Aussie men eschew beer, beef for cheese plates-survey

CANBERRA (Reuters Life!) - The beer-drinking, blunt-talking Australian male of legend is under threat, replaced by men more likely to drink champagne and talk fashion and hair than football results, according to a new survey.

The survey found 75 percent of Aussie men were more likely to bring champagne and a cheese platter to a barbeque, rather than the traditional box of beer and raw meat for cooking.

One-in-two men also now favored yoga or pilates exercises to football and cricket at the weekend, the survey of 500 men for boutique brewing company Barons found on Tuesday.

"Many single women are crying out that its almost impossible to find a real man," Barons Chief Executive Scott Garnett said.

The survey found the laconic outback Aussie image popularized by Crocodile Dundee of cinema fame had been largely replaced by so-called metrosexual men, more at home with the sophisticated shopping and restaurants of the country's biggest cities.

Around six-in-10 Aussie men said they preferred to meet friends at a cafe or restaurant to a pub, while 80 percent of those surveyed spent more on their appearance than a decade ago.

But only one-in-four of those questioned by McCrindle Research believed the metrosexual trend was a good thing, with Aussie men mostly seeing it as another way to pick up women, the results showed.

(Reporting by Rob Taylor, editing by Miral Fahmy)