Rafael Nadal is a fever in a woman’s blood.
The sensual gaze. The tawny, molded muscles. The playful sexiness that makes a little skin oh so in.
He’s displayed all that and more in the Armani jeans and underwear campaign and now he takes it off again as the spokesmodel for a new line of Tommy Hilfiger underwear and clothes as well as the new Hilfiger fragrance TH Bold.
The ad campaign – which kicked off Tuesday with events in Bryant Park and Macy’s Herald Square in anticipation of the US Open start next Monday – shows a tanned, glistening Rafa in nothing but his Tommys, and, presumably, the fragrance. If the video is any indication, Nadal could become Hilfiger’s muse much the way sensuous polo star Nacho Figueras has become Ralph Lauren’s.
Nacho, however, is portrayed as a rugged romantic in the Polo and Romance campaigns. Whereas Rafa’s controversial ads are already drawing comparisons to Hannah Davis’ Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover, in which she tugs at her teeny-weeny bikini bottom. (It’s the tease du jour.) My conservative uncle suggested to me that Rafa join the female “performance artists” in Times Square who go topless save for body paint.
But there’s a great deal of difference between Rafa baring much and Davis and the Times Square women doing the same. And that is simply because men rape women; women don’t rape men. So there’s a vulnerability to the Times Square artists and to Davis that there isn’t to Rafa. (I’ve been at a Davis event where the male obnoxiousness was palpable.)
Whereas Rafa remains in control even as strips down to his undies, wags a finger at us as if to say, “Naughty, naughty,” then doffs them before heading to the shower wrapped only in a towel.
Oh, to be that towel.