My Fall Crush Is, Unfortunately, Adam Levine 

Adam Levine, father of Dusty Rose and Gio Grace, husband to Behati Prinsloo, and occasional frontman to a truly terrible band, Maroon 5, has questionable tattoos and dresses like a teenager with too much money. Still, while watching The Voice the other night, I realized a truth that I can no longer hide: Adam Levine is sort of hot. He’s my fall crush—my forever crush, really—and I don’t feel great about it.

Though he is certainly the biggest asshole on the judging panel at this time, there is something deeply, crudely appealing to me about his entire shtick. He is yet another entry in the very long list of cocky men in hype beast track pants and gold chains that, unfortunately, do it for me in the pantaloons. He’s extremely picky about the people that he selects for his team and is often the last person to turn his chair around. Occasionally, to prove a point, or to sway the starry-eyed singer songwriter to join Team Adam, he’ll lapse into a breathy falsetto. That’s a habit that is likely leftover from his time in the aforementioned band, Maroon 5— a bad band whose enduring legacy, to me, will be the song “Moves Like Jagger,” the chorus of which sounds like Levine is singing “loose vagina.” I know that’s crude, but please, take a listen.

In the above, you’ll also see the breadth of his body art and just how bad it really is. Despite this—and the fact that he made this song, which is ostensibly about empowering women but really is about how women have to do a bunch of shit for men—I’m still into it. I’m sure he’s nice because I’m sure that almost everyone is nice, but he’s also cocky. Am I damaged enough to interpret cockiness as attractive? You bet! Adam Levine is a harmless avatar of the kind of boys in high school that I had a crush on—a smarmy lil’ charmer with dickhead tendencies that I was willing to overlook at 16 when I didn’t know better.

Strip away his L.A.-juicing-keto-on-the-weekdays shtick, and you still have a gross man who wears one-too-many accessories and is likely the kind of lover who stays with his face in your downstairs even after you’ve told him insistently that sorry, it’s just not happening and it’s okay, really, you don’t have to do this, I’m fucking fine. These men think they are generous lovers but do not be swayed, for they are not. I bet he sings a lot. I bet he sings all the time. And still—the body wants what it wants. My body, unfortunately, is ready-ish.