When I first received word that Walton Goggins is the internet’s latest boyfriend, my first thought was, “What is a Walton Goggins?” As it turns out, Walton Goggins is not a location from the now-cursed Harry Potter universe or a character from the Wonka sequel or something, but rather a dark-horse heart-throb vis-a-vis his portrayal of Rick in the latest season of The White Lotus. As fellow Cosmo staffer Olivia Truffaut-Wong recently noted, there are a number of reasons Goggins’ character is (predictably if disappointingly) ripe for this starry-eyed treatment. He’s your classic tragic anti-hero—the gruff, troubled, affection-withholding bad boy we’ve all been swooning over since Emily Brontë unleashed Heathcliff upon the world and said, “Good luck, babes!”
But recently, the internet has started fawning over its new problematic age-gap boyfriend for a very specific, somewhat more surprising reason: his receding hairline. Last week, British Vogue’s Julia Hobbs declared herself “hot for Walton Goggins’s hairline” in an article—and it would seem much of the internet agrees, with reddit threads and subsequent headlines confirming that receding hairlines are officially in for spring. (Meanwhile over on X, some discourse has inevitably broken out, with fans debating whether Goggins is hot because of his hair line, despite it, or simply without regard to it all. But either way, receding hairlines are, if not hot in and themselves, certainly a hot topic.)
And listen, while I personally love a full head of hair, I’m happy for Walton, society, and balding men everywhere! As Hobbs noted in her ode to Goggins’s hairline, it reveals a level of comfort in his own skin—and as we all know, confidence is a look that never goes out of style. Moreover, in an age when we’re pummeled with pricey “solutions” to any and all perceived aesthetic shortcomings the second we pick up our phones, seeing a star eschew “perfection” in favor of simply being himself comes as a relief. In a world where our appearance is increasingly being sold to us as a problem that not only can but should be fixed, the fact that we seem to be lusting for the natural and imperfect honestly kind of restores some modicum of my faith in humanity.
Interestingly, this is not the first time receding hairlines have been hailed as Hollywood’s latest symbol of sex appeal, with a 1987 LA Times story citing the unapologetically high hairlines of Bruce Willis, Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson and Michael Keaton as a sign that receding hairlines had become “a fashion statement that declares sexy self-confidence.”
So, you know, fashion is cyclical, everything old is new, etc. etc. But you know the one thing that somehow always seems to stay the same? While there’s always room for male aging to be deemed sexy in some capacity or another, we somehow never seem to afford women the same license to age with either grace or sex appeal. So, not to be your too feminist friend, but if you need me, I’ll be patiently waiting for literally any sign of female aging to become headline-makingingly sexy in the eyes of society.
