Diamy Wang - Sexiness is In the Eye of the Beholder

On Nov. 11, the pop culture and entertainment Twitter account Pop Base asked who should win the title of PEOPLE Magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive,” which was to be officially announced the next day (PopBase, 2024).

Despite the deluge of different replies and pictures of shirtless men, none of them were exactly expecting actor John Krasinski, perhaps best known for his role in The Office from 2005 to 2013. 

The reaction was swift, with some saying it was “just lazy” to choose Krasinski, who had not been actively working on a high-profile project or promoting one in the past several years (ceejnsight, 2024). Apparently, the “Sexiest Man Alive” label wasn’t purely based on looks — although Twitter users had something to say about that as well. 

“[T]hey could’ve chosen someone better ngl,” Twitter user @buffys wrote kindly under Pop Base’s announcement on Nov. 12. 

The real question isn’t whether Glen Powell or Jonathan Bailey should have received the title instead, but rather this: Is it that serious? 

Many — especially social media users who feel emboldened by the anonymity of their actions and comments — claim year after year that they don’t care about the “Sexiest Man Alive,” that it’s an outdated contest society has outgrown, that it’s not representative of the general population’s taste anyway. And yet, for a coronation that supposedly should be disposed of, PEOPLE’s announcement of Krasinski still made ripples. 

My issue with the “Sexiest Man Alive” contest isn’t that people care about it. By all means, tweet to your heart’s content about who you think deserves the title (I can get behind Glen or Manny Jacinto, if you really made me choose). But pretending it is meant to be objective and fair is where I draw the line. 

Celebrity news has long had a contentious history of falling into a gray area of quasi-journalism, where ethics can be played fast and loose and reporters are willingly complicit in “being used as the mechanism for turning advertising into news” by entertainment companies (Turner, 2014, p. 146). When those core tenets of traditional journalism are compromised, it’s fair to say that celebrity news becomes a beast of its own. 

With that in mind, celebrity news should be thought of as vaguely related yet clearly distinct from what we traditionally conceptualize as independent, hard-hitting journalism. Regardless, the lines tend to be blurred, and the general audience begins to interpret the clearly subjective as the objective. Krasinski is not actually the “Sexiest Man Alive” because sexiness is subjective — there’s no sourcing about his attractiveness and no hard evidence to say he is the singular sexiest man alive out of four billion in the world. And yet, people declare their opposition and try to make arguments against Krasinski’s title because they feel that there are other male celebrities who are objectively a better answer to an inherently subjective question. 

The boundary between fact and opinion is obscured even more because of the shady, unknown processes by which the “Sexiest Man Alive” is chosen. In the days after Krasinski was chosen, rumors swirled that Powell and Pedro Pascal — two attractive actors who have had some notoriety in the past year — turned down PEOPLE Magazine’s solicitations for the title (Weakland, 2024). 

Payola is the unlawful practice of music executives paying for radio play, but has also been extended to a similar practice that is not technically illegal on privately owned streaming platforms (Jennings, 2024). Even a sexiness contest isn’t immune to rumors of payola — a savvy publicist can allegedly pay the right price to get their client on that front cover come fall (Cunningham, 2024). Krasinski’s unlikely christening only amplified those allegations, which have been ever-present throughout the years. 

An intentional lack of clarity about the selection process means that we humble consumers have no choice but to make up our own reasonings for why and how these celebrities came to be crowned as “Sexiest Man Alive.” It’s similar to the concept of algorithmic gossip, where people share “communally and socially informed theories … pertaining to recommender algorithms” that are grounded less in actual algorithmic knowledge and more in keen-eyed observation (Bishop, 2019, p. 2589). It’s this type of knowledge transmission that result in social media comments implying Krasinski was somehow an illogical choice because he didn’t fit a certain standard — not only of attractiveness, but of career trajectory and social relevance. 

At the end of the day, none of this fits an objective standard. I’m sure plenty of people — including his wife Emily Blunt, a conventionally attractive and successful actress in her own right — believe he’s deserving of the “Sexiest Man Alive” title (Jordan, 2024). And who am I to critique a matter of personal taste, even if I think you’re wrong and Glen Powell clearly deserves it more than Krasinski does? 

So, the question I posed above of “Is it that serious?” isn’t a rhetorical one. The concept of “Sexiest Man Alive” is fundamentally unserious, and frankly can be an area of fun, lighthearted discourse. But when we start to get into the weeds of weighing the merits of someone’s selection when we don’t exactly know what sets the standard, that’s when we should consider taking a step back — it’s not that serious. 

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Bibliography

[@buffys]. (2024, November 13). they could’ve chosen someone better ngl [Tweet]. X. https://x.com/buffys/status/1856563316853772307 

Bishop, S. (2019). Managing visibility on YouTube through algorithmic gossip. New Media & Society, 21(11–12), 2589–2606.

Cunningham, K. (2024, November 13). The confusing recent history of People’s Sexiest Man Alive. Vox. https://www.vox.com/culture/384916/john-krasinski-people-sexiest-man-alive-blake-shelton-patrick-dempsey

Jennings, R. (2024, July). The Spotify conspiracy theories about “Espresso,” explained. Vox; Vox. https://www.vox.com/culture/357907/spotify-sabrina-carpenter-espresso-chappell-roan-algorithm

Jordan, J. (2024, November 12). John Krasinski Is PEOPLE’s 2024 Sexiest Man Alive: “I Think It’s Going to Make Me Do More Household Chores,” He Jokes. People.com. https://people.com/sexiest-man-alive-2024-john-krasinski-reveal-8743226 

Listen to @GAWTpod [@ceejnsight]. (2024, November 13). If we HAD to target middle America and stay white, Jonathan Bailey, Glenn Powell, James McAvoy, Paul Mescal, all of [Tweet]. X. https://x.com/ceejnsight/status/1856576926409773317 

Pop Base [@PopBase]. (2024, November 11). PEOPLE will officially announce their pick for Sexiest Man Alive tomorrow. Who do you think should win this title? [Tweet]. X. https://x.com/PopBase/status/1856027112022430017 

Turner, G. (2014). Is celebrity news, news? Journalism, 15(2), 144–152.

Weakland, R. (2024, November 13). Glen Powell and Pedro Pascal were “begged” to be People’s Sexiest Man Alive before John Krasinski... Mail Online; Daily Mail. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-14079715/Glen-Powell-Pedro-Pascal-begged-Peoples-Sexiest-Man-Alive-John-Krasinski-crowned.html