I guess I will dare to go out on a limb, here, and say that as a super male model, Ash Stymest must represent something quite different from what we ordinarily expect. I really do like him, but the question is why? I don't think he is particularly good-looking; he is young and all, but compared with some others such as Paddy Mitchell or Luke Worrall, or let's really be unfair and throw in somebody like Francisco Lachowski, guys who are "swoon down on your knees WOW", I don't think Ash Stymest has the same effect. He doesn't have a really great body. Yes, he is at least lean, very lean, but if he has any muscles at all it is because he plays around and is hyper-active, skateboarding, dancing, or just plain won't sit still. But I doubt he has touched a weight or entered a gym, which means there's no conscious effort toward his body, he just sort of has this natural body that is sexy and appealing for no discernable reason other than he just doesn't worry about it, but instead enjoys it without concern.
One of course notices his tattoos (maybe with like, maybe with dislike), but on the whole, those are more of a distortion to the body than an enhancement, I think. I do LOVE the way he says "tattoo," though; I wish I could write it in the International Phonetic Alphabet, but the way he says it is a kind of a lightly skimming over something like "taddauw" but said so appealingly that it almost makes ME want to get one too (and that's saying the nearly impossible). I think tattoos would be truly wonderful if you could walk up to a person with them and ask him about them. I mean, really LOOK at them and get their story, not quickly glance away as if the person were badly crippled or had a horrible disfiguring disease. Maybe Ash Stymest is a person with tattoos that make him look dangerous and tough, and yet you aren't afraid of him.
And honestly, as much as he is photographed, are they ever having him wear any kind of clothes that you would actually wear (although you maybe kind of wish you COULD wear, but only he can and you can't)? This means that you are yearning toward a world he lives in, and you can, when you realize that he seems to making it up himself as he goes along (I think he would be the first one to say this). If he can, you can.
I also imagine that he is kind of unhealthy (although of course I could be wrong, he could be almost Mormon in his pristine personal habits for all I really know), smoking, drinking, taking risks, there are probably drugs in there somewhere, all of which means that he could be eventually wearing out in a painful way, youth doesn't remain immune forever. But then, if so, he's also living in a world you are curious about but don't want to subject yourself to the danger of. So you watch him, instead, and enjoy its reflection.
I think what it is, is that he is a nuclear ball of energy. You never know what he is going to do, and probably neither does he, but he'll do it anyway and that lack of inhibition is powerfully magnetic. I don't think we could possibly stand him for long as lover or even a friend (we're not up to it), he would wear us out or send us screaming to the quiet comfort of a padded cell, but we would like to PLUG INTO him for a moment, but the most we could stand is what we get from a photograph or a video, a three-minute experience, or a two-dimensional one. The full-on experience of Ash Stymest in person would probably burn us out as if we touched a live power line. Does anybody know, does he have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, or are all his human contacts like balls rolling around in a pinball machine, good for a quick bump, but then they've got to skitter away (or he does)? If he has some loved one, I'd love to see what they look like. I imagine hair as frizzy as a Troll doll and if you touched THEM, you'd jump back from the electric spark as if you had spent the last half hour shuffling along a thick carpet (whereas they're the one who has all the residual energy).
In short, what Ash Stymest shows is that you don't have to be beautiful in any tradition that anybody knows, you don't need to work out, groom yourself, count your calories, live in crippling moderation, worry about a future you have no control over, or follow anybody's irrelevant rules. You only need to be yourself without inhibition, regret, fear, social approval, or higher authority. How wonderful it is that a person who seems totally free can be a super model (that is, a representative for others), and that may be Ash Stymest's greatest power, that he is dissident and dissidence is exactly what we need, all of us, even those in power.
