In 1994, two seemingly disparate events occurred.
Tom Hanks won the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his portrayal of Andrew Beckett, a gay man living with AIDS, in Philadelphia. After he’s fired from his law firm for what he suspects is anti-AIDS discrimination, Andrew hires a personal injury lawyer (played by Denzel Washington) who, over the course of the trial, becomes less homophobic. (Touching!)
That same year, the term “metrosexual” was coined by the journalist Mark Simpson in an essay called “Here Come the Mirror Men.”
Together, they indicated a significant cultural shift. Tom Hanks was at the height of culture alongside other clean-shaven leading men with pretty eyes: Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio, John Travolta, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Ethan Hawke. While none of these men are gay (and some are now alleged creeps), their popularity saw the rise of the “sensitive actor type.” This had a downstream cultural effect, wherein behaviors associated with homosexuality (such as “basic hygiene” and “caring about one’s appearance”) became, slowly but surely, more widely accepted — or at the very least, playing a gay man living with AIDS was the kind of thing that the Academy considered cutting-edge and brave enough to award, even if Philadelphia itself left much to be desired.
Fast forward 22 years and it seems as though we are in the midst of yet another shift, one that makes the term “metrosexual” seem like an artifact. Chris Erik Thomas wrote a retrospective on the metrosexual phenomenon of the aughts for Them in 2024, but it’s only in 2026 that it’s become clear just how quaint that concept is. Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, the stars of Crave’s runaway hit phenomenon Heated Rivalry (though I doubt I should even have to explain who they are to you at this point) are absolutely inescapable. and should expect all kinds of confounding public displays of masculinity.
Read on to learn how Heated Rivalry is changing minds…
(Source: James Factora / Them.us)
