OMEGA MALE

n.

The man who is least likely to take on a dominant role in a social or professional situation.

These "omega male" partners of "breadwinner wives" are exactly the people who are transforming the gender dynamics of family and spurring a revolution in engaged fatherhood. In fact, the much-maligned qualities that qualify men as "omega males" — an apparent absence of testosterone, a childlike affinity for fun, a surplus of disposable time — are exactly the qualities that can transform men into remarkable fathers.

—Christopher Shulgan, " The daddy shift: How 'slackers' can make pretty good fathers: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/parenting/fathers-day/the-daddy-shift-how-slackers-can-make-pretty-good-fathers/article2065493/,"The Globe and mail, June 17, 2011

American pop culture keeps producing endless variations on theomega male, who ranks even below the beta in the wolf pack.This often-unemployed, romantically challenged loser can show up as a perpetual adolescent (in Judd Apatow's Knocked Up or The 40-Year-Old Virgin), or a charmless misanthrope (in Noah Baumbach's Greenberg), or a happy couch potato (in a Bud Light commercial). He can be sweet, bitter, nostalgic, or cynical, but he cannot figure out how to be a man.

—Hanna Rosin, " The End of Men: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/8135/,"The Atlantic, June 8, 2010

[A]nthropologists have recurrently documented the existence of societies of hunter-gatherers in which there are neither alpha noromega males.

—Marvin Harris, "Earth Odyssey: The Rise of Homo Sapiens,"The Washington Post, September 27, 1992

alpha boomer

alpha earner

alpha geek

alpha girl

alpha mom

alpha pup

himbo

metrosexual

testosteronic

Men and Women

People