YOUR SEXY TIMING’S OFF, PEOPLE
Too early, too late — the ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ nod has been known to miss pop culture’s critical moment
February 1985. A rather young (and very good-looking) Mel Gibson stares at you with his intense blue eyes. His gaze gives you goosebumps, or maybe the gentlest of butterflies. Is he going to say anything to you? Hello, perhaps? Ask you out? No, he’s not. That’s because you’re looking at his picture on the cover of a magazine. The cover line? “Mel Gibson: The Sexiest Man Alive”.
This was the first edition of People magazine’s annual Sexiest Man Alive feature. The story goes that someone in the mag’s offices saw Gibson’s picture, exclaimed “that’s the sexiest man alive!” and ta-da! a monster was born.
Since then, the men who have been gifted this incredibly subjective title include those who dominated the pop culture conversation of their time (Patrick Swayze in 1991 — the year after Ghost was released), the classic hunks (George Clooney and Brad Pitt have topped the list twice), some “yeah OK I guess” types (Adam Levine, 2013) and the baffling choices (Blake Shelton,
2017 — what the heck?).
But in some rare instances, there are the men who become People’s Sexiest Man Alive and it makes one wonder: “What took so long?”
Case in point, David Beckham. Perhaps the most gorgeous footballer to have walked the earth (Thierry Henry is a very close second), Becks was crowned only in 2015. Was it the thin voice that blinded People staff to his ridiculous good looks?
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson won the accolade in 2016 — it’s difficult to argue with all that charisma, the acting chops, the bod and, most dangerously of all, that smile. As writer Roxane Gay once tweeted, “the Rock would get it morning noon and night. And also well into the afterlife.”
Johnson’s win was long overdue, but it also came at the perfect time, when his acting career was at its peak. The People team were in tune with the world around them.
Which brings us to 2018’s Sexiest Man Alive, Idris Elba. It’s incredibly strange that in the year of Black Panther hunks Chadwick Boseman and Michael B Jordan (who is coming to SA this month, ladies and gents); the year of Jeff Goldblum (his comeback is being called, cringingly, the Jeffaissance — whoever came up with that one should be locked in a room and never let out again) and in the year of Chris Evans (the actor, not the BBC presenter), that the folks at People chose Elba. He hasn’t had a particularly big year and he hasn’t even been announced as the new James Bond — so why now?
This isn’t to say that Elba isn’t deserving — he most certainly is. But the timing is weird: he should have won this a few years ago (he’s only the third black man in the issue’s 33-year history to get it — let that sink in).
It’s as though the people who choose this list are a few years behind when it comes to pop culture and who’s hot when it really should be the other way around.
Elba does look good in those pictures, though.