Adam Levine knows his public perception is not always flattering — and now he’s doing a little self-examination.
What constitutes a douchebag? Is it someone who enjoys their success a little too much? A man who uses his fame to hoard beautiful women? A case of severe cockiness? Adam Levine has been accused of all, and now he is getting down to the bottom of this oft-applied label.
In an interview with GQ, Levine explored his reputation as the sexiest douchebag alive and pondered how the label was ever slapped on him in the first place.
“Douchebag. What is a douchebag?” he wondered. “Would it be really easy to assume that I was a douchebag? Definitely. 100 percent. But that doesn’t mean that I am. Or maybe I am. I don’t know.”
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“So I’m gonna get really intricately self-reflective right now and ask myself the hard questions, to find out, once and for all, definitively, whether or not I’m a douchebag.”
Levine explains that there are three main components of douchebaggery: Lack of self-awareness (“That’s big”), conceitedness (“I’m not arrogant, I’m cocky. It’s different. Cocky is playful”) and insecurity (“Or masking deep insecurity with too much security. I’m confident. Some people don’t like confidence. They resent confidence”).
Levine, therefore, comes to the conclusion that he is not, in fact, a douchebag.
“You know what the gist of this article is?” he asked. “Your opening line can be: ‘You don’t have to like me, but I’d prefer it if you did.’ That’s kind of how I feel. I’m not the easiest person to love right off the bat, you know. If I knew everyone in the world, they would love me. Every single last f***ing one of them.”
Of course, a huge part of Levine’s rep comes from his playboy days of being romantically tied to the likes of Lindsay Lohan (which he denied on a technicality), Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson, as well as dating three Victoria’s Secret models in five years — including current fiancée Behati Prinsloo.
“Men are not as sophisticated as women,” Levine explained. “They’re not as mature as women. They’re not as connected with their emotions as women. There’s a very Neanderthal quality that still exists in a lot of men. There’s the carnal s*** you can’t deny. And if you’re in the public eye, to me, it’s very boring to say what you have to say and be media trained to the extent that you don’t ever reveal any truth. There was a time in my life when I lived probably a bit more on the primal level. And it was amazing.”
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