The Longhousing of Sexiest Man Alive

Let's just stop reproducing

This is a Carousel guest piece, part of EWOMAN WEEK, by baby g

The Longhouse prevails in strange ways. 

People Magazine’s 2023 Sexiest Man Alive has been announced. And no, it’s not Jacob Elordi. The crowd boos. It’s Patrick Dempsey! Crickets. This caps off a year of masculine neutering and completely sexless male celebrities. How did we get here? We must study the Longhousing of the Sexiest Man Alive.

Not only has no one thought about Patrick Dempsey in years, but he’s aged, washed up, and generally unerotic. Sure, he played neurosurgeon Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd on ABC’s Grey's Anatomy and drove race cars nearly a decade ago, but now he’s 57 and has adult children. And apparently a cancer foundation. Cool.

Upon hearing the news, Dempsey said, “I was completely shocked, and then I started laughing, like, this is a joke, right?” While People has certainly peaked in terms of relevance, so has their judgment. We used to get raunchy tidbits about the sex lives of celebrities; photos of wasted starlets leaving the Chateau Marmont or couples getting handsy on yachts. That’s sex appeal. Sexiest Man Alive was the pinnacle of manliness. Vitality. Fertility. But recent selections represent castration and control. I’m going to take you on a walk through the graveyard of former Sexiest Men, and we can reflect on what the Longhouse’s latest successful conquest means for humankind.

If you’re reading this you’re probably already familiar with the Longhouse, coined by internet personality and writer Bronze Age Pervert in his book Bronze Age Mindset. If not, famed anon L0m3z astutely describes it in his piece for First Things as “our increasingly degraded mode of technocratic governance; but also to wokeness, to the “progressive,” “liberal,” and “secular” values that pervade all major institutions.” In other words it’s the HRification of culture. 

It’s the reason models don’t have to be beautiful anymore, or why Aerie got away with photographing an underwear model with a catheter bag. It’s the reason beauty pageants dropped the swimsuit round. It’s the reason the Abercrobie and Fitch Netflix documentary, White Hot, wasn’t about its branding success—capturing the intangible essence of prep—but why its predatory, classist, racist, perverted, fat-phobic blah blah blah. The Longhouse pervades many other facets of human life aside from those aesthetic ones I’ve described, but since we’re dissecting the Sexiest Man Alive, think of it as the “disequilibrium afflicting the contemporary social imaginary.”

So what does it mean to be the “sexiest”? It should mean you’re the peak of male attractiveness. You should cater to the female gaze, and you should be the epitome of procreation. You should be strong, successful, charismatic, and mysterious. Veins popping out. Glistening with blood, sweat, and jizz. You should make women’s ovaries quiver!

Scrolling through the People covers of past awardees, you find examples. Pussy Posse leader Leonardo DiCaprio, acclaimed sex addict Adam Levine. Crazy eyes Tom Cruise. Matthew McConaughey. Matt Damon. Jude Law. Brad Pitt. George Clooney. Names we naturally associate with being a “heartthrob.” Those were the salad days. 

2012 was a very good year. “Charming, chiseled” Channing Tatum on the cover. “We’ve got ‘em shirtless and mustached,” the heading read. But that was the last year we heard of that kind of talk. Today’s People won’t even allude to body type at all. Why? Out of fear of perpetuating a beauty standard? Out of fear of offending those who don’t have that kind of body?

There’s a reason things are “attractive”: We’re biologically programmed to attract the mate that will most likely continue our lineage. STRONG. HEALTHY. But Longhouse world boxes up manly traits. It demands weakness of its men. If you are too virile, it demands you restrain your sexuality. It demands diversity of weakness. Maybe the Sexiest Man has Crohn’s Disease. Maybe he’s a woman. Oh I know, vitiligo—vitiligo is huge right now! Pete Davidson wouldn’t be such a bad idea—he may be Longhouse approved via his Hillary Clinton tattoo—but as an OK comedian he’s probably already been labeled too problematic.

Around 2015 SMA took a big turn. We have David Beckham. Notorious hottie, indubitably so, but the tagline under the cover says something curious:

“He’s a romantic husband, a devoted dad - AND he vacuums!” 

What about his athletic ability or tatted biceps? Or his quaffed mane of flowing blonde hair? Nothing of the sort is mentioned. And I can guarantee neither Beckham or his wife vacuum. At least they called him “tough & tender,” but this is the beginning of the end. 

