This piece is an op-ed by Teen Vogue digital editor Ella Ceron on People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" title, which this week was awarded to musician Blake Shelton.
“Sexy” is a bad word. There, I said it.
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I don't mean that you or anyone else finding something or someone sexy is bad.
But “sexy” used as if it were objective or universal? That's lazy.
If I were to say I found velvet to be a sexy fabric, I'd be saying that velvet makes me respond a certain way. I am the agent. But if a magazine — say, People magazine — were to proclaim that a man was the sexiest man alive, well, that’s a whole sweeping statement that robs me and you of our agency or say in the matter, implying that of course we are all going to go swooning over the same supposed Casanova. (This is sarcasm; we are not.) Let’s try it:
“Blake Shelton is the Sexiest Man Alive.”
I don’t know about you, but when I read that, I made the same face I used to when my mom tried to get me to eat cauliflower when I was a kid. It’s not a pretty one.
As People explains, it picked Blake — who is best-known to me as the guy who shows up to the function in jeans while girlfriend Gwen Stefani shows up in actual couture — because “he’s sweet — the kind of guy who would pull over and fix your flat tire; a guy who says he tries, every day, to put the woman he loves on a pedestal. This year’s list of sexy men is full of men like him — men who use their gifts and their talents to make the world a better place.”
Never mind the fact that people have called Shelton out for homophobia and also, oh right, for supporting Donald Trump in August 2016, long after the then-presidential candidate had already revealed his xenophobic, misogynistic ways. But People’s decision to celebrate “a guy who says he tries, every day, to put the woman he loves on a pedestal” ignores the fact that women would prefer to be seen as real people instead of hoisted up onto pedestals. A guy who apparently feels the need to advertise his daily efforts to put a woman up there? No thanks. Also, isn’t it time we all learned to change our own flat tires? It’s not exactly difficult.
I appreciate a kind gesture as much as anyone else. But there are so many better indicators of good character than performative chivalry. People even concedes it’s been “a stressful year for America” — and a lot of that has to do with the very candidate that Shelton expressed support for, the candidate who is now president. Whether ripping immigrant families apart, intensifying nuclear anxiety, threatening LGBTQIA+ rights, or undermining reproductive health, this man has made the world really stressful for a lot of us.
What’s more, Trump is one of many, many public male figures who has been accused of sexual misconduct, with that list growing by the day in a news cycle that can now only be described as hellishly exhausting. So, you would hope that something even People magazine admits is “silliness” would be a respite, a break from the madness and the crushing stress. We deserve one! Instead we got a homophobic country star who once said of voting for Trump, "I probably wish there was another option, but there's not." (My dude, there was.) And yet here I am, even more stressed, which could have easily been avoided if People had just gotten one of the various Chrises to pose gamely for us in a chunky knit sweater. I would have never complained about a Chris.
But I digress, because even if I would be happy with giving Blake’s title to one of the Chrises, that wouldn’t solve the issues here — one of which being that the "Sexiest Man Alive" list is about as diverse as a Hanes three-pack. Telling us repeatedly that "sexiest" means "white" is getting really, really, old, and People is still at it. Since the title was created in 1985, the magazine has put a man of color on its cover a total of two times (Denzel Washington in 1996, and The Rock in 2016). Blake is the 27th WHITE MAN OUT OF 29 "SEXIEST MEN ALIVE" TOTAL. True, the inside pages of the SMA package often include a much more diverse portfolio than the cover would suggest. But the cover is important real estate. Women of color are disproportionately passed over by People, too — Julia Roberts alone has been chosen as the magazine's “Most Beautiful Woman” more times than women of color have.
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Should we be surprised at the bland homogeneousness of these lists? Not really, because Hollywood’s aesthetic preferences have always been impossibly narrow, so that even the “most beautiful” people work out for hours a day and are still Photoshopped in post-production. Still, I am tired. I am tired of being told what "sexy" is in the first place. I am tired of it always meaning one thing. I am tired of "sexiness" being commodified to fit the same heteronormative, cisgender narrative. And while I get why you might want to celebrate your own partner’s aesthetic virtues, it is 2017 and we are fighting for basic rights for entire swaths of marginalized people. Now is not the time to tell me that I should be celebrating what Gwen Stefani finds sexy because I am not Gwen Stefani and also our country is up in flames.
You can celebrate “sexiness” and also open-mindedness, willingness to engage with social justice issues, and real work to do anything to change what's wrong with the status quo. But acting as if the former exists in vacuum, apart from the others, is myopic. Blake Shelton is not the right pick.
When the news of Blake's new title was first announced, people expressed shock that Idris Elba, who, IMHO, could make reading a biochem textbook into a sensual experience, was not chosen as the cover star. They pointed to Jason Momoa, whose Instagram presence more than makes up for the meh-ness of Justice League. (That meh-ness isn't your fault, Jason.) Then there's Mahershala Ali, who does more for me than Blake Shelton singing about…naming dogs. (This is a real song, I just looked it up.)
The point is that what people find “sexy” is entirely personal. And it should be! Your sexuality is yours alone, and how you define and express it is up to you and no one else. Maybe you feel nothing for any of the so-called “Sexiest Men Alive” because you’re not attracted to men. Maybe you just don't find any of the men selected sexy. Maybe you are attracted to men and/or women and/or people whose gender doesn't fit into a limiting binary. Maybe “Sexiest Man Alive” is a really silly thing to get mad about, because in the grand scheme of things none of us are ever going to meet these people, and we’ll each go find our own people or be alone forever and die that way. It’s bleak, but hey, that’s where I’m at emotionally right now.
But as dumb as this list might be, representation matters, and as long as this title is around, the least People could do is expand its limited definition of what "sexy" looks like. Even more than that, though, I don't need my media to flatter a man who might help me change a tire: I want it to champion the people who are doing real good in this world. But I have a feeling that the people who are doing that wouldn't insist on calling it "sexy" in the first place.
When contacted by Allure, People responded with the following: "PEOPLE’s editor in chief, Jess Cagle, explains in his editor’s letter this week why Blake Shelton was chosen this year." A link was included that to the mentioned editor's letter, which you can find here. The letter explains Shelton was chosen for his "considerable charm," and because he uses his "gifts and [his] talents to make the world a better place."
"We admit that it’s a strange time to be talking about Sexiest Man Alive — it seems like every day another famous man is being exposed as a sexual predator," one part of the editor's letter reads. "But ultimately this list celebrates men who do good as well as look good."
Allure reached out to Blake Shelton's representation and will update this article accordingly.
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