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In Defense of the Sexiest Man Alive
Is it time to put the Sexiest Man Alive out to pasture? Call me a hopeless romantic, but I say no.
And it made sense that George Clooney (twice), Richard Gere, Patrick Swayze, Denzel Washington, Matthew McConaughey, Pierce Brosnan, and Brad Pitt (twice) were picks in the ’90s and the 2000s when the Hollywood star system was still all-consuming. These days, with culture so much more diffuse, you can sense the magazine grasping toward some idea of the Great Average Middle in its picks: that is, men who possess a kind of uncomplicated sexiness but are not teetering at the top of some unapproachable peak (see: Dempsey, whom my colleague Jason P. Frank believes People had been keeping inside a glass box with the words “break in case of emergency” since McDreamy’s death). That blandness feels extra dissonant in the post–Internet Boyfriend era, when fans simply anoint sexy people themselves, choosing Pedro Pascal one week, Paul Mescal the next, Dev Patel, Jharrel Jerome, Steven Yeun, Austin Butler, and so on.
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