The Good, The Bad, and The... Sexy? Age and Sexuality in Hollywood

There’s something kind of weird going on. I only looked as far back as 2018, but IMDb’s number one celebrity every year has always been a young actress… until this year, when Pedro Pascal won. I don’t want to imply that he didn’t win on merit - he’s an amazing actor - but I get the feeling that sex appeal played into his ranking as much as it did for past winners. After all, almost everyone has heard of the infamous Pedro Pascal fancam from last January.

Theoretically, this should be a good thing. After all, Hollywood is famous for its ageism, so if men are finally able to break into the heartthrob role, maybe things are starting to change. Up until recently, older male stars were either put into the role of “good dad/grandpa” or “gross slimeball”. The former category tends to include people like Keanu Reeves and Cillian Murphy who seem to avoid fame and try to either help others or maintain their privacy, while the latter includes anyone tainted by scandal - your Leonardo DiCaprios and Johnny Depps.

It's a bit reductive, of course, both black-and-white and moralising. The real problem with such a limited range of acceptable personalities, though, is how dehumanising it is. It forces celebrities to either keep a low profile and sacrifice publicity or be public enough that people see your faults and ruin your reputation. Neither group is allowed to be attractive, either being characterised as asexual saints or as creepy lechers. You can say that it's just the cost of fame and that celebrities should just learn to live with it, and they can, but it would be nice to not be so restrictive.

Luckily, we have Pedro Pascal to forge a new path now.

To be fair, he’s not the first of his kind - Keanu Reeves was probably the first older male heartthrob of the internet, though his reputation faded with time. Still, Pascal is probably the most extreme example yet, with interviewers constantly bringing up his reputation as a “daddy” and how everyone finds him so attractive. I get the hype - he seems like a very charming, confident, and authentic person. Who doesn’t find those qualities at least a little attractive? He combines the good-naturedness of "grandpa" celebrities with the extroversion of the "slimeballs", earning publicity without ruining his reputation - it seems like the ideal place to be.

But of course, if it were really that good, everyone would do it. The reality is that sex symbols, regardless of age, have to deal with the eyes of the world on them, knowing that one mistake can ruin their whole reputation. Older sex symbols, however, arguably have it worse as they're expected to be wise and mature enough to not make mistakes, so it's much easier for one slip-up to cause a fall from grace. An even bigger issue is who exactly is allowed to be a sexy older celebrity. The first three that come to mind are Pedro Pascal, Oscar Isaac, and Keanu Reeves - though Keanu has basically lost his sexy status by now.

You might note that there are no women on that list - older women are only ever allowed to be classy grandmas like Helen Mirren or crazy ladies like Gwenyth Paltrow. Let's imagine that it's just because this is a new cultural shift, and male celebrities are simply leading the way with women soon to follow. But did you notice that none of the huge “internet daddies” are white? Or that the only ones who have maintained their sexy status are specifically Latino?

In reality, the newfound “older sex symbol” identity comes with a lot of baggage. It's deeply tied to race and respectability. Specifically, it seems that older white men are cute grandpas and dads who deserve respect while older Latino men are passionate “Latin lovers” who can be spoken about in some truly disgusting ways - because let's be real, the way that celebrities like Pascal are spoken about is not okay. Can you imagine an interviewer asking a female celebrity to read tweets about how they’re “slutty” or which describe what some random stranger would want to do to them? There'd be riots.

Even if they’re just jokes, that level of sexualisation deeply uncomfortable if not straight up sexual harassment. I'm passably attractive and I’ve lived in countries where I’m a visual minority, so I know how it feels to have strangers make comments and butcher your body with their stares. In the best of cases, it's occasional and respectful enough to be flattering. More often, though, it starts to become violent and threatening and happens so often that you can't help but feel like nothing matters to people but your body and what they can do with it. It only feels worse when you know it’s linked to an exoticisation and fetishisation of your ethnicity. At least I’m not famous, so harassment doesn’t follow me online.

I don’t know that there’s a conclusion or resolution that I can offer to all of this - I don't know if the creepy culture around celebrities will ever change, let alone how to do it. This isn't an issue exclusive to older male celebrities, but the new phenomenon gives us the chance to take a closer look at how we talk about stars and whether or not we might be going to far. Pedro Pascal and other hyper-sexualised celebrities might say they enjoy the attention, but if they don't, they have to make the difficult choice between harassment or preserving their fanbase. If we're really their fans, perhaps it's up to us to reign it in a little so they don't have to face that decision.