More and more male celebrities, from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Jon Hamm, have taken to publicly downplaying their chiseled bodies or chiseled faces, playing the aw-shucks card about their own well-established and handsomely paid handsomeness. Schwarzenegger recently told Cigar Aficionado that looking at himself in the mirror made him want to throw up. The latest spectacle: Tom Hardy, the indisputably fit, tattooed, bearded, symmetrical beefcake who appeared as a good-looking man in Band of Brothers, a good-looking man in Black Hawk Down, a good-looking man in a powdered wig in Marie Antoinette, a good-looking man in Inception, and more recently, a ridiculously good-looking man in the BBC series Taboo. Rumor has it that Hardy may possibly play yet another ruggedly good-looking man in the next James Bond flick—but he doesn’t think he’s all that good-looking.
“I have pencil arms, nurse a healthy layer of dad flab, crooked teeth and bow legs,” he told the Daily Mail recently. Pshaw. Sure thing, Hardy, sure thing. Also, hasn’t he heard about dad bod?
Men brushing off compliments is, of course, nothing new — part of the unspoken masculine code is pretending you aren’t vain enough to care about how you look, something men in the body positivity movement fight daily. But rarely are we treated to a laundry list of the actual parts a swoon-worthy man actively dislikes about himself.
We wouldn’t wish such self-evisceration on anybody, but sadly, the fact that men have now joined women as eagle-eyed flaw-finders, scrutinizing their bodies for every imperfection, perceived or real, is another sign of equality. So, come join us. We get it. Let us commiserate together.
Tracy Moore
Tracy Moore is a staff writer at MEL. She covers all the soft sciences like psychology, sex, relationships and parenting, but since this is a men’s magazine, occasionally the hard ones. Formerly at Jezebel.
