Walton Goggins is being dubbed as the new ‘Internet’s boyfriend’, the kind of Gen-Z phrase that makes a Gen X like me want to vomit up my skeleton. But I do fully understand the appeal of his character, Rick, in The White Lotus season 3, the kind of wry, hard-bitten, damaged ageing male with an impossibly buff body that makes women of the internet go weak at the knees.
Men of the internet too. But for men of particular age – middle aged types – he holds particular appeal.
One part of this is the way he’s a throwback to the grizzled icons of cool from 70s cinema. He’s a bit Lee Marvin, a lot Steve McQueen, almost exactly Warren Oates. Ugly/beautiful men who have no interest in small talk but are pretty handy with a handgun. On screen as Rick he was hitting all these notes, and off-screen too he’s developed a hard-won Zen persona that’s reminiscent of James Coburn (Gen-Z explainer: he was this on-screen tough guy who also trained with Bruce Lee in Kungfu and was into Tibetan Buddhism). Goggins says things like this: “What has brought me an extraordinary amount of peace in my life is when I fell in love with myself. Genuinely, I think that is the path of all spirituality.”
But anyway, that’s one part. The other part is that he makes going bald look cool.
Now – and I can’t stress this enough – I am not going bald. No. Certainly not. My hair is looking good and thick up there. Almost meaty, it’s so goddamn thick. Like a steak. A greying steak.
Still, the hairline isn’t quite what it used to be is it? And I can’t deny doing the odd little check of the crown with a handheld mirror.
Grow what hair you have, get it long. Then let it recede.
Going bald is the number one anxiety for men. In one survey by ‘hair wellness’ expert Jamie Stevens a few years ago, the majority of men said they’d rather have a small penis than go bald.
In the US, the market size of Hair Loss Treatment Manufacturing hit $3.9 billion in 2024.
Yeah, men are worried about losing their hair steaks alright. But Goggins’ appearance in The White Lotus suggested a very exciting new direction for older men.
His Rick has long dyed black hair which is receding high and has a very visible egg in a nest at the back. Goggins rocks this in real life too. Rather than shave your head at the first sign of hair loss, what Goggins is saying, with all his wisdom, is that you grow it out instead. This is world-changing.
You don’t have to get rid of it all in shame if you see bald spots. You can make a feature out of them.
Grow what hair you have, get it long. Then let it recede. Let that crown shed its immature fluff and let that proud scalp sit there naked and unafraid among the rainforest. Which you are also free to colour.
And you’ll look cool.
Ok, you might not. It does require a certain attitude to pull off. A downtrodden, hard-nosed, whisky-breathed image; you’re aiming for Zen maestro, not yoga instructor.
But still, this is an exciting new development in the world of middle aged male anxiety. Things haven’t looked this bright since Hawaiian shirts came back in. Or when Viagra stopped being tragic and started being the kind of thing that young men on drugs take (even though you are not a young man on drugs and just a man with a floppy penis, there was new reflected glory to be had).
Thanks to Goggins, growing old does not have to mean turning into Colin Robinson (no relation) from What We Do In The Shadows. It can mean you can turn into cult film star-looking dude.
The type of person who uses the world dude without anyone flinching.
Thank you Goggins, the middle-aged man’s boyfriend.
Martin Robinson is culture editor of The London Standard
