People has declared Adam Levine, frontman for Maroon 5, coach on “The Voice” and general self-absorbed celebrity to be 2013’s Sexiest Man Alive. Eww. Apart from my own personal predilections for scruffy over airbrushed and magnetism over dude-your-band-sucks, it appears that the more discerning quarters of the internet don’t agree with this pick, either. Jezebel destroyed him with his own words. Salon countered as it always does with its own list, which kind of sucked (Banksy? Really?). For its part, Esquire balances its annual Sexiest Women list with the not-yet-released “Best-Dressed Men,” redirecting any homosexual desires towards the snappy tailoring. As for me, I would have gone with Norman Reedus, but I like a bad boy.
When it comes to fashion, People isn’t just safe, it’s the high commissioner of the safety police, patrolling the boundaries of non-threatening to keep out the Joe Manganiellos and the David Beckhams, along with anyone you might describe with that awful word: ethnic. Sexiest Man Alive is a total white-boys club, with Denzel Washington (1996) being the lone non-Caucasian of all the guys who’ve ever won — almost all of whom are film actors. So in that sense, picking Levine was a departure.
In spite of power being the greatest aphrodisiac, it’s not baffling that no politician has ever won — although, woof, Rep. Martin Heinrich. But why is it never an athlete? Tom Brady seems like he’d have it in the bag. Reggie Bush, too. (By the way, hello, Gerard Piqué.) And isn’t Ricky Martin more or less the Platonic embodiment of People’s ideal of male beauty? That ship probably sailed when he came out, though. Gotta be straight to win the beauty pageant, and, oh yeah: “ethnic” again. But the resurgent Justin Timberlake unquestionably beats Adam Levine by any measure. It seems as though People is, at best, inconsistent.
Let’s consider for a moment the definition of “sexy.” Why it is the “Sexiest Man Alive,” and not “Hottest” or “Most Gorgeous”? There’s something sexy about the word sexy, right down to the X-factor of the letter x, that leaps off the shelf above the supermarket checkout conveyor belt. But there’s also a slight nuance among the superlatives. Subjectivity aside, “sexy” isn’t just another synonym for “handsome,” and a look at the history of People’s choices reveals that they grasp this intuitively. You can look handsome in a photograph, a fixed, static presentation. But “sexy” is dynamic — handsome plus something in the way you carry yourself. It requires charisma when alone and chemistry with others. Two-time winners George Clooney (1997 and 2006), Richard Gere (1993 and 1999), Brad Pitt (1995 and 2000) and even whitebread Bradley Cooper (2011) all exhibit this to some extent.
You can be sexy and model-perfect (Daniel Henney, Shemar Moore, Jonathan Rhys Meyers). You can be sexy and adorkable (Paul Rudd, Jimmy Fallon, the penguin keeper at the S.F. Zoo). You can be sexy and weird-looking (David Bowie, Prince, Gael Garcia Bernal). You can be sexy and kind of flawed (Daniel Craig, Woody Harrelson). You can be sexy and almost ugly (Willem Dafoe, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Chris Bosh). But you cannot evacuate every last trace of mystery, moodiness, and danger and be sexy. (That Adam Levine is also a total douchebag doesn’t help him one bit.) Sexy must captivate and enthrall, almost against the will. The line between swaggering charm and arrogance is a fine one, keeping sexist-uncle Joe Biden in the country’s good graces while everyone just loathes A-Rod. Things become really subjective here, but for me, file both Devendra Banhart and the ultimate awful liberal, Alec Baldwin, under “Why Am I So Attracted to You in Spite of Myself?” There is an in-born irresistibility inherent in sexiness that an overly groomed reality-show host and mall-rocker cannot ever exude. Adam Levine looks like he keeps a tattoo consultant on retainer.
Sexiness onscreen must be sustained for more than a few frames. It needs dramatic pauses and a bit of tension. It is itself a performance. Levine might have executed the least smoldering of any winner; he isn’t ever in the “Moves Like Jagger” video for more than a full second before a jump cut. While it’s actually laudable not to make a musician’s physical appearance the number one criterion when listening to his or her music, youth culture is drenched in sex. Faux-rugged Adam Levine is neither especially sexy nor particularly talented, yet reaps awards and acclaim in both areas. The result is that People’s frivolous award just means, “In the absence of true megastars, we hereby deem your name-recognition to have crested.” The upside is that Adam Levine will be 35 in April, so at least People still considers some level of maturity to be a key element of what sexy means. Fine, Ryan Gosling is still one leading role away from contention, but at least Justin Bieber didn’t take it — yet. Still, having ingested some elixir of eternal youthful inoffensiveness, the title will go to Ryan Seacrest, or Levine’s co-host Carson Daly, sooner or later.
Photo by Yuichi Sakuraba
