I know how it feels to be judged on good looks
Hardeep Singh Kohli
MY MATE Paul was strange. I never knew what he did for a living.
I had heard whispers that he had been an actor, an actor who had enjoyed no little success. He was the father of my son’s friend. It was one of those enforced relationships that you nurture for your kids; soon enough Paul and I developed a life not predicated solely on the friendship of our progeny.
He was a free spirit, unencumbered by the nine to five, as was I. Afternoons were our time; that space before children needed picking up. Paul spent pretty much every hour he could naked from the waist up. His hairy, sun-kissed chest became as familiar to me as his quizzical smile.
Even when he donned a shirt on the way to the school gate he paid scant attention to buttons, his shirt flowing as freely in the sun as his salt-and-pepper mane. I learned over dinner one night that Paul’s great claim to fame had been a not insubstantial part in the iconic 1970s TV serial Poldark. So,it could be that I knew the original topless actor from Poldark (or Paul dark as I now think of him). I was reminded of shirtless Poldark as the current Poldark furore kicked off. Actor Aidan Turner must have known what he was signing up to in season two of the BBC drama. The lustful reaction his pectorals, portrayed in season one, caused among the womenfolk (and some menfolk) across these nations upped the ante when it came to
sensual sirens of the male persuasion. Colin Firth’s bare-chested lake exit as Mr Darcy in the BBC’s 1995 Pride And Prejudice mini-series was forgotten.
Season two of Poldark hit our screens and the sexual expectation was almost palpable. The nation clamoured for more naked Aidan.
I can’t help but feel for the poor actor. I know how it feels to be blessed with a Grecian god’s body yet also to possess a craft and a skill. I, too, can relate to how it feels to be judged solely on one’s searing, sensual looks. It’s the burden of our beauty.
But last Sunday’s episode drew disappointment from the expectant viewers. The primetime heart-throb had the gall to remain fully dressed throughout the episode.
“A whole hour and no topless scene,” tweeted one crestfallen fan. “Yadda, yadda courtroom stuff, blah blah. Hurry and get back to topless.com,” chirped another. “I’ve read the books; I’m sure he was topless in court.”
What the Twitterati lacked in subtlety they more than made up for in passion and a general sense of the gallus. “His shirt stayed on, his hair changed length & now no-one is sure how to pronounce his name anymore. Absolute chaos,” sighed a disappointed viewer.
But it poses the most interesting of contemporary conundrums. If the actor concerned hadn’t been Aidan but Adriana, and the social network outcry had been that she had not spent enough time with her bared baps oot, wouldn’t there have been a moral outrage at the objectification of a woman based solely on her physical attributes? Yes, there would have been; and rightly so. So what’s the difference? In a word, the patriarchy.
I didn’t grow up with naked male torsos splayed across national newspapers. I didn’t witness scantily clad men being shoe-horned into every and any marketing opportunity to sell toothpaste/cars/stereos/carpets/ life insurance. I don’t live in a world where women are paid the same for the same work. I have yet to see women fully represented across boardrooms and the higher echelons of politics in a way that truly reflects their place in society.
Men have never been defined solely by their gender. When we see Aidan Turner topless, torturing and tormenting us with his smouldering gorgeousness, it’s a novelty rather than the norm.
I can’t pretend that I find it very edifying to watch lecherous women and men folk rattling their cages and drooling for more flesh. But to liken this to the systematic, patriarchal subjugation that has denied generations of girls and women anything approaching equality is a notion that is beyond parody.
In fact, I’d go as far as to say it is bare-faced cheek. Or bare-chested.