I hate to give you one for free,but fine. Here it is. You’ve worn me down. Let’s talk about the way we talk about men lately.
Jacob Elordi (left),Barry Keoghan and Jeremy Allen White have provided us with plenty of steamy content.Robin Cowcher
Maybe it’s just the circles I travel in,or maybe my algorithm just senses that underneath my cynicism and my relentless and tedious discourse about compulsory heterosexuality,I’m just a giddy 32-year-old schoolgirl,but we are wall-to-wall with heartthrobs lately. I can’t get through a cursory scroll without the kind of steamy,smirking content that would have put my grandmother into an early grave.
At long last,we’ve started seeing more and more media through the lens of the female gaze. Barry Keoghan went from dancing naked forSaltburn’sprolonged credits sequence – redefining the term “full-frontal” – to getting his kit off for the digital cover ofVanity Fair’s annual Hollywood issue. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen more of his naked body this month than my own.
Say nothing of the opportunistic capitalism that resulted in more than a thousand Etsy listings for candles labelled “Jacob Elordi’s bathwater”,after a scene from the same film shows his character self-pleasuring in a clawfoot tub before he leaves the,uh,result for Keoghan to slurp off the drain. It may make me a card-carrying hypocrite,but I just ordered one. As a business expense. It’s apparently coconut-cream scented,a detail that both thrills and nauseates me.
And what of Jeremy Allen White’s campaign for Calvin Klein underwear? A series of photographs so sensuous and pandering that fervour over them was louder than any discussion of his streak of nominations and wins for his performance inThe Bear this awards season. A content creator working for the Golden Globes pulled him on-camera at the ceremony to thank him “on behalf of all the women on the internet” for the campaign. White,clearly uncomfortable,blushed,laughed nervously,and made his hasty exit.
Have we forgotten our communal outrage and disappointment that every time an actress promotes a comic book film,her male colleagues are asked about character,performance and backstory,while she gets quizzed about her diet and the underwear she has on beneath her latex superhero uniform?
I don’t want to create a false equivalence here. Sexism isn’t tit-for-tat (sorry,I couldn’t resist),and a few loud women having an enthusiastic response to a strategic marketing choice — it’s not as though the point of those Calvin Klein ads is to promote their airwicking fabric and superior fit — is not the same as hundreds of years of ingrained cultural and institutional misogyny.
Whenever a female celebrity publishes a provocative photoshoot,beside page after page of her breathtaking physical perfection,you can count on a soundbite explaining how empowered she feels to find herself in a state of semi-undress in a magazine targeted at straight male readers. But if a content creator working for the official channel of an entertainment institution cornered her and thanked her profusely on behalf of all men,we’d rightfully be sickened.
Call me naive,but despite disappointing fade from public consciousness,I’d really like to believe that no red carpet host would pull out a candle claiming to smell like an actress’ orgasm and ask other celebrities to sniff it on camera. (Gwyneth Paltrow,stay out of this.) I still remember the controversy around the 2006Vanity Fair cover in which Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley posed naked and heavy-lidded beside a fully clothed Tom Ford – but when Keoghan does it,it’s cheeky,it’s endearing,it’s hilarious.
Maybe it’s because we still largely approach male nudity with humour (witness the response to John Cena’s Oscars “streak” this week). Despite its R-rated content,Magic Mike and all its self-effacing permutations operated from a foundation of comedy. Because we’ve been taught that women’s bodies are for ogling and men’s are for giggling at,we don’t have the media literacy required to approach it with the same criticism.
Or maybe it’s because we live so much of our lives online now,dopamine receptors worn and dull from the barrage of content,and we require the envelope to be pushed further and further to get the same response. Maybe we’ve forgotten that it’s still just a bit gross to objectify people,and to bombard them with our drooling,panting response.
I never thought I’d say it,but as unfiltered lust fills my feed,as the double standards mount,I find myself asking – oh,God,it’s painful just to type it (am I one of them now?) – what about men?
