In June 2014, convicted felon Jeremy Meeks’ mugshot was posted on the Stockton, Calif. police department’s Facebook page. In less than one month, the image showed the internet’s most transparent level of thirst, garnering more than 100,000 likes and savage comments. He was recently released after serving his sentence for gun charges, and is now starting his budding modeling career.
Famous hot mugshots aren’t new by any means. Frank Sinatra looked fine AF with those big blue eyes and scar on his chin after getting popped in 1938 for seeing a married woman. (Can you blame her?) The charges were changed to adultery and later dropped, but you know what we still have? That fire mugshot. Admittedly, his celebrity is what makes it special, and celebs have and always will be busted for bad behavior. Whether it's Sinatra or Justin Bieber getting arrested for doing a bunch of dumb things that irresponsible teens do, the mugshots that result are as bedroom-wall poster-ready as any photo shoot Teen Beat ever did.
But back when Ol’ Blue Eyes got nabbed, we did not have the internet, let alone social media. Celebrity mugshots are now almost guaranteed to go viral. Most police departments have Facebook pages, and seeing as they have a pretty narrow source of #content, you can usually find mugshots on their timelines. And like every other image on any social media platform, the most attractive warrant the most engagement. So you better believe the best looking men and women in central booking yield the most likes and thirsty comments. With that jawline, those lips, and blue eyes, it’s no wonder Jeremy Meeks’ mugshot + the internet = extreme levels of thirst. Add his gun charge (that he is already done serving time for), multiple neck tattoos, and the lone tear on his face, and every woman or man who's unapologetically into bad boys is on the lookout for Meeks or someone that resembles him—including myself and his agency. Maybe with his new modeling gig he’ll leave his criminal ways behind, right?
West Coast rapper YG even glamorized the mugshot for his debut album artwork, My Krazy Life. Regardless of my knowledge of YG’s krazy ways and new skull tattoo, you better believe that when he recently spoke to a therapist on camera, I hit all my girlfriends with a screenshot like, “He is looking so fine lately.” Everyone who has dabbled in dating bad boys and girls (or even finds them attractive) knows that part of the appeal is fueled by the challenge of reforming them—you want to be the one they'll change for. The “Halo Effect,” coined by psychologist Edward Thornlike, is a cognitive bias in which our judgment of a person's character is based on what we think of their looks. Therefore, if I think YG is hot, I also think he has favorable personality traits, despite being fully aware that after he was shot last summer he said, "I'm very hard to kill."
In a time when the entire internet is looking for a bae that can do both, it’s obvious that extremely attractive people who get in trouble still evoke the ‘net’s thirst, be it with a selfie or mugshot. The question is whether or not to risk it all and stand by your shorty when they catch a case, or keep your thirst to leaving splash emoji comments on the police departments’ Facebook timeline pics. As long as the internet is alive and well, sexy mugshots will be a thing; and as a lover of bad boys, I'm not mad.