Everyone can vacuum, but not everyone can be  “chiseled and charming,” so now People uses the award as an outlet to push a new male standard: Patrick Dempsey. He’s older, and therefore naturally more sexless. He hasn’t posed shirtless in years. But on top of that he’s also charitable, unproblematic, and a victim. 

He opened two locations of The Dempsey Center, offering cancer therapies and counseling. He’s never been part of any controversy. Diagnosed with dyslexia as a child, in a 2008 Oscar special he told Barbara Walters "It's given me a perspective of — you have to keep working. I have never given up." He’s also been married twice. Once when he was 21 to his 48-year-old manager and acting coach, and again later to someone his age, the now mother of his adult children. 

People has been cherry-picking minority identities like these for years. 2018-2020’s Sexiest were all black men. After the year 2020 they clearly learned the word “performative” and pulled the plug on that streak. They returned to white guys…old enough to be your grandfather. Yeah, yeah. Old men can be hot, but Dempsey’s too old. He doesn’t have a jaw anymore! 

“I peaked many years ago,” he says, laughing in his SMA interview, “But I’m still here.” Sexiness is measured by how many women throw themselves at you, and how far they throw themselves. You don’t see Patrick Dempsey fancams on Tiktok. Patrick Demspey sounds like a name coming off my mom’s Ellen Degeneres or in an SNL joke I didn’t understand. 

Apparently he’s in Ferrari (2023), the biographical film on Enzo Ferrari. My first thought upon hearing that is that People could have chosen Adam Driver, the actual star of Ferrari. But no, Adam Driver has anger issues, so they have to choose a safety side-character. Adam Driver probably has overwhelming outbursts of aggression because he’s so high T, but it doesn’t matter because that’s not a factor in deciding Sexiest Man Alive anymore. 

My aforementioned suggestion, Jacob Elordi, was everywhere this year. He can be seen in Saltburn (2023) as a ripped and horny alpha or in Sofia Coppola's Priscilla (2023) as a famous rockstar. Luckily, GQ got the idea and awarded him Man of the Year. BUT NOT SO FAST. He was awarded Man of the Year alongside Travis Scott and Kim Kardashian. They just had to balance out the handsome white boy with two people from the same media-mogul family… Kim isn’t even a man! The effects of the Longhouse are omnipresent.

Here’s my compromise take on SMA: what about Timothee Chalamet? While he’s pure twink, girls come unglued for him. He appears flamboyant (not the first) and like if he shot a gun he would go flying backwards. Sure, that’s part of an evolving beauty standard away from manly, chiseled hunks, but guess what? At least people are still hot and bothered by him.

Clinging to a final shred of credibility, People gave Chalamet a shoutout in this year’s runner up Sexiest Men list that they use to keep the diversity points up. He was joined by Pedro Pascal, Usher, Jamie Foxx, Lenny Kravitz, and Jason Kelce (lol). Truly the oddest bunch. 

I’m really not sure if People is an active operative of the Longhouse agenda or if they’re just trying to abide by Longhouse criteria out of shame as a gossip tabloid that used to publicize people’s cellulite. It doesn’t really matter anyway. Maybe since young girls don’t read People anymore, Patrick is the Sexiest Man to the hags that do. Regardless, the benchmarks of male sex appeal are changing, and if you’re sporting too muscular of a physique these days you may just get called a himbo. 

What was once a totem of male prowess is proving to be on some of its last gasping breaths. What used to serve a purpose now services a regime. People’s Sexiest Man Alive now aligns itself with a new hegemony, one that lies about beauty. Of course no one thinks Patrick Dempsey is actually the Sexiest Man of 2023, but as L0m3z wrote of the Longhouse, “The Great and the Good have become the mediocre and the lame.” Dempsey’s a safe option for today’s set of rules and sensitive cultural climate, but when all aspects of pop culture reflect those rules, the general public’s mind starts changing too. 

“I’d completely forgotten about it and never even contemplated being in this position.” Dempsey said. He knows he doesn’t exude sex and vitality. Sure, men aren’t going to war and operating oil rig drills covered in mud like they used to, but we can respect the general notion of sexiness before we give ourselves over to asexual eunuchs. 

Sex is becoming less important, and while that may sound like a safer world, it’s leading us to an antisocial society. Not being able to even acknowledge real sexiness is a sort of sexual censorship. Men can’t ask for a number without coming across as predatory. A few generations down the line, “chiseled and “charming” may be lost for good. People already aren’t having as much sex, and it’s not much longer before we stop reproducing entirely and “die on history’s hospice bed.”