Those who say that there are no impossible beauty standards for men have never met Instagram phenomenon Brock O'Hurn.
It's another day at a well-known, overpriced West Hollywood gym. The floor is swarming with fitness junkies who circle one another, grunting and pouting like sinewy fish in a bowl of floor-to-ceiling mirrors. The only eye contact anyone makes here is with themselves.
Their narcissism is not unfounded. Surveying the floor, one must admit: the people here are, for the most part, undeniably attractive. These are the models, the actors, and the athletes that maintain and embody Hollywood's well-worn stereotypes. The men are vascular and primped. The women are tightly wrapped in spandex, often with full cat-eye makeup even in the midst of a sweaty jog. If any one of these people walked into a bar in a small midwestern town, their looks would likely cause a stir. In this place, they come by the baker's dozen.
But even here - some stand out more than others.
At some point in the afternoon, a man emerges from the stairwell with a gym bag over his shoulder. One by one, the peacocking alpha males around him begin to wither into betas. You can almost see men questioning their self-esteem in real time, comparing themselves to him in an imaginary pageant, and losing.
Describing him without succumbing to hyperbole is difficult, so perhaps it is best not to try. Brock is six-foot-seven, with a lion's mane of hair that - and I can't believe I'm about to say it - looks like amber waves of grain. The man's appearance is so startling, it is almost impossible not to stare. He is an anthropomorphized Mufasa from the Lion King. He's Brad Pitt circa Legends of the Fall, if you add a foot of height and an extra few pounds of muscle. He's Thor with conditioner and a blow-dryer, Tarzan in a suit and tie, Conan without the barbarism. He is a cartoon, so exaggerated as to almost become a caricature of himself. He simply does not look real.
But, evidently, he is real. He really does look the way his many fans describe him: somehow, impossibly, "perfect."
"Well first I appreciate that compliment, but I am by no means perfect," he says. "I am flawed and I am more than okay with it."
He's not trying to cause a fuss. It doesn't seem that he's being purposely provocative. But he can't help it. Even as he says it, dozens of barely concealed envious male gazes burn the back of his neck (not to mention female gazes of a different sort). You can see the knee-jerk defense mechanism in the men's expressions, the psychological wheels turning: he's taller, better looking, and in better shape than I am - women love him - therefore, he must be an asshole. So goes the inner testosterone-fueled monologue that men cannot help but recite. If one values masculinity in any traditional sense, he is utterly threatening. The subtle hierarchy on the gym floor brings to mind nature documentaries about elephant seals. These animalistic tendencies, as much as everyone tries to be civilized, seem to still exist, and the men here embrace them with varying degrees of honesty. If he decided to assert his dominance in this place, none could challenge him.
However, meeting Brock, one finds the man is anything but an aggressive alpha jockeying for territory. The competition is, really, imaginary. He is utterly kind - almost too kind. As in, "speech writer for Miss America" kind. He'll wax happily about positivity, empowerment, leaving every place and person better than he found it, and the like. He goes out of his way not to threaten.
This, of course, only makes it worse for those he threatens with his very existence. His kindness seems suspicious in Hollywood, a town populated by hustlers, users, and manipulators.
"Oh yeah, I've seen that guy," they say, inevitably with a roll of their eyes. Their minds are made up, not knowing a thing about him. They are simply certain that he deserves to be written off, much like the internet trolls hiding between swooning women on his Instagram page. Comparison is truly the thief of joy around Brock. But the effect he has on people does not seem to be his goal - or his concern.
"The way I deal with it is, I take myself out of the situation," he tells me. "I like to see who the person is, I see where they're coming from, could be out of jealousy or insecurity, and I can't get mad at them for that. They're doing the best they can with what they know. Their negative reaction has nothing to do with me. I might have sparked it, for whatever reason. But I know that I'm only putting good out there, I have no desire to put anyone down. It's not about me, it's about them. If you can realize that, it's not gonna effect you. I only hope and wish the best for people."
