Robert Redford, who died this week on the age of 89, was once, in addition to being certainly one of Hollywood’s brightest stars each in entrance of and in the back of the digital camera, graced with “all-American just right appears to be like [that] couldn’t be left out” because the BBC wrote. Breaking thru within the “new Hollywood” generation, his luscious blond curls, outlined jawline and delicate, fascinating smile equipped him the everyday pretty-boy benefits that good looks gives for a occupation in leisure, even though his ability and zest for performing driven him additional nonetheless.
It was once his position because the gunslinging, sharpshooting Sundance Child in 1969, along the extra established Paul Newman, which propelled him to reputation – even though the movie’s author, William Goldman, had disregarded Redford as “simply some other California blond … throw a stick at Malibu, you’ll hit six of him”. But what comes thru about Redford within the remark and obituaries following his dying is this feeling that he transcended his good looks; that he defied the clean California Ken doll archetype to develop into in truth prodigious inside US cinema.
It’s then simple to know why Redford seemed to undermine his personal good looks and reject his standing as a intercourse image. In the way in which he offered himself he did little to undo the belief of him as a logo of male class: certainly, a Monetary Instances piece about his unbelievable taste – revealed, by the way, the day prior to his dying – evidences that he was once lively within the collection of superb tailoring. However good looks was once nonetheless one thing of a jail. In an interview with the New York Instances in 1974, Redford said that “this glamour symbol could be a actual handicap. Symbol is crap”, and he was once many times disdainful of the truth that his look continuously avoided him from being taken extra severely.
A New Statesman piece bizarrely laments that Redford represented the ultimate of a practice of male “beauties shall we depend on”, apparently as a result of such gorgeous males have been an embodiment of distinctive feature and agree with. And there’s a Telegraph piece through Joan Bakewell, who interviewed him within the Nineteen Seventies and writes that “he was once … just right taking a look, however he took his process as a movie big name severely”, as even though it’s exceptional or contradictory for an attractive individual to care about anything else rather then their face. There may be this extraordinary tendency to pit good looks in opposition to different qualities – as even though an individual is a steadiness sheet, and a greater face should imply much less ability or brains. But if will we ever follow this in our actual lives? Call to mind the gorgeous folks you already know and recall to mind the entirety else they are able to do. Why is the truth that good looks is one high quality amongst many one thing that folks should at all times attempt to end up, once we all merely comprehend it to be true?
It isn’t that there was a scarcity of protection of Redford’s achievements in Hollywood, from his dexterous performances and his advocacy of unbiased cinema to his Sundance movie pageant; nor of his environmentalism or championing of Local American and LGBTQ+ rights. However such constant emphasis on good looks is going in opposition to the type of determine Redford tried to be during his occupation. He refused to be typecast as a “fairly boy”, who prefer extra really extensive and difficult paintings, comparable to portraying a journalist investigating the Watergate scandal in All of the President’s Males. He even first of all became down the position as Barbra Streisand’s Waspy romantic hobby in The Manner We Have been, handiest agreeing as soon as the nature was once remodeled from “a Ken doll and not using a measurement” to one thing extra mistaken and complicated.
I believe this issues now not handiest in framing how we have in mind Redford, however as a result of discussions about male good looks and the way society interacts with it really feel frequently underdeveloped. Sociologically, we’ve intercourse symbols, of any gender, as a litmus take a look at for a slender set of societal good looks requirements and to fee photographs that may additional positive media and industrial tasks – this is, intercourse sells. However I believe there could also be a vulnerability implicit within the thought of a intercourse image or a symbol of good looks; as a result of up to they could also be admired, envied or lusted after, they’re additionally a supply of aid. Possessing such good looks can also be seen as a delusion or function, the load of someone else that we will experience with out being interested by it, despite the fact that that implies emphasising it the place the individual has now not invited it.
The load of being a intercourse image has been considerably extra consequential for well-known ladies – the scrutiny, tragedy and objectification confronted through the likes of Pamela Anderson, Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield are smartly understood. However I do surprise additionally what it looks like for gorgeous males – a lot of whom, like Redford, have it seems that expressed a discomfort or even rejection of the fascination with their good looks and their very own sexualisation.
Assumptions concerning the conquest of straight male sexuality – that the good looks opens your get admission to to girls – would possibly make you’re feeling that no guy would ever be uncomfortable with the eye his appears to be like obtain. And but actors comparable to Keanu Reeves and Sterling Okay Brown have actively sought to distance themselves from their intercourse image standing, specifically the place – as with Redford – it has undermined being taken severely.
I have in mind Brown’s Emmy-nominated flip within the hit political mystery Paradise being decreased on my social media timelines to a bathe intercourse scene, which was once circulated in reward of his muscular again and in the back of. Years prior to that, Jesse Williams, whose intercourse image standing was once cemented through topless scenes in Gray’s Anatomy, expressed his sadness when target audience contributors at a Broadway efficiency he was once in filmed a nude scene – and unfold it on-line.
Intercourse and good looks have their position in artwork – and feature undoubtedly helped those males’s careers. But it isn’t the sum of them. It could lead males to a darker position, too. The neo-soul singer D’Angelo, a disciple of Prince, has remarkable musical ability, dulcet vocals and a mastery of more than one tools. But that ability was once obscured and eclipsed through the intercourse image standing that was once conferred on him after his track video for Untitled (How Does It Really feel), during which he seems bare and writhing, and which was once credited with the sexual awakening of many a millennial lady and homosexual guy. This incapacity to cement himself as a soul legend as a result of the trimmings of good looks profoundly affected D’Angelo – he took an 11-year hiatus from track and struggled with habit, as he advised GQ in 2012. Predictably, when D’Angelo resurfaced now not as buff and chiselled, the remark on his weight achieve and look was once merciless.
None of that is to mention that male good looks, like every good looks, can’t be celebrated. Nevertheless it feels as even though we don’t have a language or actual figuring out of what nice good looks can really feel like for males. And the place they do specific it, or distance themselves from it, we insist on bringing them proper again to these confines. Redford knew he was once an attractive guy, however he would now not countenance his appears to be like being obsessed over even in dying. Why is it that we will’t assist ourselves however to proceed?
