The rabid sexualisation of male actors is getting creepy 

There’s something particularly excruciating about a joke going too far. Not just for the victim but the bystanders, too. Maybe someone laughs a little too long – and thus a little too meanly – or kills the comedy by repeating the punchline one too many times. Or maybe, as happened with Pedro Pascal last week, the joke oversteps some boundaries and makes everyone uncomfortable. That’s right, the internet daddy fun is over. Time to awkwardly stand in silence until someone changes the subject.

What started out as a slew of horny tweets and TikToks last month soon led to The Last of Us actor being forced to field question after question about his online heartthrob status in interviews. At first – as in the resurfaced 2022 clip that kicked it all off – Pascal was a good sport, playfully revelling in his newfound role as the internet’s thirst trap. But he was clearly uncomfortable during a red carpet interview with Access Hollywood last week in which he was asked to read tweets about himself out loud. Initially willing, Pascal declined after taking a closer look, labelling them “dirty” and politely laughing through near-gritted teeth.

The clip soon went viral, alongside the caption: “This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen.” Many Twitter users were quick to agree, with some labelling the interaction sexual harassment and others accused the daddy discourse itself of being objectifying and dehumanising. There were suggestions there’d be uproar if a woman was subjected to the same treatment, particularly in a professional setting. Some pointed out that it was also unfair to put Pascal on the spot like that, observing that BuzzFeed’s Thirst Tweets series is usually planned in advance, with the pre-arranged consent of its participants.

The video is indeed a painful watch – and for women, it’s also a familiar one. The archive of women fielding sexist interview questions stretches back many decades. Remember Scarlett Johansson being asked about her underwear? Or Helen Mirren having to comment on whether her figure distracts from her work? Or Lady Gaga, over 30 years later, being asked the exact same question? Taylor Swift and Rihanna have also frequently been framed in red carpet interviews as being predominantly interesting for their sex appeal. While the tide hasn’t turned on this behaviour – far from it – it seems women are no longer the only ones being obnoxiously and unpleasantly sexualised.

The peak of Pascal’s objectification comes shortly after Paul Mescal – the internet’s… brother? – divulged two disturbing encounters with fans. In an interview with British GQ in November, the Irish actor recalled meeting a woman who, referencing Normal People, told him: “I didn’t think the show was any good, but I saw your willy and I have a photo.” Then, two weeks ago in an interview with ES Magazine, the Aftersun star revealed that a woman groped his bum as the pair posed for a photo outside London’s Almeida Theatre, where Mescal’s currently starring in A Streetcar Named Desire. “I remember tensing up and feeling just, like, fury,” he said of the latter.

These aren’t the only examples of male actors feeling uneasy with their overt sexualisation by fans and the media.. In recent years, Euphoria star Jacob Elordi, Richard Madden, and Sam Claflin have been among the men speaking out about their discomfort with objectification – as well as the ridicule they’ve received when they’ve talked about it. In 2015, after Kit Harington said it was “demeaning” to be “put on a pedestal as a hunk”, he was widely mocked. A Telegraph op-ed, for example, suggested “getting out the world’s tiniest violin” for The Game of Thrones actor. In response to the backlash, Harrington told Out: “Young men do get objectified, do get sexualised unnecessarily. With every photo shoot I ever go to, I’m told to take off my shirt.”

Men don’t always face the same career repercussions when they’re sexualised – the 2004 Super Bowl, when Janet Jackson’s breast was accidentally exposed by Justin Timberlake and his career soared while hers stalled remains a potent example – and their objectification is less likely to come with the risk of real-world violence. A study by journalism school USC Annenberg confirmed that the “hypersexualisation” of male characters on screen increased rapidly in the years between 2007 and 2014, but pointed out that women are still three times more likely to be objectified on screen than men.

Too often, though, these points are used as an excuse for shrugging off – or, worse, encouraging – men’s experience of objectification. The argument needs to be more nuanced than, “Women sexualising men actually evens the gender playing field”. Gender politics aside, the rabid sexualisation of actors like Pascal and Mescal feels, well, creepy. Social media has irrevocably altered our relationships with celebrities, creating a false intimacy that means many people seem to think it’s okay to call them ‘daddy’ to their face, ask them to do their fingering impression, or even force them to reveal their sexualities. 

Watching the video of Pascal, you can see the exact point that he feels the joke wearing too thin. The ‘I am so tired’ moment as it might be described on the internet; his thousand yard stare where you can almost hear him thinking… really? Which is as good a question as any to ask of this tired, tiresome trend of sexualising men for sport. Really?