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What does チャラ mean? It was explained here that チャラ男 means light image. Does that mean cool image of a person? A cool person?
チャラ男とは言動が軽いさまを表す「チャラチャラ」またはこれが形容詞化された「チャラい」を男性名っぽくしたものである（単に「チャラチャラした男」「チャラい男」の略ともいわれる）。
Note: I was actually trying to understand an interview by いきものがかり here.
chara has several meanings: 1) a lie or joke "chara wo iu", 2) even, zero "kari / hanasi wo chara ni suru". However, chara chara is rather different. Of the various meanings, frivolous and talkative are most relevant.
It is hard to miss out on the chara-phenomenon for those that live in Japan. Especially in 2011, Fujimori Shingo (藤森慎吾) made it into a very popular concept. Rather than chara, it is chara chara "frivolous" and "talkative" which are most defining. It is something that you know when seen, but difficult to define. So I referred to the Wikipedia article on it. It gives several defining characteristics, which seem appropriate:
Men who are like this are charai. Look up 藤森慎吾, who is the representative example of this. In 2011, he also made popular the phrase "kimi mo kawawiiii ne", where kawawii is a contraction of kawaii.
You have misunderstood what 軽い means when used for a person or behavior of a person. It means something similar to “frivolous,” “giddy,” or “rattlebrained.” So チャラ男 means “rattlebrain,” not a cool person.
According to Daijisen, Daijirin and the Yahoo JE dictionary, ちゃらちゃら can mean:
For ちゃら:
ちゃらを言う: can mean "random speech"/"saying [something careless/nonsense]"ちゃらにする: can mean "forgive a debt"/"wipe the slate clean"/"go as if something never [happened/existed]"It looks like they can go away from those definitions a lot though.
