Jeremy Allen White looks great in the Calvin Klein ads – and that’s a lesson for us all 

There was some surprise when the ‘relatable’ star of The Bear revealed an impossibly toned body in a new ad campaign. It was a reminder, once again, that celebrities aren’t like you or me, writes Coco Khan

Jeremy Allen White: It wasn’t his ability to remove his shorts while walking and without taking off his trainers that got tongues wagging — or rather, panting. It was White’s muscular, toned, and tanned physique.

Sex sells. Just ask the fashion label Calvin Klein, whose adverts flogging perfectly white (and salaciously tight) men’s underwear have led to global pant domination.

 Its formula of “hunky celebrity guy du jour brooding in tiny whities” has been turning heads for decades, so you might think we’d be immune to their masculine wiles by now. Not so, as the breathless response to last week’s ads featuring the actor Jeremy Allen White proved. In the campaign video, White, best known as chef Carmy from the hit TV series The Bear, is seen wandering New York, before climbing the stairs of a building and emerging onto its roof, where he strips down to his boxers and does some half-hearted exercise (mostly stretches but he chucks in a little pull-up too). This is before he falls onto a conveniently placed rooftop sofa (no plastic covering? Doesn’t it get wet?), and we see that he had his trainers and socks on the whole time.