Geeks To God: How Did These Actors Become Hot?
It happens time and time again. Nerdy, skinny weird boy goes through puberty and suddenly has a real life frog to prince transformation. It’s great, after all those years of being bullied they can finally have their time in the sun. However, something truly strange tends to happen after these conversations. The now-hot guy is in fact hot, but he still looks like someone who maybe wasn’t supposed to be hot. It is a confusing phenomenon and one best described through pictures of celebrities ( who after all aren’t real people anyway right?). In the next three examples we will explore how and why these scruffy, scrawny little geeks turn into veritable sex gods- and why we still can’t seem to accept them as such.
Example 1: Ryan Reynolds
With a bad hair cut on Sabrina The Teenage Witch
When he first started out he was the skinny kid with bad 90’s hair who attempted (but still failed) to woo Melissa Joan Hart’s teenaged Sabrina. And then this happened…
Buff in Blade:Trinity
…And nothing was ever the same. It makes sense in a way. Everyman actor gets buff for a role, gives a good performance and suddenly he is the next sex god. But there is something inorganic about it, some of that awkward, lack of intrigue still remains and so we end up with this…
Boring actor meets subpar actress
Example 2: Ryan Gosling
Who would have guessed?
There is something inherently anti-sexy about being the kid who engaged in group singalongs on the Mickey Mouse Club.
Ok so he was adorable in The Notebook
And then he was selected to play maybe one of the most unbelievably romantic roles ever to exist on screen and the female fan club was here to stay.
Beardy and Boring
So why is he so hard to believe as a sex symbol? Maybe its the Tumblr memes (Hey Girl) or maybe its the way that Hollywood seems to INSIST that he be a sex symbol. Somehow we just aren’t sold.
Example 3: Joseph Gordon Levitt
10 Things I Hate About You awkward stage
Remember when Joseph was the geek with a heart of gold in 500 Days of Summer? Those were the good old days when his celebrity status made sense. The underdog with a select few females who thought he was cute.
Don Jon era sex appeal
Then he got a role as a buff womanizing jerk (ok but a hot jerk) in Don Jon and suddenly we just didn’t know what to think about him anymore.
Wait what?
Because Joseph Gordon Levitt is not a hot jerk, Ryan Reynolds is not a built superhero and Ryan Gosling probably wouldn’t wait 10 years for the love of his life to come back to him (what sane person would?). In reality these guys are all just nerds in buff bods who play sex symbols for a living. Not that we mind those buff bods. Hey, we’re only human.
