The Oscars were this Sunday, which means it’s the perfect time to announce that the light of my life during this awards season has been the beautiful Timothée Chalamet.
Timothée was in Lady Bird and Call Me By Your Name, two movies I haven’t seen just yet but am nevertheless obsessed with because LOOK AT THE SWEET FACE ON THIS MAN.
I’m not the only one who has adopted Chalamet as my hypothetical boyfriend. Jennifer “Relatable Content” Lawrence was gushing about him to Entertainment Tonight last week.
I mean, me too.
However, the context she was using to geek about him kinda freaked me out a little bit.
“Timothée, I’m waiting for him to get a little bit older, you know?…[I’m] buttering him up like a pig for slaughter, and then I’m going to swing right in there as soon as he’s, like, 30.”
This particular instance wasn’t horrible as Lawrence is 27 and Chalamet is 22. At the very least, she acknowledged that what she said wouldn’t be super okay if he wasn’t already older.
“He’s old enough to say that, right? He’s over 18?…What if I was like, ‘He’s hot!’ and he’s 15?”
Both parties are legal adults, so I see no real issue with this particular series of awkward jokes. Unfortunately, it brings to mind behavior that’s much more gross and uncomfy.
Around the release of Stranger Things season 2, the internet’s obsession with the show’s teenage actors turned disturbing in some places. Often, fans would forget that the actors are teenagers and underage, and proceed to sexualize them. (So much so that when I was Googling info on this, the first search result that came up was “sexualizing stranger things.”)
I think that since teenage characters are usually played by actors over 18, it’s something of a reflex in media consumption to openly thirst after them. However, part of what made Stranger Things stand out was the charisma of its young actors whom were cast age-appropriately. Because the gang is so young, we have to be vigilant about treating them with the non-sexual eye that children deserve.
This is a particular issue with young people in the public eye. There’s a lot of pressure to consistently meet your fans’ expectations, especially in this day and age. At the end of the year, 15-year-old Stranger Things star Finn Wolfhard was called “rude” by fans on Twitter after not saying hello to them. His castmate, Shannon Purser, rushed to his defense and made a good point about giving children in the spotlight their space.
I imagine J Law has spent a significant amount of time thinking about this concept, having found success in the Hunger Games films alongside a number of young actors who have also faced this external pressure. And I don’t believe her comments regarding Timothée are bad, since they’re both adults.
I just think that we need to keep talking about letting kids be kids and acknowledging that even though young people do really cool stuff, as adults we should acknowledge that they are at a different stage at life than us and back off of viewing them in an adult, often sexual, light. Let’s not be constantly watching and waiting for them to grow up quickly.
Instead, crush on beautiful adult men from a distance. I’ll focus on beautiful adult men very close to my age, like…
Be still my beating heart.