Paul Mescal's Thighs Against the World
Paul Mescal is about to enter his own cultural golden era but his thighs already beat him to the punch. Or squat, as it were, because Mescal's gams are finally, deservedly, in season.
Mescal's legs are so much the star of summer 2024 that they practically stole Gucci's thunder at the maison's June 17 menswear runway show.
All Mescal had to do was show up to the function in a pair of tiny, striped boxer shorts he single-handedly (leggedly?) inspired a million menswear memes and nearly as many thinkpieces debating the proper length of dudes' shorts.
Obviously, the correct answer is to simply wear whatever shorts feel right. For Mescal, that means airing out the girls — the girls, of course, being his much-loved legs.
Mescal's lower limbs have been admired for the better part of a half-decade but only recently, framed by his short-shorts, his epochal thigh-scrapers, have they received due admiration.
Really, the actor's entire wardrobe is a masterclass in singular personal style, indicative of someone who knows exactly what they wanna wear at all times.
We're talking tiny shorts, yes, but also crop tops and charmingly normcore layering pieces, like chore coats so typically cool that they coulda been swiped from the closet of any downtown dirtbag.
Mescal's looks are so recognizably Mescal that in his latest Gucci ad, he wore those exact tiny shorts as though they were made just for him. Maybe so!
And, as the weather warms across the upper hemisphere, you know Mescal won't be tucking those MF thangs away.
Attending Glastonbury 2024? Thighs out! On a date with Gracie Abrams (allegedly)? Thighs out! (allegedly)
You better believe that wherever Mescal is, so long as the temp even comes close to allowing it, he'll be wearing those incredibly short shorts.
Even in the promotion imagery for forthcoming blockbuster Gladiator 2, Mescal's glorious gladiator gams are on full display.
He's wearing basically the same armored kilt that Russell Crowe wore in the original film, which almost feels like stunt casting.
Like, Mescal's a tremendously talented actor and even bears a more-than-passing resemblance to a younger Crowe but you gotta wonder if his famous lower torso made him that much more of a fit for the role.
Surely, it didn't hurt.
Even if the pendulum swings in reverse and menswear's taste reverts entirely back to bigger shorts, hard to imagine Mescal ever hiding away his blessed legs.
That broader cultural conversation about the "proper" shorts length for men, the one that feels as archaic as dictating anything that anyone does with their body, simply does not affect Mescal.
And with legs like that, who could blame him?
Let the haters come for tiny shorts, if they will — Mescal's impressively defined quadriceps care not.
