I. Justin

There’s a favorite paper of my wife’s from undergrad about Justin Trudeau. The paper argues that:

1. When men run for office, they are often described (and often style themselves) as stoic, confident, and aggressive, in line with a traditionally masculine image.

2. Female politicians receive “gendered scrutiny” that focuses more on personal appearance and temperament, and are often cast as being buoyed by powerful men.

3. If you do some complex textual analysis, media coverage of Justin Trudeau resembles (or resembled as of 2016) coverage of a woman running for office more so than a man.

Why? Why did Justin Trudeau get this kind of attention? My wife’s professor blamed his boyish charm. Trudeau was young (for a politician), he was handsome (for a politician), he was clean cut and personable, he had broadly feminist policy goals.

He was a sweetie! He was just too dang cute for politics!

II. Timmy

Timothée Chalamet could’ve had a different career, I suppose, but watch him act, and you’ll get the sense that he had no other choice. He carries himself as if he was always meant to be a movie star. Certainly he had the resources - although from a middle-class family (by the standards of New York City), he went to New York’s most prestigious arts high school and had already landed several TV roles before graduating.

Then again, he didn’t have to be a movie star the way he did. Before Chalamet’s 21st birthday, his talent manager got him a meeting with director Luca Guadagnino, who immediately saw “ambition,” “intelligence,” and “artistry” in the young man, but also “sensitivity” and “naivety.” Guadagnino quickly cast Chalamet to star in his next film.

Call Me By Your Name (2017) remains Guadgnino’s best-performing film to date, thanks in large part to Chalamet’s performance. Critics stampeded to their keyboards to lavish praise on Chalamet, then 21 years old (“he alone would make the film worth watching.”) Committees for all notable and many unnotable acting awards showered him with nominations. Chalamet was a star.

Ah, but he was more than a star, wasn’t he? He was cute. He was sweet. He was a soft boy. He’s just different, isn’t he? Everything you like with nothing you don’t?

III. John

That had to be how it happened to John Mulaney, right? That people saw him through Tumblr gif sets and nowhere else? Half of his breakout special for Comedy Central (New In Town, 2012) is about how he’s babyfaced and has a disarming, boyish demeanor and how that warps the expectations that people have of him. Here’s an illustrative joke from that set:

I don’t drink. I used to drink, and then I drank too much, and I had to stop. That surprises a lot of audiences because I don’t look like someone who used to do anything. I look like I sat in a room somewhere eating saltine crackers for 28 years and then came out here.

But! His most popular jokes have nothing to do with that. I would say these are his most popular bits:

• The one where he and a friend go to a diner and queue up “What’s New Pussycat” by Tom Jones several times in a row, interrupted only by a single instance of “It’s Not Unusual”. This is good, clean, juvenile fun! Nobody gets hurt!

• “My wife is a 5 foot Jewish bitch and I love her so much!” Great bit, shows he loves and cares about his (then) wife, wholesome despite the fact that he says “bitch.”

• The joke about how saying “my wife” makes him feel like an adult. Again, clean, wholesome, loving.

• Several other jokes involving his (now ex) wife.

If all you knew about John Mulaney was those bits and his visual appearance, you would indeed have the wrong impression.

IV. Pigs

A teacup pig is a marketing trick.

Piglets are small and cute and seem like they’d make great pets, and there are some breeds of pig that are smaller than others. So, you take the piglets of the smaller breeds and sell them as “micro” pigs or “mini” pigs or “teacup” pigs, as pets, to people who are not familiar with pigs and expect them to stay that size forever. Cash only, of course, and be sure not to provide your real contact info.

Smaller, micro, mini, these are all relative terms. The smallest breed of pigs still get to be over 100 pounds as adults. But that takes five years. Sell the piglets quick enough, leave no trace, you’ll make a killing. Who cares what happens to the buyer? Who cares what happens to the pig?

I’ll tell you what happens to the pig: It grows up and becomes a normal pig! It eats slop and it shits and it makes a mess, but now you own a pig that loves you, so you either have to:

• Betray it, and give it away to a shelter or farm, or

• Reconfigure your life around owning a pig.

And if you happen to be friends with someone who bought a teacup pig, and talked your ear off about it for years, and it grew up and became a normal pig, I’m sure you’d love to rub it in their face, what a sucker they were.

V. Justin

You would think people would have fairly low expectations for the personal conduct of P.E. Trudeau’s son. I mean, Trudeau pére (and mére to a lesser degree, although few could beat P.E. Trudeau in this regard) was a real libertine himself, his raw charisma leading him into all manner of minor scandal.

