what happened to the white boy of the month?
the rise of pedro pascal may be the perfect case study
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Who do you think of when you think of the White Boy of the Month? Well, first we can take a look at any movie or TV show that’s trending right now, maybe even a Top-40 hitmaker. Next, you pick out the White Boy. He’s sometimes a leading man (Tom Holland as Peter Parker), sometimes the supporting one (Mekki Leeper in Jury Duty). Sometimes the goody two-shoes who’s endlessly endearing (Noah Centineo in To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before), sometimes the bad boy with the heart of the gold (Jeremy Allen White in The Bear). The White Boy is the one people post screenshots of, captioned “Does anyone else think White Boy is kinda…” Once we set our sites on Him there are fan edits, playlists, and compilations to feed the flames of obsession. Before you know it you’re not just opening Netflix to watch a show, you’re four episodes into some god-awful teen drama waiting for Him to make his inevitable appearance.
Some brief history for those unfamiliar: The earliest use of “white boy of the month” was in 2011, a user writing “Chris Pine is my white boy of the month. Congratulations homez! If I see u, jus kno its yam city.” The phrase picked up speed in early 2018 and caught on to the cultural vocabulary. In December 2018, a viral tweet codified the term, a user claiming “i’ve kept track of all the ‘Twitter’s White Boys of the Month’ this year so here’s the 2018 thirst calendar.” I don’t know about you all, but I feel like when this tweet dropped my brain chemistry was changed. These rhythms of the public consciousness, the passionate fervor I’d experience every month articulated in such a clear, simple, and painfully accurate way. With this viral tweet, White Boy of the Month became both a term of endearment and an insult waged against white men who obtain clout for being just that—white men. For me, the beauty of The White Boy of the Month is that it participates in the system while also critiquing it, the concept buys into and gives legitimacy to this tendency of stan twitter and the public to latch on to a man and propel him into temporary stardom while poking fun at the fact there’s an obvious blueprint and common denominator. When you look at this chart, it’s laughable how the internet seems to have a type… well, most of the time.
Michael B. Jordan’s presence in this original chart has always stuck out to me, and whenever I start ranting about why I find White Boy of the Month to be such an interesting topic, his inclusion is a perfect case study. You don’t have to be White to be White Boy of the Month, maybe White Boy of the Month is a state of mind.
Hence, Pedro Pascal. Since the premiere of HBO’s The Last of Us coupled with the fourth season of The Mandolorian on Disney+ earlier this year, the 48-year-old has gone from seasoned, well-respected Chilean actor to an inescapable full-blown heart-throb. This wave of love, lust, and praise feels abnormal to say the least—even by the standards of Gen-Z and stan twitter. Apart from inspiring edits that garner millions of views, Pascal has also inspired a number of thinkpieces breaking down the precise WHYs and WHATs around his recent and almost unprecedented spike in popularity. While I’m not here to answer those questions, I can sum up this craze with a question of my own: What’s not to like? Pedro Pascal is equal parts sexy, intelligent, talented, hardworking, funny, and family friendly. Great both on-screen and off. Pascal has all the makings of a White Boy of the Month, but that title… feels wrong?
Back in 2018, anointing MBJ as White Boy of the Month felt like a joke that *we* were all in on. When I say *we* I mean myself as a black woman who uses the internet as long as the rest of stan twitter and those cognizant of the pop culture ecosystem at the time. Like I said, I like the phrase White Boy of the Month because, when it comes out of my mouth, I know it’s because I’m simply saying the quiet part out loud. I’m not sure in 2018, however, that everyone using the term understood that nuance. Flash forward to the spring and summer of 2020, when we all started to say the quiet part out loud. Hollywood’s and America’s blatant race problem became too loud for White Hollywood and White America to ignore any longer, and it felt like every sector of every industry did some sort of racial-ethical overhaul, or at least made themselves look like they did. Pre-2020, I imagine that White Boy of the Month felt like a collective jest, an equal opportunity for all to poke fun at themselves. It took a national racial reckoning to make white America realize they are the butt of the joke, that it shouldn’t be all that funny to them.
Calling Pedro Pascal a white boy of the month, despite him checking all the boxes, feels icky because it’s always been icky. It has always been weird that like clockwork the internet and collective consciousness latches on to white men for just being there. Pascal is an example of POC in Hollywood working twice as hard for twice as long to get half the praise. I could even posit that part of the appeal of falling for Pascal is that it feels like the story of an underdog, and that’s because this level of adoration for a man of color in Hollywood is in fact just that. To white audiences Pedro Pascal is refreshing because he breaks the mold. At once he is, in fact, all of those coveted traits but conveniently he can also stand as a virtue signal–white Hollywood’s intentionally obtuse "what type?”
Not surprisingly, this case isn’t actually a sign that we’ve come THAT far as a viewing society post-2020. I love Pedro Pascal as much as the next woman of color consuming media, but I can’t pretend that his meteoric rise to being a household name doesn’t represent something else about the public consciousness. We may not have white boy problem anymore, but we still have a Man problem.
It is hard to deny that the cycles of fame and lust for men in popular culture is asymmetrical to those of their female counterparts. Pedro Pascal and his fans don’t stay up at night waiting for the inevitable day in which the tide turns and he goes from beloved to reviled. For a white Boy of the month the worst thing to happen is to be forgotten, not loathed. However, this inevitable, and let me emphasize, completely predictable shift in public sentiment is the norm for women who become famous quickly. It happens faster, it happens more intensely, and it happens when women are younger and more vulnerable. Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, and Jenna Ortega are just a few examples that come to mind. No matter how talented, kind-hearted, or quiet these women are they seem to face swift and degrading backlash that simply is not levied in the same way against their male peers, a phenomenon that is that much worse for women of color. [For more on this check out Rayne Fisher-Quann’s “What does it mean to get ‘woman’d?”]
Pedro Pascal is the progressive face for the Hollywood-Twitter-Stan-Thirst machine, but he still represents how much less men have to do to gain that much more: The Man of the Month simply has to Be Decent and Be Hot. No matter how hard a woman in the public eye sits still and looks pretty, she will get more backlash just for being a woman.
Call it what you want. Boy of the Month, Man of the Month, Stan Twitter's New Obsession, “the wholesome internet boyfriend.” This cyclical adoration represents the quiet luxury of being a man in the public eye. I'll never come for a POC finally getting what they're due, and I can love Pedro Pascal enough for all of us. I simply beg the question: Is White Boy of the Month just as politically fraught by any other name? I say absolutely.
This piece was an elaborate ruse to launch my campaign for White Boy of the Month April 2023. There’s still time, people!
In all seriousness, I love this topic and have 30 more pieces in me about it, so if you have ideas, my DMs are always open (@simisitu on insta).
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Analysis on point👍🏾
So good!!! Loved