One of Lost in Showbiz’s favourite battle cries is: “What about the men?”, which often pops up when, say, crimes that have overwhelmingly female victims and male perpetrators are reported as such, and men’s rights activists get upset about this (#meninists #notallmen). This week, LiS has been wondering what about the men, as a group of male celebrities have had their physical appearances judged and analysed and picked over as if they were – imagine this – female celebrities.

There was wholesome Kit Harington, who stars in Game of Thrones as Jon Snow, the brooding, fur-clad bastard with lips that could break a fall. “To always be put on a pedestal as a hunk is slightly demeaning,” he said (prompting the website Jezebel to headline a post about it with: “Shut your pretty little whine hole, Jon Snow.”) “I’m in a successful TV show in a kind of leading man way and it can sometimes feel like your art is being put to one side for your sex appeal. And I don’t like that.”

Out of the mouths of babes, as the saying goes, and such objectification seems quite the news to Harington, who says that it is demeaning “in the same way as it is for women”. If only there was a familiar catchphrase about how little is known by his Game of Thrones character …

Calvin Harris in an underwear ad. Photograph: Emporio Armani

For a brief window, it seemed as if men had broken through and achieved the equality they had dreamed of for so long. They were all over the tabloids, taking advantage of the long-awaited opportunity to have their physical appearances scrutinised by a bunch of strangers and “experts”. Singer Sam Smith has undergone an “incredible transformation”, losing three stone over the past few months thanks to something called Eat Nourish Glow, which sounds like a late-period Alanis Morissette album but is in fact a nutritional bible. Fellow controversial Mobos nominee Ed Sheeran has gone down three shirt sizes, owing to a diet of green juices. And Calvin Harris, now as slick as an American soap star, abs glistening in an Armani underwear ad lit solely by his teeth, has had the full before-and-after treatment, with the shocking revelation that having lots of money may make you look as though you have lots of money. Lost in Showbiz is heartened by this progress, and hopes that now they are finally being shown the way, men will start to hate themselves, too.