Upon first glance, Jeremy Renner and I donโt have a lot in common. Outside of belonging to the same species, we couldnโt be more different. He is a successful actor and (less successful) musician who enjoys extreme sports and flipping houses, while I am a mild-mannered writer who needs prescription swimming goggles.
Yet, despite our many differences, when his eyes glaze over as he talks about โeating cleanโ, we are the same.
Paul Rudd stars in Living With Yourself on Netflix.
Paul Rudd is another A-list celebrity whose life also bears little resemblance to mine (initially). Again, he is a charismatic superstar; I am an asthmatic four-eyes. But when he admits to begrudgingly avoiding bread, sugar and fried food in the foolish pursuit of a perfect body, I feel close to him. (This closeness is even greater when he confesses to being too embarrassed to show off said hard-won physique.)
Despite being deeply personal, these facts about Renner and Rudd are not private. Both men freely offered them up during interviews in which they detailed the gruelling diets and workouts they follow to look and move like famous people. I absorbed this information while bingeing the endless stream of videos that my YouTube algorithm one day decided would serve me: โTrain like meโ, โFridge tourโ and โHow I got rippedโ content.
I canโt say why the internet decided that I needed these videos. But I can say that watching them, and learning that Wilmer Valderrama wakes up at 4am to work out, has offered me a strange feeling of comfort and satisfaction without ever inspiring me to do the same.
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In the past, Iโve written about my twisted relationship with this variety of content. Much like โwhat I eat in a dayโ videos, it can be depressing to see the art of preparing and eating a meal devolve into a gruelling chore as (usually) female celebrities explain why they only eat three almonds at a time. But when the subject is a loudmouthed white guy being paid millions of dollars to endure the early morning alarm, the content just hits differently. Seeing Tyra Banks hollow out her bagels to cut down on carbs is sad, but when itโs Glen Powell making a โbreakfast sandwichโ with slices of sweet potato in place of bread, I donโt mind.
In my experience, men generally arenโt as susceptible to the utterly insane and never-ending list of expectations around what our bodies should look like. Sure, they may feel a moment of deflation when a favourite shirt fits a little tight over their tummy, but they donโt wrestle with a lifetime of body expectations (that begin well before puberty) when they look in the mirror. They didnโt grow up being overtly and covertly lectured about the value and deficits of their physical form, understanding the real-world impact not having a good enough body can have on every aspect of a womanโs life.
Magazines, peers, parents and strangers didnโt feel free to comment and critique every change in their appearance. But Jake Gyllenhaal, who grew up in a showbiz family and has acted since childhood โ and shared a video of himself grimacing while doing push-ups with massive chains while training for the Roadhouse reboot โ probably did.
