’s Mad Men, but he’s just as real as any other public personality you can think of. Celebrities are brands, with carefully constructed images, and most of us are just as likely to have a beer with Don Draper as with anybody else on this list. What matters is that Draper’s hard-ass 1960s persona represents something about male identity that is enduringly captivating but has nonetheless vanished. The man that Don Draper is—value-driven and thoroughly masculine—is the product of a bygone era; without him, there would be no contemporary figure to represent it. Yet, as removed as his persona may be, it is also contemporary and familiar. He’s a postwar archetype, both a brilliant career man and a temptation-swayed philanderer who sincerely wants to be a family man. Like most men, us and our fathers both, Draper is permanently conflicted over how to reconcile his morals and his desires.
Draper illustrates old-school values even though he often fails to meet them himself. His human flaws are what make him so relevant to men today. He is by turns a chain-smoking, drinking-in-the-office emblem of a bygone age, and an unusually real, earnest human being who illustrates the struggles modern men know all too well.
2. Usain Bolt
Three-time Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt held on to his title as the fastest man on the planet, and comes in on our ranking as the second most influential man of 2009. At the World Championships this past August, the Jamaican sprinter beat the records he had set at the 2008 Olympics in both the 100- and 200-meter events, making him the first man to simultaneously retain the 100- and 200-meter Olympic and World titles.
