Bye

As a younger man, I liked to believe I was relatively well put together. I took care of my appearance, choosing my clothes carefully and ensuring my hair was the way I liked it. Though I am not tall – and have even been described as diminutive – I have never felt inferior to other men.

That is, until one evening fifteen years ago. I was at a dinner at a club in the West End when a male model sat down beside me. This was the foremost underwear model of the time, with a vast chest and iron jaw, and so tall that if I were to stand up, he could have snuggled my pretty head into his armpit. He clearly had no idea who I was and no interest in finding out. After offering me his huge hand, he turned his chair in the other direction and spent the evening entertaining a series of giddy women who materialised around our table.

Next to this giant, I was rendered minuscule, impotent and humiliated. All my years of struggle for writing recognition collapsed; if I had won the Nobel Prize that morning, it would have meant nothing. As an ageing man with my faculties, such as they were, declining rapidly – and unable to maintain an erection for more than five minutes – I was in the presence of a walking, talking phallus, the embodiment of an erection: strong, upright and virile.

This was not my first time being superseded by a beautiful man. Once, on a train to Hay, the athletic Cuban dancer Carlos Acosta sat down across the aisle from me. I gaped as a number of women more or less physically fought to manoeuvre themselves into the seats opposite him.

I have met and worked with several good-looking men. My first film, My Beautiful Laundrette, starred the preternaturally handsome young Daniel Day‑Lewis. Later, in The Mother, Daniel Craig played a muscular builder. These men were promising young actors, but they were also cast because of their beauty. Laundrette was a camp, queer film; Craig’s builder was, on reflection, what I imagined an older woman’s fantasy might be. In both cases, the plot depends on a striking man walking into another’s life and shaking it up. 

Beauty is rare – it has to be – but male beauty is rarer still. Women have many more tools at their disposal: make‑up, clothes, accessories, fillers, Botox and implants, the whole machinery of the “glow up”. A woman can superficially transform herself; men are mostly stuck with the faces they were born with – until recently.

Perhaps this is why the sight of a truly beautiful man can be so unsettling for other men. He makes the heterosexual confront his own vulnerability, inadequacies and indeed queerness. Sitting beside the model, or across from Acosta, I had become the fan, if not the flustered girl.

On either side of the good-looking spectrum, there are at least two types of admirable men: current New York mayor Zohran Mamdani and five-time Champions League winner Cristiano Ronaldo. The latter exists in the collective male mind as a sort of gladiator or warrior, humiliating other men by scoring brilliant goals and stripping off his shirt in celebration. Everything he does is in service of himself, his own ego and vanity, bending the world to his will.

Mamdani, the son of intellectuals, exists in the service of others, to improve their lives. He is forthright and witty, and his charm and good looks are a by-product of his authenticity and aptitude. 

Philosophers like to say beauty is “disinterested”: we’re meant to contemplate it calmly, like a lovely view. But in this social media age, where beauty is thrust upon us at every waking moment, it can be maddening, creating overwhelming envy. Never before have we been confronted by so many images of outstanding attractiveness; you think you’re idly looking, but underneath you’re doing violent arithmetic about your own face and prospects.

All the men I have mentioned – to varying degrees – are talented, and it is this, coupled with their status, that is enviable. The other day, my gardeners brought along a new assistant. This worker was of such outstanding attractiveness that, as he reseeded my lawn, everyone in the house had to go and have a look at him. We all imagined the amount of love and good luck his face would bring him.

                                                                        - Hanif Kureshi