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Michael B. Jordan Is the Sexiest Man Alive
For the third year in a row, People’s “Sexiest Man Alive” is a Black man. This year, Michael B. Jordan receives the honor. The 33-year-old actor, who has starred in films like Creed and Black Panther, has also been active in the Black Lives Matter movement and this year’s election. What’s more, according to People, his company, Outlier Society Productions, was “the first to adopt an inclusion rider, which mandates that filmmakers enlist a diverse cast and crew.
Which is all great! What is less great is that the Sexiest Man has almost always been White; Jordan is only the fifth Black man to win the significant (if sliiiightly superficial) honor in its 35 years of existence. As Kadeen Griffiths wrote for Bustle back in 2005, “It’s just a natural fact of life that White men are going to be overly represented on lists like this, but I don’t want to keep accepting that as a ‘fact.’ I want that to change. I want to look at People’s Sexiest Man Alive list each year and see various representations of what sexy looks like, across different cultures.”
Sounds like a very noble (and sexy) goal, doesn’t it?
