the feminist librarian reads

It’s a counterintuitive process: that becoming a heartthrob can de-masculinize you. Attractiveness to women should up a male star’s virility quotient, but in truth, or, at least, in media, it makes him subject to the gaze — a passive pin-up. It’s what happened to Rudolph Valentino back in the ‘20s; it’s what nearly happened to Burt Reynolds in the ‘70s, when he posed nude for a Cosmopolitan centerfold that he’s recently admitted he regrets. (Leonardo DiCaprio has fought the impulse by getting as ugly as possible in every other film.)