BRYONY GORDON: Wahey, welcome to ‘Hot Boy Summer’! So why do I feel guilty for ogling hunky Theo James?

The rain is pouring, the wind is howling, and the knob on the thermostat hasn’t looked this inviting since that big freeze back in February. But while July seems to have done a runner, there’s no mistaking that the Hot Boy Summer is well and truly here.

For those who are not regular users of social media, let me explain: ‘Hot Boy Summer’ is a masculine aesthetic seen on Instagram and Tik Tok that essentially involves lots of bare, oiled torsos. But it is also very much a wider trend, as seen in Gladiator 2’s first trailer, released to much fanfare earlier this week.

I watched it, for research purposes, of course, and can report that it’s three minutes, ten seconds of pure testosterone: rippling muscles covered in sweat and dirt, Denzel Washington delivering angry monologues about rage while Paul Mescal does battle with a giant rhino and Pedro Pascal single-handedly takes out an army of men who make Russell Crowe look like Mr Bean.

And if this wasn’t enough to raise the temperature, Pascal proceeded to post a ‘behind the scenes’ shot to social media, which featured his co-star Mescal wearing nothing but a loincloth and a look of intense manliness, one that said, ‘I just ripped off Connell from Normal People’s head and put it on the end of a stick that I will now use to wave menacingly at any bloke who dares to express an emotion in public. Grrrr!’

Then there were the pictures of British actor, Theo James. The peak-Hot-Boy-Summer ones. Must I describe them? OK then, I will, but once again, this is purely for journalistic purposes. In these photos, 39-year-old James is lying in a dinghy in only a pair of white Speedos – as you do of a Sunday afternoon – on top of a model who apparently goes out with Leonardo DiCaprio.

The photos, which were taken in Capri, were for a Dolce & Gabbana advert, though what the fashion designers were advertising seems unclear, given that nobody in the pictures appears to be wearing any clothes.

Anyway, the photos have caused quite the stir.

‘His poor wife!’ cried the internet as one, referring to Ruth Kearney, who is also the mother of James’s two children.

‘Poor Leo!’ I thought, for the first time in history, because it’s not Kearney I feel sorry for…

Paul Mescal wearing nothing but a loincloth and a look of intense manliness

Forget Ryan Gosling’s hilarious depiction of Ken in last summer’s Barbie movie. In these photos, James is giving GI Joe a run for his money. It is the male equivalent of that Eva Herzigova Wonderbra advert from 1994 – ‘Hello Girls!’ as opposed to ‘Hello Boys!’

I looked at the pictures of the actor from Netflix hit White Lotus and Guy Ritchie’s TV series The Gentlemen, and I did not feel comfortable with the response it elicited in me, which was something along the lines of ‘PHWOARRR, WHAT A HUNK!’ I was basically wolf-whistling like a White Van Man from the 1980s. I had turned into every bloke I had ever complained about in my teens, 20s and 30s, every man who had reduced me to a pair of breasts and a bum.

It’s not the first time this year that an advert has left me wondering about our willingness to objectify men in a way that we (quite rightly) wouldn’t stomach with women.

In January, The Bear star Jeremy Allen White broke the internet when he appeared topless in a Calvin Klein commercial.

At the same time, the Advertising Standards Authority banned another ad by the same designers, featuring singer FKA Twigs. The ASA said that the singer’s Calvin Klein advert focused on ‘her body rather than on the clothing being advertised’ and that the image was ‘irresponsible and likely to cause serious offence’. All of which felt rather strange given that, at the time, Allen White’s crotch had been plastered by the same designer across buses and billboards around the world without any complaint.

Of course, some might argue that Hot Boy Summer is a welcome change after years and years of Hot Girl Summers (the phrase was coined by the rapper Megan Thee Stallion in 2019, but it’s been a thing since the dawn of time). Actually, I’d say it’s merely a diversion from them, and a sign that, if anything, the ridiculous pressure to be ‘beach body ready’ has got worse rather than better.

The body positivity movement has shrunk drastically in the past year, the likes of Ozempic and Wegovy melting away the public appetite for anything approaching a plus-size model. Any hope that we might have been at the dawn of a new era, where a variety of shapes and sizes were celebrated in popular culture, have been cast off quicker than Theo James’s clothes. Now, it’s not just women who must diet and exercise their way to a more acceptable summer body, but men, too.

This isn’t equality, in any meaningful sense. The Suffragettes didn’t throw themselves under horses so we could drool over pictures of Paul Mescal fighting rhinos. Our grandmothers didn’t burn their bras so we could gaze at the bloke from White Lotus in his pants.

Theo James in his tightie whities. The photos, which were taken in Capri, were for a Dolce & Gabbana advert, though what the fashion designers were advertising seems unclear, given that nobody in the pictures appears to be wearing any clothes

Hot Boy Summer isn’t progress – in fact, it’s positively regressive. It’s walked straight out of an Athena poster shop from 1988, and just like that ‘Man and Baby’ poster that was supposed to be a picture of a sensitive new dad, but turned out to be of a male model who boasted of sleeping with 3,000 women, it’s a trick presented as a treat. Because here’s the thing: as long as fashion designers and Hollywood are encouraging people to objectify men, us women are less able to complain when they do it to us. Which they will, inevitably.

So excuse me if I refuse to embrace this Hot Boy Summer, and instead head straight for Cool Girl Winter. You might want to join me, given the weather.

After all the hoo-ha around the introduction of the sugar tax six years ago, we now learn it has worked: sugar consumption in children has dropped by a half, and in adults by a third. Which is quite something. Can we now do the same with ultra processed foods, and use the money to make fresh food more affordable, and cooking at home with your family more appealing?

A new study reported in Time Magazine, has found that tampons used by millions of women contain toxic metals such as lead, cadmium and arsenic. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley found that worryingly, even ‘organic’ tampons contained chemicals that were linked with dementia, infertility, diabetes and cancer, but said that more research was needed to see if any of the metals were contributing to negative health effects in women.

So tampons are not just harmful to the environment, but potentially to us too, and yet still nobody has come up with anything better because… well, we’re women, so why bother? And yet if men got periods, you just know there would be a programme hosted by Jeremy Clarkson where him and his mates tried out the latest in menstrual technology, the height of which would absolutely not be some cotton wool attached to a string, dipped in arsenic.

Bring it home like our fab Lionesses! 

How sweet that the England men’s team have made it to the finals of the Euros. Here’s hoping they ‘bring it home’… as the Lionesses did two years ago!

Confidence clinic

A sequel to The Devil Wears Prada is in the works, with Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt apparently signed up. I often go into tricky meetings trying to channel the icy self assuredness of Streep’s character Miranda Priestley. ‘Everyone wants to be us!’ is her motto, and when I’m feeling the imposter syndrome sneak in, I try to make it mine.