The Fleeting Comforts of the Celebrity Look-Alike Contest

It may be a coincidence that the celebrity look-alike competition returned to prominence just as American citizens were voting in what some called “the most significant presidential election in our lifetimes.” But once it happened, the appeal was obvious. Here was a different kind of democratic event: a totally insignificant one, in which attractive men with slightly off-kilter features were lined up in public and ranked by the roaring crowd.

At the first contest, which convened a flock of Timothée Chalamet doubles in Manhattan last month, the New York Police Department showed up, deemed it an “unscheduled demonstration” and arrested four people. It was, in fact, only the police presence that made the event feel anything like a protest — as if the crowd were truly fighting for the right to be meaningless and absurd.

In the coming weeks, as President-elect Trump revved up for his second term, doppelgängers were crowned of Jeremy Allen White in Chicago, Paul Mescal in Dublin, Dev Patel in San Francisco and Harry Styles in London. It was as if each city were electing its boyfriend. It all provided a populist diversion, though one with diminishing returns.

These events have been comforting in their modesty. They are typically publicized with posters on lampposts, staged in public parks and accompanied by meager prizes. The Mescal double won 20 euro “or three pints”; the White winner received $50 and a pack of Marlboro Reds.

Despite the stingy rewards, the contestants are frequently impressive — men seizing a long-awaited opportunity to put a useless talent to work. Each contest unfolds like a human scavenger hunt. The winner is a kind of modern Cinderella, the one unsung city boy who happens to slip perfectly into a fuzzy Willy Wonka hat or the blue chef’s apron worn by the star of “The Bear.”

Part of what makes the searches feel pleasantly trivial is that they center on male celebrities (though not all of the contestants have been men). A Zendaya look-alike contest held in Oakland, Calif., this week is the rare exception. The public ranking of women risks activating an ugly history; it makes the apolitical political again. But also: Mimicking Hollywood femininity may require a degree of effort that intensifies the proceedings. The contest could inspire feats of makeup application, hairstyling, boob tape. The masculine look-alike, on the other hand, must simply exist. He’s just waiting to be discovered.

The contests have begun to work as a regular-fellow publicity machine, a mechanism for surfacing a crop of cute local men and delighting in the revelation of their professional lives. The White look-alike is a therapist; the Mescal look-alike unemployed; the Styles look-alike a struggling musician, a real-life aspiring Styles.

When photographic evidence of the events is posted online, the game transforms into an Erotic Photo Hunt, with onlookers zooming in on their favorite contestants and racing to identify them on social media. Many of the runners-up are more conventionally attractive than the winners. The whole thing promotes a sexual ideal, everyone rallying around the celebration of a certain type of guy. Timothée Chalamet, the boy king; Paul Mescal, the shy king; Jeremy Allen White, the short king.

“The look-alike contests are so Great Depression era coded,” the playwright Jeremy O. Harris wrote on X this week, referring to competitions in the 1930s that assembled crowds of Charlie Chaplins or Shirley Temples and handed out what amounted to consolation prizes for the nation’s miserable conditions. Unlike events for surfacing secondary Chaplins or Temples — or later, Elvises and Monroes — today’s competitions are less costume contest than genetic lottery. The winner feels like a delight generated by the randomness of the universe. That chaos so often produces fear and distress. Here, for once, is a happy accident.

There is a kind of grass-roots pride to this process, in the crowd working together to prove that a celebrity actually resembles one or more nonfamous people in any given city. But there is also the assurance that none of these men look quite like the real thing, and that there is something special about our stars after all. When Chalamet himself briefly appeared at his own contest, popping up between two of his doppelgängers, the crowd was thrilled, but the contestants were somewhat diminished, all of the discrepancies emphasized between his face and their own.

Unlike many previous iterations of celebrity look-alike contests, there is no movie theater or Hollywood studio directly benefiting. They seem arranged from below, not above. But as the process regenerates again and again, it has begun to feel opportunistic and a little depressing. The original Chalamet contest, it was later revealed, was organized by a YouTuber who regularly arranges viral stunts.

As soon as the images are posted online, the charm begins to fade. The contests inevitably suffer from the weary overexposure that dooms all passing trends: flash mobs, mustache finger tattoos, cuddle puddles.

Still, they go on. In Washington, D.C., a Jack Schlossberg look-alike contest is planned for this weekend, in pursuit of a person with a passing similarity to the young Kennedy family member and Vogue political correspondent. Schlossberg is neither particularly famous nor interesting looking, but that’s politics for you. Washington would, at least, be a fitting place for this democratic dream to die.