It was a given that a new series of The Celebrity Traitors was going to cause a commotion on an internet primed for screenshots, video explainers and memes. Tell me, for example: how many times have you seen the video of Ross Kemp going “GET IN” after the Faithfuls got rid of useless Traitor Richard E Grant captioned something like “When mum says it’s fajitas for tea” on a hun account over the last week? What I am less sure about, however, was that we were necessarily primed for the outpouring of desire for the show’s breakout heartthrob over the last fortnight: arise James Acaster, your time is now.
I wrote briefly last week on this very website – when I was being, alright yes, a tiny bit of a cow about what everyone was wearing on the show – that Acaster’s specifically east London-y wardrobe had captured the hearts and minds of millennial women countrywide, which I had observed after a quick skim of social media (@Pulitzer, when?). Having taken a proper look into this, however, I can tell you that there actually is rather a lot going on vis a vis a certain comedian from Kettering having quickly become the UK’s Internet Boyfriend of the Month. There are Acaster fan-cams featuring Traitors clips set to Ginuwine’s “Pony” and Adela’s “Nicole Kidman”; there is a turf war raging on Twitter (I’m not calling it X, grow up) between the new fans and those who are longtime Acaster truthers; and formerly subdued work Slack chats are lighting up weekly with the phenomenon. All of which begs the question: why?
Obviously as an impartial journalist I am not passing judgement here on Acaster’s attractiveness or lack thereof when I ask this question. I am more interested in what it is about him that has caused such a stir. The clothes, as discussed, have to be a big part of it: the short, boxy Carhartt and chill-type coats, the Service Works trousers cropped just above a slouchy pair of New Balance, flashing a bit of sock while they’re at it. This is a tried and tested Boyfriend Wardrobe for women in their 30s and 40s (minus the Traitor cape, that is) – a bit younger and cooler than Rob Beckett’s Sky Sports drip; a little less Fun Jacket-dominant than Romesh’s. It’s a well-put together, but ultimately plain and boyish visual template upon which to project future visits to Ikea and your parents’ house.
Elsewhere, there is also the signature Acaster haplessness and the highly reluctant Traitor-ism to consider. That such a seemingly ordinary set of traits has set sofas across the British Isles alight in recent weeks kind of speaks to what millennial daters are looking for right now. A personality type this averse to rocking the boat equals a guy who would surely never reply to their co-worker’s Insta story with a flame emoji, right? And someone this comically all over the place almost certainly couldn’t be arsed to date three or four people at the same time, surely?
For a generation of women sick of the situationship-heavy dating pool, and raised on the sensitive heroes of ’90s and 2000s movies (your Clueless’s Paul Rudds, your Princess Diaries’s Robert Schwartzmans, and so on and so forth), it makes sense that this would all add up to extreme boyfriend bait. I’d even go as far as to say that it doesn’t actually say much about Acaster himself – how, after all, can the version of someone we see on TV for a few hours tell us anything truly concrete about them as an ordinary person who goes about the world getting the Tube and paying council tax? – and more about the characteristics he embodies (no offence, James).
Obviously there’s nothing wrong with this – a little fan-cam never hurt anyone, after all, and I’m sure that the Acaster train will keep on chugging until (and indeed, after) we discover his fate on the show. But it is always interesting to think about how our current social mores play out via the internet, which is, for better or worse, our main arena of cultural discussion. The key takeaway, then, is this: women want one thing, and it’s disgusting (a man in a nice jacket who they can imagine going to the garden centre with).
