Get ready for some incredible news that proves that our toxic beauty culture may finally be headed in the right direction: Boys’ Life magazine has just selected a plus-sized boy for its annual Sexiest Boy Alive issue!
This is a major win for body positivity!
Ever since Boys’ Life was first published in 1911, its annual Sexiest Boy Alive honor has always gone to a slender, athletic-looking boy, and it’s been setting nearly impossible beauty standards for boys everywhere. But that’s all changing now that the popular magazine has selected Paul Faulk—a husky 8-year-old—as the sexiest boy alive for 2018.
Paul’s a Cub Scout who can tie six types of knots and recently earned both his archery and astronomy merit badges, and he just proved that even boys with a few extra inches around their waistlines still deserve to be recognized for their smooth, smoking-hot bodies. It’s wonderful to think that plus-sized boys all over the world will look at Paul strutting his stuff on the cover of Boys’ Life and realize that they, too, can one day carry the title of Sexiest Boy Alive.
The groundbreaking issue of Boys’ Life, which also features a guide for how to salvage camping supplies from a capsized kayak and a short story written by Gary Paulsen about a boy who befriends an injured wolf, comes complete with a full photo shoot in which Paul confidently shows his plus-sized body off for the camera, and shatters a major glass ceiling in boy beauty standards.
The photo shoot includes bold, in-your-face pictures of Paul shirtless while sanding down a soap box derby car and building a campfire in Yellowstone National Park while winking coyly at the camera as if to say, “Oh, did I build this fire?” They’re the kind of pictures typical of past Sexiest Boy Alive issues, but you’ve never seen a heavyset boy like Paul pose for these types of glamor shots before!
“It’s 2018, and at Boys’ Life, we believe that it’s high time to acknowledge that all boys are sexy, regardless of their body type,” a representative of Boys’ Life stated in a press conference at the magazine’s offices in Irving, TX this morning. “By naming Paul the world’s sexiest boy even though he’s a little curvier than the slender boys who usually receive this title, our magazine is boldly declaring that categories like ‘plus-sized boy’ and ‘chunkmeister’ are just the harmful constructs of a broken society, and that in reality all boys belong to just one category: gorgeous and sexy.”
What an incredible step forward for inclusive beauty standards! The fact that a boys’ interest and outdoor lifestyle magazine as prestigious as Boys’ Life is willing to name a plus-sized boy their Sexiest Boy Alive should give everyone hope that we’ll soon be living in a better and more progressive world. This just goes to show that in today’s world, our definition of what’s considered “sexy” or “beautiful” is rapidly changing to include bodies of all shapes and sizes—and that’s pretty amazing!
