Like many people, I’ve been thinking about pictures of Jeremy Allen White a lot recently. Not so much the ones you immediately recall when someone says “pictures of Jeremy Allen White” (although those ones—in which The Bear actor reclines on a New York rooftop, Calvin Klein jeans around his ankles, abs twinkling in the glow of golden hour—are very nice). I mean the other ones: the pap shots taken of the 33-year-old on his trips to LA farmers’ markets to pick up industrial quantities of flowers.
I imagine you’ve seen them: a mohair cardigan-clad JAW cradling a cellophane-wrapped bouquet so giant he’s struggling to see over the top of it; or sporting a sweater vest and tall beanie, carefully selecting greenery from a plastic bucket; or filling an adorable Bode laundry bag with adorable tulips… You get the gist. The man likes flowers! Sometimes he takes his girlfriend Rosalía along with him, the pair enjoying some light chain-smoking amongst the daisies. Most of the time, though, he’s weaving through the obstacle course of tiny dogs and smug couples unique to inner-city outdoor shopping experiences solo, AirPods in, curls poking out of a Mets cap and a look of total concentration on his face as he makes his selection. It’s—and I’ve been trying to think of a more subtle way to say this, to no avail—an incredibly hot vibe.
I’m not alone in my newfound passion. To say that there’s furore surrounding these pictures is an understatement. If Jeremy’s Calvin Klein shots did whatever the 2024 version of breaking the internet is, these snaps are at least the equivalent of the WiFi going in and out in your office—not a major incident, per se, but enough to distract quite a large amount of people from getting any work done.
What is it about this (yes, very good-looking, talented, and well-dressed) man running errands in a ragged old cap that’s getting so many people going, I wonder? Because I’ve long lived by the motto, “If you like something, you should overthink it to the point that you never want to see it again,” I’ve spent many hours considering this, and I think I’ve worked it out.
You’d be forgiven for assuming that these pictures have so many fans because seeing the former Shameless star lug around armfuls of peonies allows people (me) to imagine he’s buying them for us (me), and that he’s on his way over with takeout for two and something else normal, like an engagement ring, hidden inside a photo scrapbook of our relationship.
You would be wrong.
Back in 2016 (bear with me), there was frequent chatter online about a specific breed of straight man, one with a single stained pillow on his full-sized mattress (which, needless to say, didn’t have a bed frame). The kind of guy who never bothered to buy hand soap (just used shower gel), whose kitchen cupboards contained two plate-bowls, a mug, a fork, and three huge tubs of cookies and cream protein powder. A man who, if you brought any of this up, would make out like it made total sense for him to be incredibly particular about the brand of premium olive oil he used and which designer he got his white T-shirts from, but still use the fading bedsheets his mom got him for college, 15 years post-graduation. Well, my theory is regarding this archetype.
I’m going to assume, from the regularity and scale (vast and inconvenient) of Jeremy’s purchases, that he’s buying them for himself rather than as gifts. He’s browsing the flower stalls for his seasonal faves, picking up spiky ones, orange ones, leafy ones (ironically, I actually know so little about flowers that I am unable to identify his regulars), and heaving them all home to arrange in Hay vases while he makes soup or roasts a chicken and listens to, I don’t know, Throwing Fits, or whatever men who wear a lot of Lacoste like. This totally fictional impression of him—as a straight guy who buys flowers for himself and then indulges in arranging them—is the total opposite of “man with one pillow,” and that’s what makes it irresistible to me, a woman in my 30s.
A straight man regularly buying flowers for his home is basically a rejection of the long-inherited and often subconscious belief many lads hold that making a space look somewhat pretty isn’t something for them to worry about. (It’s the same logic that can lead women in heterosexual relationships to do more cleaning, because their partners claim they don’t actually mind watching TV amidst a forest of old coffee cups.)
More than that, it’s a commitment to frivolity. Flowers only last a couple of weeks. They’re not useful. You just put them in jugs and spend seven to 10 days thinking, Oh, they’re still alive, until they start to smell a bit bad and you have to throw them away. Unlike buying some Malin+Goetz to make your grimy shower slightly more appealing to a new girlfriend, or replacing your lumpy duvet with a good John Lewis one when you get a raise, or even investing in a status-y Arhaus coffee table, it’s not a long-lasting investment purchase to ease the stress of “having to make your place look nice for when people come around.” It’s taking genuine care to look after your home just because it’s fun. And, in Jeremy’s case, it’s made even hotter by the fact that, at this point in his career, he could probably afford to pay someone else to run this errand for him, or at least buy ready-arranged bouquets. Instead, he’s out there sweaty and flustered, choosing between dahlias and chrysanthemums.
I hope this is a turning point. If one of the most fancied blokes of our time is out there buying hyacinths, then maybe this heralds a new era of all straight men getting properly into making spaces nice just for the sake of it. Perhaps we’re getting close to the day when no woman will have to shower at a date’s apartment, only to find they’re drying themselves off with a towel so old it has the texture of pumice stone. Until then, we can all just read far too deeply into photographs of a TV star giving the paparazzi a little wave as he picks up a dozen tulips. Or, I guess, give up on the capitalistic pressure to have nice interiors altogether, and live in a way that involves buying fewer things. I’m not quite there yet, though, so hooray for men getting themselves flowers.