Who, exactly, is your daddy? If you were to listen to Details Magazine, your lovely poppa would be Kevin Federline (the former Mr. Spears) or Larry Birkhead (Anna Nicole Smith’s baby daddy), supposedly the magazine’s “good fathers” of the year. Shocked? Annoyed? Disgusted? Just wait until you see the rest of the men on Details’ “50 Most Influential Men Under 45” list – or more succinctly, the magazine’s “Power 50.”
According to Details, the men on this list are those “who have it … the ones who control your viewing patterns, your buying habits, your anxieties, your lust.” And the list spans from teeny-boppers such as Zac Efron of Disney’s High School Musical franchise to “Revenge Nerds” such as Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen to Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria. A wide array of men to be sure. But when it comes down to it, it’s not the men on the list that make the issue of this magazine ridiculously offensive and superficial – it’s how Details chose to rank them.
Thinking No. 1 would be someone like the soldiers fighting (and dying) in Iraq would make sense, wouldn’t it? “The Surge” of soldiers – 20,000 strong – has an average age of 27 and is fighting a fruitless war spiraling further and further into oblivion, but that’s not good enough for Details. The Surge is only No. 2 on the list. And no, the soldiers weren’t beat out by someone powerful like political star Barack Obama – The Surge was overshadowed by the aforementioned Efron.
Apparently highlighted bangs, a Rolling Stone cover and a girlfriend whose underage naked pictures are slathered all over the Internet make you more influential than anyone else in the entire world. To quote Details, “If you think you can escape Disney’s mind-controlling power, think again. Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Ryan Gosling, and Even Stevens’ Shia LaBoeuf – who stars in next summer’s installment of Indiana Jones – were grown in Disney’s hothouse. Like it or not, we’re all caught in the mouse’s trap.”
It’s true, pop culture is saturated with people like Efron, who hold sway over prepubescent girls’ dreams and make ducats off trite cable TV (I’m looking at you, MTV). But does that make Efron truly more “influential” than the soldiers fighting in Iraq or Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook (No. 3), or members of the scarily influential conservative Christian right (No. 4) or school shooters such as Columbine’s Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (No. 5)? Sure, Efron is the easiest on the eyes of the top five, but does that make him more culturally important than web-wizard Zuckerberg or the Trench Coat Mafia? I beg to differ.
The rest of Details’ list – well, some of it – actually made sense, which is what makes Efron’s crown so upsettingly confusing. The top 20 also included Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page (No. 12), YouTube founders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley (No. 13) and YouPorn founder Stephen Paul Jones (No. 14); you can’t deny the power of the Internet. Also, some mentions that may seem surprising are understandable: Jonathan Ive, senior vice president of Industrial Design for Apple, created the iPhone and got the No. 22 spot; David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s campaign manager, is No. 26; the “Vocal Vets” of the Iraq War are No. 35 and even Harry Potter is on the list, at No. 41.
The unacceptable entries are still there, though. How the hell is Kelly Slater, a world-champion surfer who is “Mr. Rebound” for Leonardo DiCaprio’s exes such as Gisele Bündchen and Bar Refaeli, important enough to make No. 49? He might be barely on the list, but Slater is somehow still there, only for surfing his way into models’ pants. Similarly awkward: “The Well-Dressed Man” at No. 45 and Iggy, Ellen DeGeneres’ Brussels griffon mix terrier puppy at No. 29.
At the end of the day, why the hell do most of these people – or Iggy the damn dog – even matter? Why should Kevin Federline be heralded as a “good father,” when he’s the guy leeching millions from a former pop starlet who may legitimately be batshit insane? What exactly does Ryan Seacrest do – except pray every day that Dick Clark dies – that is so influential to society that he deserves to be No. 20? And why do these lists even matter? What gives a random men’s magazine like Details the authority to pick and choose from the billions of men in the world, and how valid are their thoughts, anyway?
I don’t have the answers, and I don’t care enough to pretend I do. But this I know: Next year, more American men will keep dying in Iraq, while Efron will have more Disney money to line his designer jeans with. I may not be a genius, but there’s something about that scenario that just isn’t right, no matter what Details says.
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