Why wouldn’t you expect the son, who had no real political ambitions until after his 35th birthday, born into even more prominence and privilege than the father, to have ever acted any different?

But then again, Justin Trudeau was in control of his own image the entire time. Why did he brand himself like this? It got him elected, yes, but it backfired pretty much immediately, and then you have to enter high-level, closed-door political negotiations every single day as the sweet uwu softboi prime minister. How is that ever going to work in your favor? How can you possibly expect to maintain the expectations you’re setting with voters? What was he thinking? 1

VI. John

To his credit, I don’t think John Mulaney tried to be too cute for his own good. If we take what he says in several specials at his word, he’s just like that, everyone has always had this impression of him, it’s part of who he is. In retrospect it seemed like some people wanted him to say “I am an addict, I am a city rat, I’m approaching middle age, comedy as an art form is base and low, expect nothing of me, I am not a role model” but he did say that, more or less, repeatedly! Did no one want to listen?

Here’s the historical standard for behavior from stand-up comedians. In 1980 Richard Pryor, popularly recognized as the best stand-up comedian to ever do it, celebrated a $1 million film deal by getting high on freebase cocaine, pouring rum all over himself, and setting himself on fire.

Two years later, during a taped special, Pryor lit a match and said “Look, it’s Richard Pryor running down the street.”

A year after that, Pryor co-hosted the Oscars!

Like, look, okay, it’s not good, it’s not good that John Mulaney went on a bender and went to rehab and left his wife for another woman and immediately knocked that other woman up, it was bad that he did that, but was it unexpected?

On the other hand, now that Mulaney has broken the illusion of cuteness and youth, it seems like he wants it back. Here he is on Late Night with Seth Meyers in 2022, about two years after he blew his life up, looking not even bad, but like a 40 year old Irish Catholic man with a toddler at home, and here he is in 2024 with new jaw and hair lines. But his youth is gone. He can’t fit in a teacup anymore, even though he might desperately want to.

VII. Timmy

Timothée Chalamet, I would say, had long recognized that he was trapped by his own perception as cute and soft and sweet. Clearly he was trying to break that image. He went to Knicks games and yelled at the players. He picked roles as maniacs and rascals. He started dating Kylie Jenner.

So why is this what broke that image?

CHALAMET: [on diminishing attention spans in media] …but it does take you having to waive a flag of “Hey, this is a serious movie” or something, and some people want to be entertained, and quickly. I’m really right in the middle, Matthew, cause I - I admire people, and I’ve done it myself, where people want to talk shit about “Hey we gotta keep movie theaters alive,” y’know, “we gotta keep this genre alive.” Another part of me feels like if people want to see it, like Barbie, like Oppenheimer, they’re going to go see it and go out of their way to be loud and proud about it. And I don’t want to be working in ballet, or opera, or things where it’s like “Hey, keep this thing alive,”

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CHALAMET: even though it’s like, no one cares about it anymore. All respect to the ballet and opera people out there -

[CROWD laughs]

CHALAMET: uh, I just lost 14 cents in viewership. But, um -

[MCCONAUGHEY laughs]

CHALAMET: Damn, I just took shots for no reason.

[CROWD laughs]

MCCONAUGHEY: That’s not a shot, I hear what you’re saying. Yeah.

CHALAMET: [imitates an opera singer]

[CROWD laughs]

This is a rude way to say something true. Ballet and opera are not popular art forms in the 21st century, they are held up by a niche community of enthusiasts, and film is (for now) a multibillion-dollar industry with mass appeal.

These comments sparked weeks of controversy. It was all anyone could talk about. A thousand Substack articles, a hundred thousand Reddit posts, a million tweets, multiple New York Times op-eds. There’s no way all of those people were avid fans of opera or ballet.

No! People piled on Chalamet because they were sick of him, either because they were never fans of his and resented the annoying behavior his particular brand of cuteness inspired in others, or because they were fans of his and he failed them, failed to be cute and sweet and let them swoon at his poster, failed to because he’s an arrogant movie star from New York who dates supermodels, failed because he doesn’t fit in a teacup.

If you start off being cute and sweet and a source of comfort, you’re trapped. People you’ve never met will rely on you, and need you, and need your output, which can never change. They will expect it. You must go beyond containing your worst impulses. You have to be perfect. You can never become a real pig. You must fit in the teacup forever. And you may get popular, but you’ll never be able to do anything else.