The case for Jacob Elordi as the first ever Bond Boy

A 'Bond Girl" is a reductive trope where beautiful women are reduced to sexual objects for James Bond films, so clearly we need a Bond Boy to finally don the bikini and solve feminism

I’ve been waiting a long time for the right actor to be the very first Bond Boy, and nobody was more surprised than me when I realised Jacob Elordi, currently having his it boy moment post Priscilla and Saltburn, is a good candidate for this.

If you’re not familiar, a “Bond Girl” is the name given to the various beautiful women in Bond films who adhere to certain tropes - they are sexy accessories to Bond’s stories, fulfilling different functions in a sexy way. Maybe they are the love interest who dies tragically, motivating Bond to get some revenge because of their helpless beauty. Maybe they betray Bond after beguiling him with their sexual boobs. Maybe they are hyper efficient computer programming ladies who HATE Bond’s arrogance, but then inevitably succumb and have sex with him.

They are objects of sexual desire, with slightly different flavours, and varying levels of plot functionality. They usually have insane names like Pussy Galore or Xenia Onatopp to really drive home that Bond does not truly see them as people. They are in their mid-twenties, and they always need something slightly exotic about them - strong features, big eyes, widely spaced cheekbones. They cannot, in any way, be generic. They must turn Bond’s eye, prove that he is a connoisseur of sex in a way that separates him from other men - no generic big honkers or shiny hair for James Bond. The Bond Girl is like a collector’s issue for lechers and emotionally compromised spies.

That said, they’re usually extremely independent and skilled - there has to be something about them that Bond respects, but we shouldn’t mistake what that respect means. It’s almost like the pursuit is more meaningful when it’s a missile scientist or a mobster girlfriend that he’s bagging.

Ignoring all the valid feminist criticism of this trope, I’ve often wondered about what form a Bond Boy would take. Let’s assume that we have a Daniel Craig style Bond who is exactly the same character as we’ve seen depicted in countless films, but he’s also determinedly bisexual. Nothing else is different. He’s still a guy with some problematic attitudes towards sex and people and having sex with people. But he’s also noting ethereal twinks and tight butted boys in the crime casino, and ploughing them for secrets.

I want to make sure that there’s nothing empowering or even woke about this, it’s just an expansion of the bad trope. At best it’s equal opportunity objectivism. I want Bond to remember topping some soft-eyed boyfriend of a super-villain, and then pounding his fist on the dashboard when he finds him washed up on the beach, murdered for sharing secrets or giving him the USB that activates the moon bombs or whatever.

I don’t have strong feelings about Jacob Elordi - I think he’s a good actor, and objectively a good looking man. His appeal has been hard for me to pin down, having done my time having crushes on Aussie straight private school boys (no judgement on whatever his sexuality is, but it’s what he serves, particularly in Saltburn). He gives me “most attractive man at Sutherland Leisure Centre”. He gives me “most crushable guy at the IT lecture”. He has a type of Australian good looks that unfortunately make me feel like he is going to throw something at me from a moving car, or say “don’t you know who my father is”.

But, he is also objectively, a perfect Bond Boy. He has a kind of accessibility, a willingness to be treated as an object of desire. His cheek bones and strong chin and wide eyes provide the point of difference that make him perfect for this role. He’s the right age. When I think of other recent it boys - Timmy Chalamet or Harry Styles or even Noah Centineo when he was having his 5 seconds - and while they’re all objectively pretty or handsome or sexy, none of them feel designed to be admired, and certainly not to be pursued by Bond. Either they are too macho coded, or too delicate. Elordi straddles all these - handsome, muscular, masculine, but also pretty, smooth, doe-eyed.

Obviously no human person is designed just to be admired - that’s a horrible thing. But in the Bond universe, you could argue that we are seeing the world through Bond’s eyes, where people wield sex as ably as they do fast cars and sleek guns, and the trope says more about him than anything else. Bond is clearly a masculine fantasy - and I want that toxic dream to extend to beautiful young men too.

I can see Elordi’s Bond Boy fluttering his eyes at Bond, luring him into a bungalow after a tense gun fight. I can see him chuckling huskily, asking why Bond is so obsessed with schematics. “Your obsession with schematics is giving ME the schemat-ICK”. I can imagine him being thrown out of a helicopter as Bond watches with helpless rage. I can imagine him planting a tracker in his butthole that will attach itself to Bond’s dick.

I want to see him emerge from the ocean in a yellow speedo, shaking the water from his hair, slow motion, the sun caressing his bouncing pecs. I want Bond to suck on his eyebrow piercing.

I don’t know who I have to start lobbying to make this happen, but let’s start the groundswell here, today.

Also here are some names that Elordi’s Bond Boy could be called:

• Jock Strappe

• Peter Richard Johnson

• Dick Willingsley

• Hector Cocks

• Richard Girth

• Octowang

• Harry Bottomsley

• Jonathan Twink

• Piotr Arsenyev

• Harold Hole

• Amyl Von Pants

• Joel Pole

• Hugh Johnson

• Amon Prep

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