Gabrielle #41 – Backshots (Investigative Journalism Edition) with… Footballers
An excerpt from my completely unscientific study of male footballers and sex symbols, published in the latest issue of Mundial.
Backshots (Investigative Journalism Edition) with… Footballers; or, The Ball Jar
It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer that man stuck a flare up his arse. It was mid-2021, the last of the COVID-19 restrictions were being lifted, and England had stormed all the way to the final of the Euros. The air was effervescent with Heineken and hope. The streets were delirious, the public toilets strewn with balled-up St George’s Cross flags soaked in piss and spit and lord knows what else. A collective mania swept the country akin to the day it was announced that David Cameron fucked a pig. And though Italy Italy’d their way to the spoils, it still felt like a net win for some – partly because England hadn’t performed that well in the Euro since 1996, and partly because it transformed one player in particular from a good footballer into a sexual phenomenon.
Emerging from the bowels of Aston Villa with a black alice band and a bemused Colin Farrell look about him, Jack Grealish had people climbing the pub walls with lust. The Brummie had it all: calves, charisma, the floppy curtains of a gorgeous lesbian. It helped that he was talented, obviously – a month after the Euros final he made his move north to Manchester for £100 million and became the most expensive British player of all time – but his appeal extended beyond the already vast parameters of football fandom, and that was entirely owing to his appearance. In the middle of the Euros, British Vogue published an ode to his haircut – “the highlights! The length! The volume!” – and Tatler placed him first on their list of “lions worth growling over.” Handmade signs asking “Will you marry me, Jack?” filled the stands like a scene from a documentary about Take That in the 90s, and a young woman went viral for waving a custom shirt with the name and number “Mrs Grealish 69.”
The young woman in question – who now goes by “Mrs Grealish 69 Official” on social media and was featured in multiple mainstream news outlets including The Standard – represents a lynchpin moment in the contemporary thirst for footballers. The screenshot that launched a thousand novelty mugs, it was a rich and efficient expression of everything people had been feeling while watching Grealish rag around the pitch all summer. It also placed him in the same category as other 2020s sex symbols like Jeremy Allen White and Paul Mescal: traditionally masculine men frequently spotted doing normal, non-threatening things, like going to the farmer’s market or bowling around Hackney grasping a packet of prawn cocktail crisps, a bottle of Crabbies and two Gordon’s Pink G&Ts. With the manosphere casting a dark cloud over discussions of modern masculinity, their raw qualities – remarkable talent in the sheets (on TV), down-to-earth air of a boy you let copy your English coursework in the streets – has become incredibly easy to eroticise. Hence, there are multiple Instagram pages dedicated to Grealish’s legs, arse and bulge, respectively.
Footballers have long been objects of desire and admiration, both consciously and unconsciously. Their combination of physical prowess, technical ability and aura of glory puts them in the same category as rock stars. People either want to shag them, be them, or both. The fact that in the UK, especially, football is overwhelmingly considered a working-class sport – one of the last arenas in which a kid can come from absolutely nothing and become a superstar – only fuels the fantasy. Often these are young men you could recognise from your school or street. They feel familiar, because for the most part they grew up eating spaghetti hoops and watching Pingu like everybody else, and that gives them an air of plausible attainability. Maybe you could be him… Maybe you could neck him in a venue with a 2-for-£5 offer on Jagerbombs and the words “Bar & Grill” in the name… You definitely can’t, though, because you’re fighting for your life at five-a-side and they’re way too famous to be tying one on anywhere near you, but there is a world in which that could have happened, and that’s enough. The aspirational finger of The National Lottery hovers over each and every stadium pitch, as if to say, it could be you…
Read the full feature in Mundial Issue 34, ft. input from Lauren O’Neill of Dining Out and knowing-about-Solihull fame, Adam Mattera, who was the editor of Attitude when they put David Beckham on the cover in 2002, and, of course, the fans.
Available to buy here.
This piece is one of four covers and they all rock, but if you want my Jack Grealish’s Calves-specific variant you can get that here.