{"id":156264,"date":"2025-09-20T09:13:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T09:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/156264\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T09:13:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T09:13:08","slug":"as-hollywood-mourns-robert-redford-why-do-we-still-struggle-with-the-idea-of-male-beauty-jason-okundaye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/156264\/","title":{"rendered":"As Hollywood mourns Robert Redford, why do we still struggle with the idea of male beauty? | Jason Okundaye"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Redford, who died this week<\/a> at the age of 89, was, as well as being one of Hollywood\u2019s brightest stars both in front of and behind the camera, graced with \u201call-American good looks [that] couldn\u2019t be ignored\u201d as the BBC wrote<\/a>. Breaking through in the \u201cnew Hollywood\u201d era, his luscious blond curls, defined jawline and gentle, charming smile provided him the typical pretty-boy advantages that beauty offers for a career in entertainment, though his talent and zest for acting pushed him further still.<\/p>\n

It was his role as the gunslinging, sharpshooting Sundance Kid<\/a> in 1969, alongside the more established Paul Newman, which propelled him to fame \u2013 though the film\u2019s creator, William Goldman, had dismissed Redford<\/a> as \u201cjust another California blond \u2026 throw a stick at Malibu, you\u2019ll hit six of him\u201d. Yet what comes through about Redford in the commentary and obituaries following his death is this sense that he transcended his beauty; that he defied the blank California Ken doll archetype to become genuinely prodigious within US cinema.<\/p>\n

It is then easy to understand why Redford appeared to undermine his own beauty and reject his status as a sex symbol. In the way he presented himself he did little to undo the perception of him as a symbol of male elegance: indeed, a Financial Times piece about his incredible style<\/a> \u2013 published, incidentally, the day before his death \u2013 evidences that he was active in the selection of fine tailoring. But beauty was still something of a prison. In an interview with the New York Times in 1974, Redford stated that \u201cthis glamour image can be a real handicap. Image is crap\u201d, and he was repeatedly disdainful of the fact that his appearance often prevented him from being taken more seriously.<\/p>\n

A New Statesman piece<\/a> bizarrely laments that Redford represented the last of a tradition of male \u201cbeauties we could count on\u201d, seemingly because such beautiful men were an embodiment of virtue and trust. And there is a Telegraph piece<\/a> by Joan Bakewell, who interviewed him in the 1970s and writes that \u201che was \u2026 good looking, but he took his job as a film star seriously\u201d, as though it is remarkable or contradictory for a beautiful person to care about anything other than their face. There is this strange tendency to pit beauty against other qualities \u2013 as though a person is a balance sheet, and a better face must mean less talent or brains. But when do we ever observe this in our real lives? Think of the beautiful people you know and think of everything else they can do. Why is the fact that beauty is one quality among many something that people must always strive to prove, when we all simply know it to be true?<\/p>\n

It is not that there has been a shortage of coverage of Redford\u2019s achievements in Hollywood, from his dexterous performances and his advocacy of independent cinema<\/a> to his Sundance film festival; nor of his environmentalism<\/a> or championing of Native American<\/a> and LGBTQ+ rights<\/a>. But such consistent emphasis on beauty goes against the kind of figure Redford attempted to be throughout his career. He refused to be typecast as a \u201cpretty boy\u201d, preferring more substantial and challenging work, such as portraying a journalist investigating the Watergate scandal in All the President\u2019s Men. He even initially turned down the role<\/a> as Barbra Streisand\u2019s Waspy romantic interest in The Way We Were, only agreeing once the character was transformed from \u201ca Ken doll with no dimension\u201d to something more flawed and complex.<\/p>\n

R&B singer D\u2019Angelo\u2019s talent was eclipsed by the sex symbol status conferred on him. Photograph: Gregory Harris<\/p>\n

I think this matters not only in framing how we remember Redford, but because discussions about male beauty and how society interacts with it feel continually underdeveloped. Sociologically, we have sex symbols, of any gender, as a litmus test for a narrow set of societal beauty standards and to commission images that can further certain media and commercial projects \u2013 that is, sex sells. But I think there is also a vulnerability implicit in the idea of a sex symbol or an emblem of beauty; because as much as they may be admired, envied or lusted after, they are also a source of relief. Possessing such beauty can be viewed as a fantasy or a distant goal, the burden of another person that we can enjoy without being involved in it, even if that means emphasising it where the person has not invited it.<\/p>\n

The burden of being a sex symbol has been significantly more consequential for famous women \u2013 the scrutiny, tragedy and objectification faced by the likes of Pamela Anderson<\/a>, Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield are well understood. But I do wonder also what it feels like for beautiful men \u2013 many of whom, like Redford, have evidently expressed a discomfort and even rejection of the fascination with their beauty and their own sexualisation.<\/p>\n

Assumptions about the conquest of heterosexual male sexuality \u2013 that the attractiveness opens your access to women \u2013 might make you feel that no man would ever be uncomfortable with the attention his looks receive. And yet actors such as Keanu Reeves<\/a> and Sterling K Brown<\/a> have actively sought to distance themselves from their sex symbol status, particularly where \u2013 as with Redford \u2013 it has undermined being taken seriously.<\/p>\n

I remember Brown\u2019s Emmy-nominated turn in the hit political thriller Paradise being reduced on my social media timelines to a shower sex scene<\/a>, which was circulated in praise of his muscular back and behind. Years before that, Jesse Williams, whose sex symbol status was cemented by topless scenes in Grey\u2019s Anatomy, expressed his disappointment when audience members at a Broadway performance he was in filmed a nude scene \u2013 and spread it online<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sex and beauty have their place in art \u2013 and have certainly helped these men\u2019s careers. Yet it is not the sum of them. It can lead men to a darker place, too. The neo-soul singer D\u2019Angelo, a disciple of Prince, has exceptional musical talent, dulcet vocals and a mastery of multiple instruments. Yet that talent was obscured and eclipsed by the sex symbol status that was conferred on him after his music video for Untitled (How Does It Feel), in which he appears naked and writhing<\/a>, and which was credited with the sexual awakening of many a millennial woman and gay man. This inability to cement himself as a soul legend because of the trappings of beauty profoundly affected D\u2019Angelo \u2013 he took an 11-year hiatus from music and struggled with addiction, as he told GQ<\/a> in 2012. Predictably, when D\u2019Angelo resurfaced not as buff and chiselled, the commentary on his weight gain and appearance was cruel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

None of this is to say that male beauty, like all beauty, cannot be celebrated. But it feels as though we don\u2019t have a language or real understanding of what great beauty can feel like for men. And where they do express it, or distance themselves from it, we insist on bringing them right back to those confines. Redford knew he was a beautiful man, but he would not countenance his looks being obsessed over even in death. Why is it that we can\u2019t help ourselves but to continue?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Robert Redford, who died this week at the age of 89, was, as well as being one of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-156264","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}