So if you’re not already aware, Stanley Tucci has entered TikTok. The Tooch is a sex icon, which people apparently think is weird, but I do not. He is the definition of a sauce man, aka the kind of man who makes a sauce and then offers you some to try in a wooden spoon and says, “what does this need?” Of course it needs nothing, it is perfect, because he is the sauce man.
Stanley is not new to the short video medium. If you haven’t already watched his viral Instagram cocktail-making videos, especially the original on making a negroni, stop reading this right now and go watch them. These videos were lockdown sensations, which is such a fascinating category of content - it’s hard now to remember how obsessed we became with random shit when there was nothing else to do. But, as far as I’m aware, no criticism has pierced the bubble of perfection around Stanley’s cocktails, like it has around other lockdown obsessions (Tiger King, the rise, fall, and rise again of Alison Roman, etc.). There was a hilarious uproar last summer about the fact that Prince William was voted “World’s Sexiest Bald Man” over Stanley, which obviously wasn’t a criticism - it was an outpouring of support (the survey was very unscientific, which makes sense because no one in their right mind would pick Prince William out of all the bald men on the planet).
Since the negroni video was posted on April 20th, 2020, Tucci’s memoir, Taste: My Life Through Food, was published in October 2021, and his CNN show “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy” premiered in February 2021, was nominated for several Emmys, and is now on its second season (luckily it is on real CNN, not CNN+). Not that he wasn’t already successful in the entertainment sphere, but might we say that the negroni video launched his food career? He had already published a cookbook, but I think it definitely launched him into the cultural zeitgeist in a completely new way.
What made this video, and all the ones that came after it, so great? First of all, people love a classy dude who cooks - or, by extension, makes a food-adjacent item like a cocktail. This is because most dudes do not do this, so it’s a novelty. Novelty sells. Second, and more interestingly, these videos are all filmed by Tucci’s wife, Felicity Blunt (sister of Emily). There’s nothing particularly special about her camera work, but the basic fact that we, the viewers, are watching Stanley through his wife’s eyes is gripping. His interaction with the camera is also his interaction with her, and it makes the videos feel authentically intimate. He teases her, he smiles at her, he flirts with her, and we can hear her laugh at him - it’s so endearingly personal and vulnerable. When he made a Christmas cocktail video that featured his in-laws, Emily Blunt and Jon Krasinski, it was entertaining because famous people are fun to watch, but that erotic sense of peeking into a marriage was missing.
Now, he’s on TikTok, because it’s the place to be. His offerings so far have been limited and not particularly ground breaking, but he has 455k followers and 1.3M likes, after launching his account three weeks ago. One of his videos is just an ad for his CNN show, which is obviously lame, but others are direct continuations of his Instagram aesthetic. They’re filmed by Felicity, who he guides around their beautiful kitchen to show off the food he and his family have made. He acts simultaneously too-cool-for-school and earnestly enthusiastic to show off the fruits of his work in the kitchen (which look delicious).
I think these videos encapsulate the secret to this man’s sex appeal, which is that he embraces being seen through the female gaze. We are watching him through the eyes of the woman he loves, and he is looking at us via her. It’s so charged, so intimate, but also so accessible. One person used the term “Tucci-sexual” to describe the widespread reaction to Tucci’s videos as incredibly hot to everyone, not just straight women. Somehow, he seems to transcend categories of sexuality and gender to achieve a truly universal appeal.
I think this kind of transcendent appeal characterises many of the hotties of our day - Harry Styles, Timothee Chalemet, straight women who “dress like lesbians,” aka women who wear masculine or menswear-inspired clothes (which is, like, everyone at the moment). The Tooch isn’t androgynous in the same fashion-oriented way, but his non-threatening, opposite-of-macho energy and general sexiness has the same vibes. I’m very intrigued by this trend in what we collectively find attractive. The intense reactions to it (see “Bring back manly men” in response to Harry Styles’s Vogue cover, anti-trans legislation, the general conservative fervour over preserving “traditional” gender presentation) really just confirm that it’s happening. Tastes shift - that’s what happens. What we perceive as traditional is really just post-World War II.
My man Stanley is possibly not the obvious example of a non-normative manly man, but I find his rise to the status of cult sex icon fascinating and surprising. I think it’s part of the larger tide of shifting metrics of hotness - the tide is always shifting on this, and it’s always interesting to think about what new qualities are gaining currency.
If anyone sells T-shirts that say “The Tooch,” I would buy one. Let me know.
Some Other Things I’m Thinking About
This really terrific New Yorker essay on Mackenzie Fierceton and the way Penn turned against her when she stopped fitting their narrative of an “underprivileged” student
“Can We Dance as the World Falls Apart?”, an essay about clubbing in Eastern Europe right now
The British government’s appalling plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, and particularly the confrontation over it between the government and the archbishops of Canterbury and York who are (weirdly!!) representatives of the official state religion of the UK
Hot Milk by Deborah Levy - a genuinely fantastic book
Welcome to Taurus Season!!!
"sauce man" is such an amazing descriptor and i cannot wait to adopt it