To millennials, Brock is not merely a local fixation. He is a well-established crest in the new wave of digital celebrity. His Instagram account has grown since his Buzzfeed feature article, and is now 1.9 million loyal followers strong. He has done "meet-and-greets" in the most literal sense of the term: he showed up, and so did a lot of people, simply to meet him. One such event wound up on the local news simply because of the size of the crowd. And yet, the product is simply himself - his attitude, and the way he looks. Even less so than a model, Brock initially had no product to sell, no media to market. He was, and is, the product.
Brock insists this is the result of smart marketing, not merely genetic lottery. He credits this curious social media fame as the beginning of his journey to... well, wherever it is that he's going.
"I mean I always wanted to act, model, produce, that whole realm. It started off with fitness stuff of course. The first monetization was a sort of online personal training business. I eventually realized that wasn't the route I wanted to go, and I started branding myself as a whole. I made this big collective of social media pages. Then it started getting bigger. After gaining a certain number of followers, all of a sudden I'm getting messaged about getting paid to do appearances. People just wanted to pay me to show up, or to wear their clothes, or promote their brands. I tried doing those for a while, and it just wasn't me. What I really wanted to focus on was acting, developing my brand, etc. Now I'm going to be in my first feature film. All of it started with social media."
As Instagram grows, so does Brock's loyal following. His aesthetic has become the fad of the moment: facial hair, long hair tied up in a perfectly tousled bun. Slowly but surely, the digital begins to leak into the physical.
"Depending on where I am, I'm not getting swarmed, but if I'm at a mall or a concert people do come up, they ask for photos, start conversations. It's a crazy thing to wrap your head around - I haven't done any giant movies, written crazy best selling novels, but I'm still getting recognized. It clicked how far you can go with social media, this totally free thing."
Yet, though he gains power with every digital stride, he seems to keep an almost aggressively humble worldview. Once again, the competition other men imagine they are in with him seems to be just that: imaginary.
"With every step that I take, I only want to leave people better. I don't see myself above anyone else, we're all living here together and everyone is going through something. I want to leave people better than I found them every single time. The more known I get, the more people see me, that's all I want to do in return."
When asked if he would pursue a more traditional career, had he not been so physically blessed, he seems reluctant to even acknowledge his blessings.
"In all honesty, I would be chasing the same dreams I'm chasing now. To act, create and to help as many people as I can along the way. Look, people say, oh, he was born like this, so that's all luck. But my level of physical fitness isn't luck - I worked really hard at it, consistently, every day, and I did that too with my brand. You can see my before and after photos on my profile - that was a choice I made. Being obsessed with looks can be unhealthy, but seeing someone better off can also be motivating. I just chose to make myself better, and then be myself, and put it out there. But the way I did that was in a very strategized way. I saw what parts of myself got the most positive response, and I focused on developing those."
There is nothing, it seems, predatory or territorial about his ambition. And yet, because of his looks, half the population desires him, half silently resent him, or are at least suspicious of his intentions. As he says - seeing someone better off can be motivating or depressing. Sure, he didn't pick his face, he didn't pick his height. But the most startling thing about him is undoubtedly his level of fitness - which is something most of us can attain with time, patience, and hard work. His looks may cause envy, but his attitude courts and dusts off an old-fashioned "American dream" cliché: perhaps it really is just a matter of hard work that separates people like this - the beautiful people, the successful people, the flashy people - from everyone else.
So, what comes next for Brock?
"I started my own jewelry line - it's called Ebb and Flow. In fact we're working on this camp in Kenya, going to go out there in the next few months, to teach the people there how to make the bracelets using their natural resources, so we can give them a source of income to be self sustaining and to earn more for their families. I'm very excited. And I recently booked a pretty funny Icelandic Glacial Water commercial, and a part in my first feature, Tyler Perry's 'Boo! A Madea Halloween.'"
As strange as Brock's life is, his relentlessly positive worldview is contagious. Talking to him reverses the effect of looking at him: the desire to tear him down turns into a desire to build oneself up. Whether Brock is simply doing some sort of "nice guy" schtick to spread his brand, or he really is genuine, the effect seems to be the same.
"For people who want to do the same as I do, find your definite purpose, what makes you, you," he says, "And then pursue it. I think we're at an era where we can all be ourselves more than ever."
Time to hit the gym, I suppose.