Tom Cruise attends the 95th Academy Awards Nominees Luncheon. Photo / AP
OPINION:
Tom Cruise has gone viral for sporting an orange tan, and thank you Mr Cruise for normalising men trying with their appearances.
Cruise turned up at the Academy Awards lunch with a noticeable glow. He’d overdone it on the fake tan and looked more like Fanta than sun-kissed. Relatable, we’ve all overdone it with our Bondi Le Sands tan before.
Cruise’s botched tan sent a clear message.
He is a man that tries when it comes to his appearance and he’s prepared to dab on some tan to make himself feel red-carpet-ready.
Yes, love to see it!
Sure, Cruise’s tan-looking natural turned out to be mission impossible but I think he did men across the globe a favour.
He showed them that he isn’t just a genetically blessed movie star, the reason he often looks so good is that he does put effort into his appearance and that is okay — actually it is pretty bloody cool.
Cruise is normalising men caring about their appearances, thank you, short king!
One of the many things I’ve never liked about the patriarchy is how it firmly puts people into boxes.
If you’re a woman you are allowed to care about hair, make-up and fashion, and if you are a man you’re meant to care about beer and have a weird love of ill-fitted shorts.
Honestly, that is beyond ridiculous ... but anyway.
The patriarchy is scary though and people tend to conform, so usually our male celebrities never admit to wearing make-up or caring about fashion or their looks.
At every awards ceremony, famous women will tell reporters how it took hours to get ready and the men will joke it took them a tight 20 minutes – ha, ha, ha.
It is just widely accepted that is cool for men not to care about how they look, and when famous men rally against that they get shamed.
Christian Wilkins is the king of fashion in Australia; his looks are so good they become the news.
Yet he deals with being consistently trolled online for pushing back against outdated gender stereotypes.
Similarly Sam Smith, who doesn’t identify with any particular gender, often gets mocked for being playful with fashion.
Conservative commentator Jedidiah Bila recently went viral for posting a photo of Smith in a cute outfit with the caption: “Masculinity in 2023!”
I guess trying to make some kind of strange point about Smith’s style not conforming to any outdated and frankly boring masculine tropes.
It still isn’t easy for people to push back against gender norms, even if they are rich, famous and successful.
This is why I can’t help but feel bloody thrilled to see one of the biggest action stars in the world going viral for revealing he puts effort into his appearance.
Hopefully, it’ll encourage more men to realise it doesn’t make them less of a man to have fun with how they look.
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