Sometimes All You Need Is A Good Hunk
It took four days for 2024 to notch up its first internet meltdown. The ignition switch? Hit by a shirtless Mr. Jeremy Allen White, who has gone full hunk mode in the new Calvin Klein underwear campaign.
The moody Mert Alas-shot stills are delicious, but if you want the full immersive experience do find a quiet place to lap the campaign video of The Bear star atop a New York rooftop doing the kind of things one has always known hunks do when left to their own devices: disrobing, smouldering, chin-upping, stretching, and – umm – sprawling on an orange sofa while staring into the distance as a stud is wont to do. 10/10. No notes.
So, yes, cue collective thirst. A taster of the comments on Calvin Klein’s YouTube page: Much ‘Yes, Chef!!!!’-ing and a surplus of fire emojis. ‘Can you guys make this 1 hour version video?!’. ‘This deserves an Oscar honestly’ (alas, the Golden Globe White is up for this weekend is for his work on The Bear and not his services to topless gambolling). ‘I am getting over the flu. This is the first thing in days that has reminded me life is beautiful.’
You don’t need to be recovering from the lurgy to appreciate that reminder. A hefty dose of no-small-print, don’t-overthink-it, does-what-it-says-on-the-tin fitness is just what the doctor (or, you know, those thoughtful folk in Calvin Klein’s marketing department) ordered for those of us currently besieged by the January blues. Certainly if you are looking for reasons to feel hopeless/sad/angry/inadequate/fatigued you don’t need to go far to find them. And while a topless actor isn’t a solution to any of those things, it is a salve. White did his crunches so our early January could look a little brighter.
Something it’s easy to forget: levity and frivolity are essential to functioning as a rounded person. Those flashes of escapism, of light, don’t diminish our substance as a person – in fact, I’d argue that they heighten our ability to take seriously the things that **really** matter. And what could be more luxuriously silly than fancying someone you have never met with the kind of marble-carved six pack you’ve never seen outside of a museum or beyond the Love Island villa? Perhaps ‘appreciating’ is a better word than ‘fancying’. Personal attraction is weird and idiosyncratic and inexplicable (50-somethings in fleeces with dad tums and receding hairlines are more my kind of thing IRL) but there is something uplifting about letting an Objectively Fit person – by which I mean, one whose torso fits into some golden ratio ideal – interrupt your day.
Certainly nobody does Objectively Fit better than Calvin Klein (JAW follows in the footsteps of the tightie-whitie clad Mark ‘Marky Mark’ Wahlberg, Freddie Ljungberg and Jamie Dornan), something amplified by White’s blue-collar, ‘man’s man’ uniform of someone who knows how to change a tire – or, please, at least a lightbulb: white vest, chain, et cetera. And make no mistake; White is in on it, gamely proffering himself up for being objectified. The choice of soundtrack – Lesley Gore’s 1963 feminist-anthem ‘You Don’t Own Me’ – is a nudge-nudge, wink-wink, as if he is inviting us to reframe the gaze, ladies.
And while discussions of desire can easily be hijacked by politics, why bother? Sometimes it’s not just fun to be shallow – it’s your duty.
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