Chris Evans Posted a Musical Thirst Trap, and It’s Mesmerizing

Welcome back to another episode of Chris Evans Knows Exactly What He’s Doing And He Should Keep Doing It. 

On Friday, apparently looking for new and exciting ways to make his biceps bulge without looking like a try-hard, Evans treated his audience of 12.7 million Instagram followers to an intimate show: a piano rendition of the Prince song “Purple Rain.” Let’s analyze this performance in the name of objectifying men as a feminist act. (Evans, a feminist, has spoken cheerfully to Glamour about being objectified, so this feels right.) 

The tight white Henley! The veins popping with exertion! The necklace sloping cheekily into the high-V of his shirt, like a raindrop rolling into the crevice of a windowpane! He might as well be singing a different Prince song, “Dig if you will the picture/Of you and I engaged in a kiss/The sweat of your body covers me/Can you my darling/Can you picture this?” Yes Chris, we can picture it. 

Evans, one of the leading experts in having-a-cute-little-forehead-crease-you-want-to-smooth-out-with-your-own-thumb, is definitely doing all this on purpose. This is not the first time he’s posted a story of himself playing piano, and it is an art form he’s clearly perfecting. Examine the carefully calculated aw-shucks hotness of his Instagram grid—of his last six posts, four are images of his dog, one is a picture with his mom, and one is a picture of bruises he got on the set of The Gray Man, a movie in which he will co-star with Ryan Gosling and Bridgerton heartthrob Regé-Jean Page. See the way he looks up at the viewer at around the 32-second mark. He is bating us…bating us with powerful hands and strong, decisive fingers…

Chris Evans has laughingly said, of social media apps including Instagram, “They all make me just a little sad.” Indeed, the digital world can be depressing. And one imagines that it is especially lonely at the top—imagine the solitude of living on the cutting edge of thirst trap creation. The man just turned 40. He is, apparently, being beaten up at work by the Goslings and Pages of this world (were they all wrestling, or?) He should be allowed to rest. 

Jenny Singer is a staff writer for Glamour. You can follow her on Twitter.