About Everything I Thought When I Saw This GQ Cover

Grief takes you to odd places. This week, it took me to the cover of GQ's September issue. The actor Jeremy Strong is on it because he's playing Mark Zuckerberg in the upcoming sequel to The Social Network (who asked for this?). According to The New York Times, this cover is representative of the "New Macho."

So many thoughts crowded my brain upon seeing Jeremy Strong in his ~$1,500 Loro Piana hoodie like a gloomy Quiet Luxury Jawa; it was a veritable cranial maelstrom in there. Because I could not compute the absurdity of what was before me, my mind immediately defaulted to this Diane Arbus photograph:

...once you see it, you can't un-see it.

And then: can we please go back to using models on magazine covers? If someone is going to try to convince me that standing around with a modern compound bow is somehow natural, let alone macho, I'd prefer it be a professional instead of the crankiest actor of his generation. When I look at this, I think of the boys from my Saturday school class trying to prove how cool they were at their themed bar mitzvah parties, not a swaggering paragon of 21st-century masculinity.

Speaking of which, masculinity! Again, I refer you to the Arbus photograph. Men, in the GQ cover's interpretation, are forever little boys clutching at their toy weapons of destruction. That Jeremy Strong wears a $1,500 hoodie beneath a sport coat is simply the lipstick on the pig. We are constantly being told that (heterosexual) men are not okay, that they are in crisis, and what is this cover if not a case study in "show, don't tell"?

Also, I would argue that one reason straight men are not okay is because media outlets like GQ and the Times are telling them that this is what it means to be macho. Luxury clothing, Sharper Image cosplay, and intractable solitude in which to contemplate...whatever it is the Macho Man likes to contemplate. The cover's tagline reads "on the hunt with Jeremy Strong," but what is he hunting for? Self-validation? Protein supplements? The TV remote? It remains tantalizingly unclear, but the implication is that whatever Jeremy Strong is hunting, it is even bigger than the $22,355 price tag on a Loro Piana sweater coat, and infinitely more unknowable. And that once he finds it, he's gonna eat it.

Looking at Jeremy Strong's unsettled visage, I realized that there is one place I'd like to see him: starring in a Rain Man remake alongside Jeremy Allen White. I know they're both in the Social Network sequel, as well as that Bruce Springsteen biopic, but they don't play blood relations in either film, and that is a missed opportunity. They have the same tortured little pout, the same eyes that look like they've stared deep into the yawning void of Method excess and refused to blink first. I hope against hope that this pairing will happen, though not if it produces another GQ cover like this one.

I showed the cover to my husband, David, to get his thoughts on it as A Man. He registered an expression of disgust and asked, "what is the point of this, exactly?" I had no answer for him, just as I have no answer for myself, or for you. Except that perhaps that the answer is what Jeremy Strong is hunting for. If not the answer to the point of life and existence, then who, at least, thought this cover was a good idea.

What I'm consuming this week:

Reading: Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me, a fast, fun, queasy read.

Watching: I just rewatched Dirty Dancing for the first time in a long time and was pleasantly shocked by how much discernible chemistry there is between Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze.

Listening: In preparation for an interview, this Here's the Thing interview with Grace Coddington. I know Alec Baldwin has his issues, but it's entertaining.