As the unspoken rules regulating public displays of online horniness continue to loosen in these unprecedented times, no digital platform is immune to the forces of quarantine horn, including, apparently, Change.org.
The site is now home to a petition asking for support in naming Dr. Anthony Fauci People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive. The petition — which, at time of writing, has more than 4,000 signatures — argues that the 79-year-old director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases deserves the title held by the likes of Brad Pitt and Idris Elba in recognition of the health expert’s contributions to the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
“His tireless work to educate and support Americans has affected all of us,” wrote the petition’s founder, Sandra Martin. “His comforting and intelligent demeanor has helped to lessen our national anxiety. He speaks truth to power, a strength few have at this time. His kind face and manner of speaking bring calm during the storm.”
While People editor-in-chief Dan Wakeford conceded that, “Smart is sexy, no doubt” in a statement about the petition to WWD, the movement has caused the Cut, an outlet among media’s foremost sources of horny expertise, to question whether we’re not getting a little “too horny” this time.
“It is irresponsible to target a figure as seriously engaged in combatting that pandemic as Dr. Fauci is with unregulated horn,” argued the Cut‘s Bridget Read, drawing comparisons to a similar case of “misplaced horniness” that’s recently surrounded New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in response to his coronavirus crisis efforts.
While Martin, the Fauci fan behind the petition, calls the health expert “the definitive Sexiest Man Alive in 2020” for “sapiophiles,” Read makes a good point. Need all of our admiration be so sexually charged? Can we commend a public figure for a job well done without turning them into an object of lust? The entire history of women would suggest not, and now, it seems our tendency toward sexual objectification has finally broken free of the restrictions of the gender binary. It’s 2020, the world is ending. We’ll objectify literally anything we can turn into an appropriate receptacle for our unbridled horniness, whether male, female, or aging health expert just trying to do his job.
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