Why is it OK for women to ogle men in Calvin Kleins but not the other way around?

As an underwear ad featuring FKA Twigs is banned for ‘overly sexualising’ a woman, one featuring actor Jeremy Allen White is busy breaking the internet with women declaring it a fantastic day to have eyeballs... Is this what feminism was meant to achieve, asks Rowan Pelling

Two Calvin Klein adverts with two very different reactions (PA/Mert Alas)

Remember when everyone talked about how Kim Kardashian “broke the internet” in 2014 with a raunchy photoshoot for Paper magazine? Well, if she broke social media, Jeremy Allen White also blew it to smithereens last weekend, like the eruption of a lust-fuelled Vesuvius. For those of you living in internet Siberia, the 32-year-old US star of acclaimed chef drama The Bear just appeared in a Calvin Klein boxer ad, where he flaunts his naked, ripped torso and prominent, cotton-covered package as he cavorts gymnastically on a high building top in NYC. Typical comments on Instagram left by female fans include “yes chef!”, “this feels illegal”, “what a fantastic day to have eyeballs”, “Thank you Mr Calvin Klein, sincerely yours, my uterus”, “a tear just went down my leg” and “I want him in a way that’s concerning for feminism.”

Perhaps we should all be a bit concerned for feminism. We often talk about the pernicious effects of the male gaze and how it objectifies the female body. Indeed the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a recent advert featuring British musician FKA Twigs, after receiving two complaints that the images were “overly sexualised”, offensive and irresponsible because they objectified women and were inappropriately displayed.

So, is it really progress when women do the exact same thing to men? After all, Allen White’s swooning fans arrive hot on the heels of an army of women who appear unhealthily fixated on the body of 31-year-old Barry Keoghan, the anti-hero of Saltburn, who dances willy-wobbling and butt-naked at the end of the movie. There’s also “that” scene (spoiler alert) where he ruts the earth on top of a freshly filled-in grave.

A Calvin Klein advert featuring heartthrob of the moment Jacob Elordi (Shutterstock)

In recent years I’ve been quite perturbed by how women friends my age (mid-fifties, since you ask) talk about Timothée Chalamet’s lips and limbs, even though they’re old enough to be his mum. In a man, this kind of commentary would be described as “perving” over someone. Yet we often give women a free pass and producers have built several dramas around the possibility of provoking female lust. The BBC’s Poldark is one obvious example, where no opportunity was lost to showcase Aidan Turner’s pecs and biceps. Remember that gratuitous scene with a scythe? Meanwhile, The Bodyguard seemed to be more watched by women for Richard Madden’s buttocks than for the ludicrous plot.

It’s clear that younger men feel the pressure of this socially-licenced female gaze. I have two teenage sons and often chat with other mothers of boys about their obsessive gym routines. I don’t remember any young man of my generation feeling they had to have chiselled torsos (skinny heroin-chic bodies were more the thing back then) but now every youth swaggers around showing off their pecs and weight-toned arms. No one talked about planking or squats back in the late 1980s; it was all about women dashing off to do aerobics so they could fit into tight Lycra and body-con dresses.

But fast forward to 2024 and my gym-honed 19-year-old son is wandering around the kitchen topless, despite the recent cold weather, sporting trousers so low on his hips they look like they’ll fall and the logoed band of his (yup) Calvin Klein boxers are on full display. To my maternal eye at least, he looks like a model. But it’s also clear that he – and his younger brother are on a 24/7 quest for great physiques, artfully-tousled hair, and Instagram-ready pouts. And it seems to me the reason they’re doing this is that they’re under pressure from womankind to be perfect.

‘Poldark’ had a fair few ‘is that a scythe in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?’ moments (Getty)

OK, I’m not asking you to cry for young men. Women have faced pressure to look “hot” for decades, centuries – aeons. I turned 21 in the age of the Wonderbra and boob job, for chrissake. Back then, men with beer guts and chutzpah could look in the mirror and go, “Hello Tiger! Still got it!”, while we all struggled to look like Cindy Crawford. But giving ourselves permission to drool over undressed, young males hardly feels like dynamic progress for womankind. And I remember when Germaine Greer was widely criticised in 2003 for praising young male pulchritude in her art book The Beautiful Boy, intended “to advance women’s reclamation of their capacity for and right to visual pleasure”. But Greer outraged many with her defence of the book’s images (which included a cover photograph of Björn Andrésen, the boy from Death in Venice), when she said, “I’d like to reclaim for women the right to appreciate the short-lived beauty of boys, real boys, not simpering 30-year-olds with shaved chests.”

Of course, female admiration for the male form is hardly new. Numerous classicists have pointed out that gladiators were the male pin-ups of their day; Ovid described in his Ars Amatoria how women watching gladiators battling in the Forum were aroused by the spectacle and more receptive to erotic overtures. Then there was Lao Ai, who died 238 BC, who faked castration to become the “favourite” of Queen Dowager Zhao (apparently it was an intact ample penis that first drew her attention to him) the mother of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China.

Throughout the 20th century there were male sex symbols valued foremost for their bodies. Marlon Brando caused a sensation when he burst onto the silver screen and it occurs to me his unusual combination of muscles and sensuality is the reason modern women are drawn to Jeremy Allen White. And there was Shai Shahar, perhaps the century’s best-known male sex worker, who claimed to have had sex with over 500 women, most of whom were married and not looking for emotional entanglements. He was also the first man to sit in a window in Amsterdam’s red-light district, flaunting his assets. But these were outliers. Most muscle-bound male pin-ups (think of Tom of Finland’s sketches and some of Dolce & Gabanna’s ads) were still aimed at gay men.

Jeremy Allen White has garnered some – fairly explicit – praise for his recent Calvin Klein campaign (Mert Alas)

But now countless women are openly lascivious about male anatomy. Once BDE (big d*** energy) meant macho men who swaggered around the office. Now, the acronym seems to have become far more literal. You only need to stumble in on a group of young women watching Naked Attraction or Love Island to realise they can be every bit as judgmental about physical imperfection as Donald Trump presented with a room of beauty queens. And the young men judge one another. A youth I know was recently telling us about his first term at university, where he shares a floor with 20 other young men. I asked him if his male contemporaries are given to strolling around topless, like my sons, and he said the peacocking was de rigeur and approved of – before pausing for reflection and citing one “chubster” exception: “No one wants to look at that.”

I fear that the admittedly attractive Jeremy Allen White’s video will put further pressure on male Generations Z and Y to achieve god-like physiques – and to feel despondent when they can’t. Isn’t it time to calm down the body beautiful wars? I don’t see much benefit in bringing dirty old (and young) men to the brink of extinction, if women start to sound just like them. We’d do well to remember one male actor got into hot water last November after leaving the innocuous comment “wow” on Euphoria actress Alexa Demie’s lightly-clad, super-provocative Calvin Klein video. Who was this villain? Step forward… Jeremy Allen White.