Jeremy Allen White’s Calvin Klein Ad and Its History

White’s breakout role was in “The Bear,” starring as Carmy, a shambolic chef de cuisine who returns home to Chicago to run his family’s sandwich shop. But you might remember the way he looks in the show as much as his performance — specifically, the bicep-hugging white shirt that acts as his uniform. Or, perhaps more specific, its appearance in a still image that quickly became an internet meme: a shot of Carmy in a back room, having a heated conversation. His carotid bulges, his hair is a tousled mess and he looks as if he stinks, but the shirt hugs his arm so well. “I’m too scared to watch The Bear because I’m actively in therapy to stop falling in love with men who look like this,” ran one popular tweet. As another pointed out, “This screenshot did more for the bear than any advertising could.” This is the reputation White’s ad exploits: a sleepy-eyed dirtbag radiating sex but also wrapped in prestige and highbrow critics’ praise. The statue himself collected a statue of his own this month — the Emmy for outstanding lead actor.

Calvin Klein has always trafficked in high and low — in classic all-American athleticism, shot through with an untethered primal lust. The unease of this combination animates the brand’s most famous ads, from a too-young Brooke Shields saying nothing gets between her and her Calvins to Mark Wahlberg — still, back then, the hip-hop star Marky Mark, fresh off a rough youth of violent, racially motivated attacks and a Rolling Stone photo shoot featuring peekaboo Calvins — grabbing his junk and laughing like the boy next door. (Wahlberg’s acting pivot would eventually take him to an Oscar nomination; that’s what gravitas can give a beefcake.) Justin Bieber, emerging from his own child-star antics, also sported Calvins on the cover of Rolling Stone (headline: “Bad Boy”) before all but begging for a billboard, using the newly launched #mycalvins social-media hashtag in 2014. He got his wish, appearing with rippling muscles and prayer hands — his single “Sorry” was released that year — and prompting much discussion of his robust bulge.

Some other Calvin Klein ads fail to have the same friction, the right wrongness. Why didn’t the actor Jacob Elordi’s ads go viral? Simple: He was too pristine. White is shot like statuary, but his vibe is always louche. On his billboard, he lies on his stomach, jeans down — a callback to Kate Moss’s infamous Obsession perfume ad from the 1990s, in which she lies nude on a dark couch. This is a difficult move for a man to pull off, especially one who wants to be taken seriously. We expect to see women posed like this in fashion spreads, no matter how alarmingly vulnerable it may make them seem. But a man in this position still risks ridiculousness.

There are faintly fascistic undertones in the form Calvin Klein valorizes. The same fetishistic focus on male strength was part of the aesthetic of Nazi propagandists, perhaps most notably in Leni Riefenstahl’s “Olympia,” which documented the 1936 Summer Olympics with black-and-white imagery of the human body as machine. The Renaissance art that the campaigns refer to is itself a homage to classical antiquity, the same kind of color-sapped reimagining of the past embraced by modern-day Western-civ supremacists. Klein’s trick is to balance heroics with sleaze. The brand shows us the musician Dominic Fike half-naked, looking strung-out on the floor of a dilapidated camper; it catches the actor Travis Fimmel looking uncomfortably boyish, his sizable package on display. (How surprising is it that Calvin Klein has worked with the estate of the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who used his models to engage the viewer sexually?) The ads seduce us with what we are ashamed to want. This is part of why models like Wahlberg, Bieber and White grab attention in them, while straightforward beauty like Jamie Dornan’s does not — and why schema-breaking ads (the musician FKA Twigs confidently owning her athleticism, the trans model Bappie Kortram sporting a bra) provoke censure instead.

Jeremy Allen White’s underwear ads were, in fact, so successful that people seemed to forget he was, in addition to a meme, a working actor. At the Golden Globe Awards, interviewers raised the ad over and over when talking to his co-stars on “The Bear” — to the growing chagrin of the actress Ayo Edibiri. When an “Extra” host produced a large poster of the ad, she moved it off camera, laughingly objecting: “This is a work function!” “Does it make you uncomfortable?” the host asked White, as the rest of the cast looked pained. “Sure,” he said, to which the host replied incredulously — “Does it?!?” — as though a touch of discomfort isn’t precisely what creates a hit Calvin Klein ad. A blushing White responded emphatically: “Yes.” The host’s assurance that he looks great gets at the continuing hazard of dropping your pants for Calvin Klein. The ads may refer to heroes of the past, but appearing in them does not quite amount to heroism — the embedded shame is the point. Thank God for the simpler glory a trophy can provide.