Considerations | Sweatpants Date Night

Dana Powell. “Punch” (2021). Oil on linen. 16” x 12”. Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles. 

High stakes hook ups, melodramatic breakups, premature shacking up, and delayed weddings and commitment ceremonies. The past year-and-a-half of pandemic life has put enormous pressure on intimate personal relationships. With all due respect to the thrills of quarantine love affairs and the tumult of lockdown separations, the glut of think pieces about pandemic entanglements have failed to address the escapist delights of fantasy—a.k.a. the delicious blend of giddiness and projection embodied by a crush. And the only thing more perfectly perverse than a regular crush is a celebrity crush. During our recent socially isolated times, celebrity crushes have exceeded their former status as scrolling diversions and transformed into existential balms, capable of charming the public during a period of global dread.

 In regular life, admitting a crush or expressing interest in someone you’re liable to encounter—even if initially only via an app—means potentially involving said person in your day-to-day sphere. In other words, a crush activated towards the pragmatic ends of actually getting to know a person can compel self-reflection, even self-criticism. A celebrity crush, however, demands far fewer reality checks. Questions of compatibility and availability can be endlessly postponed. As the relatively strait-laced cousin of stan culture and fanfiction, the abstract framework of a celebrity crush encourages us to pick and choose specific aspects of a person to focus on. For example, many of us would rather fantasize about Notting Hill-era Hugh Grant without the complicating details of his relationship with Elizabeth Hurley or his attitude towards women more broadly. Within the celeb crush framework, I can accept that Grant and I would likely clash IRL while still relishing his performance as hapless travel bookseller, William Thacker, bumbling on about Horse & Hound. 

Celebrity crushes are a long-time staple of pop culture and entertainment journalism, but their renewed associations with escapism have hung thick in the air since the pandemic was declared in March 2020. As opportunities for spontaneous public interactions diminished, flirtatious energy became subject to new pressures and pod-mixing safety concerns. Meanwhile, celebrity crushes became increasingly valuable diversions during months of lockdown, sweatpants, and dismal news. 

During the past year, people have revisited former celebrity crushes, as reflected in revived cult attention to series like The Sopranos and frenzied coverage of 2000s icons like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Simultaneously new stars have been born with increasing attention to TikTokers like Elsa Majimbo, Addison Rae, and Boman Martinez-Reid, and publications like The Cut and Teen Vogue profiling mutual aid activists and thereby rocketing them to fame. As unlikely as it may have seemed pre-pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci even became the object of polarizing obsession. A 2020 article in The Atlantic titled “America is Thirsty for Anthony Fauci” described the proliferation of Twitter accounts, such as @FauciFan, posting youthful photos of the president’s chief medical advisor with “#thirsttrap.”

Whereas the underlying aim of a non-celebrity crush is typically developing affection into a reciprocal relationship, A-list crushes enjoy Peter Pan lives in the Neverland of imagination. Rarely intended to be consummated, celebrity crushes encourage projection without the baggage of questioning our own worthiness or appeal. Furthermore, celeb crushes invite us to think and feel beyond logistical constraints. You can crush on 1980s Cher, early-2000s Beyoncé, or a mid-2010s Alan Cumming in a clip from The Graham Norton Show—er, that last example may be a niche affinity. Scarcity also ceases to be an issue as crushing on famous people can be a catalyst for sharing facts, photos, and observations sans the hindrances of modesty or traditional relationship goals. 

Too often dismissed as frivolous, indulging in the fantasy of a crush can reveal untapped aspects of our own personalities. At the very least, the dopamine hit, or the rush of happiness we experience during the early butterflies-meet-nausea stage of a crush, feels like an opportunity for self-care. Crushes can be aspirational, too. Lately I’ve had a crush on the musicians Angel Olsen and Hand Habits singing a Tom Petty cover in a YouTube video. Both artists are compelling, but my crush is really on them singing together and on the hopes of sharing such a warming collaboration one day.

As wide swaths of the public find comfort in conversations about crush-worthy figures, the lines between stanning, admiring, and desiring blur. If this summer’s plethora of adoring social media posts about Timothée Chalamet at Cannes, or Naomi Osaka pre-Tokyo Olympics, are any sign of what’s to come, it seems clear that celebrity crushes will continue to trend in 2022. As objects of our individual and collective affections, celebrities symbolize traits we dream of being in proximity with or embodying ourselves. For now, as parts of the world cautiously return to “regular” life, celebrities lead the ever-idiosyncratic way. And whether we love them entirely or just admire parts of their personas, there is an undeniable levity to the ultimate unrequited crush.