End of year lists are coming! Oh, what a wonderful time of year, when the Christmas stocking of the Internet is filled with all kinds of debatable, short-form goodies. This week, People named the sexiest man alive just as GQ named its men of the year. Who could they be? Innovators? Newcomers? Interesting … guys?
Well, no.
First, let’s start with sexy. People magazine picked Bradley Cooper, you know the boring-looking dude who plays a smarmy playboy so well? Maybe there’s more to Bradley Cooper than I realize. Here’s the mag’s justification:
“Ladies, take note: this Georgetown grad can whip up dinner, take you for a spin on his motorcycle and whisper sweet nothings in French (he’s fluent!).”
So, being sexy means:
-You can cook dinner
-You graduated from [nice college]
-You can ride a motorcycle
-You speak French
These seem like pretty simple credentials to me. Shouldn’t we expect all men to be able to whip up dinner by now, and hopefully to graduate from college, that debt-creating thing? The motorcycle part gets me. Do I prefer a man more likely to die in a leathery, bloody skidfest after falling off a really fast bike? Not really. And French? How about a man who can speak Chinese? Half the guys in America think they speak French.
Let’s see what GQ thinks. Their men of the year are … Justin Timberlake, Jay-Z, Jimmy Fallon and Michael Fassbender.
The first two: Cool musician guys who aren’t necessarily more relevant this year than they have been in the past. They’ve bedded some of America’s favorite chicks.
Jimmy Fallon: Huh? Hasn’t this been the year people have non-stop criticized his show? Or was that last year and I just haven’t heard much about him this year?
Michael Fassbender: Who that? Ooh, a cute actor who is going to play Carl Jung. Doesn’t scream 2011 to me.
I would say that these men were determined by a fairly simple equation:
Who is likely to sell the most magazine covers x Whose latest project does the magazine have some quiet agreement to promote
If not for the latter, would Bradley Cooper end up on anything?
Magazines’ pulse on culture is starting to feel outdated because it still conceives of celebrity as being someone with massive success in the acting or music worlds. In reality, the Internet has opened up what celebrity means to us, and made us curious about people who feel unique, real and even innovative.
Why not someone in the tech world for man of the year? Why not Old Spice guy even? At the end of the day, notable men aren’t inaccessible giants, but people who change what being a notable man is. What about someone like Will Reiser, who turned his cancer experience into something funny and relatable that will make thousands of people diagnosed feel less alone? Or what about one of these social media founders? We don’t need the guy who played the guy anymore. We’re fine with the original, whether or not he looks good covered in oil.
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