This Tom Cruise GQ cover1 is bad. Let’s just get it out of the way. It’s dope that Adam Baidawi landed the incredibly elusive actor for a cover story. And a real interview! But wow, this cover isn’t just bad; it’s uncomfortable to look at! The pose is awkward. Cruise looks like he’s cruising at the Eagle, but even if you’re into older guys (and I am!), it won’t be this one, because you know he’s gonna offer you Tina. When Baidawi spoke to The New York Times in February about replacing Will Welch at GQ, he said he wanted to restore the magazine “to its rightful place as the North Star of masculinity. I’m curious to propose a version of masculinity that is yes, progressive, yes, modern, but is also sexier and cooler and more aspirational and more desirable than some of the nihilism or cruelty or vanity that we see out there.” Well, there’s nothing sexy about this cover! Nor is there anything cool about it! It is crazy tho, so it’s got 1/3 of a TLC album going on, at least.
What’s even crazier is that this is the second time this summer GQ has dropped a cover with a box-office star posing weirdly with their arm behind their head. Tom Holland showed pit (I’m not against it) in a trio of covers for The Odyssey, and despite me loving Holland and loving armpits, that cover is also incredibly awkward too!
The cover is too close-up, for one, and the tank top sweater he’s wearing doesn’t exactly scream sexy and cool masculinity, so much as it screams queer New York party. I guess what I’m saying is that both of these covers are very queer-coded, but not in the cool way; they’re gay (derogatory). This was not always a bad thing at Condé Nast. Details magazine, which began in 1982 as a sort of chic downtown alternative to GQ, was basically a magazine for gays. In 2011, Out asked the question, “How Gay is Details Magazine?”
While GQ has the market cornered on the frat-brother-turned-investment-banker market, Details is a bit more elusive with whom, exactly, it's aimed at. The younger brother to Condé Nast's man-glossy just released their November issue, and the cover is a shirtless picture of model David Gandy (left). The issue -- which excuses its liberal exploitation of fleshy torsos by deeming this a fitness edition -- does not simply cause us to lift an arched brow simply because of the heavy, heavy implementation of fit male bodies (starring celebrity appearances from Marky Mark, Marc Jacobs, D'Angelo, David Beckham, and Alexander Skaarsgard). No, there is also lots of actual gay content in the magazine. For example, in the fitness portfolio, there is an entire section titled "Gay is the New Normal." Is that some sort of subliminal message? Then there's a full story about women who settle down with two or more men, called "Modern Family" (though, to be honest, there isn't much gay sex happening in that story -- but still.) And to seal the deal, the back page is an interview with our newly outed brother Zachary Quinto. Let's just say. Details, you're really, really, really gay.
I loved Details. I used to want to work at Details. To me, a closeted Midwestern faggot, it helped fuel my dreams of moving to New York and working at Condé Nast. Eventually, I would fulfill those dreams with a regular column at GQ in 2017. Who knows if I’d still have that column if I hadn’t asked for more than $350 per column and stopped having my emails answered! But nothing about the new GQ seems like it would inspire a young, cool gay writer to want to work there! At least, not via its covers! Which is how you grab their attention in the first place. Having a column at GQ was my dream once upon a time, but now I do the same thing on Substack and make more money than I did in 2017.
I’m especially incensed at this treatment of Cruise. Frank readers know he’s my favorite actor, and I wrote about Cruise’s 2002 Vanity Fair cover that definitely helped me realize I was gay, gay, gay in my book Pure Innocent Fun:
Tom Cruise’s 2002 Vanity Fair spread became my new Bible. The cover, a shirtless Cruise, immediately caught my attention during one of my weekly visits to Barnes & Noble at the May-fair mall. Inside, a spread with two additional photos. In one, he flexes his biceps while gripping his tousled brown hair. In a second, his arm is behind his head, showing off his slightly hairy armpit.
Yes, his hand is behind his head in this photo too, but this shoot makes you wanna drop to your KNEES, not race out of the dark room as fast as you can. And might I reiterate, it’s not the cover! The actual cover photo is sexier. It’s less suggestive and relies on Cruise’s eyes to do all the fucking.
It’s the more grown-up version of his 1990 Rolling Stone cover. Bret Easton Ellis wrote about the cover in his non-fiction book White2, “By July 1990, the summer of that Rolling Stone cover, Cruise was entering the next stage of his power. He’d already done all the stuff necessary to get there: propping up two old-timers (Paul Newman in The Color of Money, Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man and helping them win Oscars; surviving a fiasco that was a bomb (Legend), and another that became a big hit (Cocktail)… the cover was shot by Herb Ritts and suggests sex, of course, but the image of Cruise emerging from the foamy water also hints at rebirth, a new beginning.”
By contrast, Cruise’s GQ cover suggests nothing of a rebirth (unfortunate for the rebirth of GQ!), but instead a retread. Cruise’s attempt at selling sex here is a failure, maybe because he hasn’t been a sex symbol in his films since… Eyes Wide Shut? Coincidentally, the film he was promoting in Vanity Fair!
The death of the magazine might be vastly exaggerated; there’s a ton of really cool magazines I discover every time I hit Casa Magazines in the West Village. But Condé Nast’s flagship titles have been slowly shuffling off this mortal coil. Baidawi has the right idea when he says he wants GQ to be modern, sexier, cooler, and more aspirational. But nothing about this Tom Cruise cover gives that. If instead, the cover highlighted the Cruise we have now instead of a retrograde version, it might have achieved that goal!
Cruise has stepped into a role as an insane stuntman and elder statesman. When he’s not doing stunts that might kill him in the Mission: Impossible films, he’s sending actors like Glenn Powell a six-hour instructional video on screen acting. Six hours. Cruise told GQ of the video: “It was just very basic. It was something to have people understand, just to have a different concept of lenses and what the lens is and what the frame is. Just the same way as an actor onstage, or in the development of cinema, where it started, and what that frame means and how to understand that frame. There are just different layers of storytelling, of structure, but also: to understand certain things so that you can forget about it.” Whatever that means! Release The Cruise Cut!
This is Cruise’s 8th GQ cover. I don’t address the others because they’re fine, but not particularly worth discussing.
Look, I’m a completionist with authors I love. I had to read this book eventually. It only took seven years!
He looks…tired. Lol
“ he’s sending actors like Glenn Powell a six-hour instructional video on screen acting” im sorry but that 6 hr video is needed considering a lot of young actors dont know that much about the films they are suppose to be making!