In Covid-era politics, there were two kinds of daddy.
There was the unhinged Western Australian kind, who kept gross outsiders from bringing their germs into your state. And then there was the unhinged Victorian kind, who kept gross outsiders from bringing their germs into your state and was also Work Hot.
It’s fair to say we were starved for titillation in the long months of 2020. Confined to our homes, banished from wandering after 9pm, many in the Education State would have accepted a second glance from a sugar glider displaced by old-growth forest logging.
We had, at that stage, fallen into the uncomfortable routine of turning up each morning for the Will You Die Today? show. The premier would appear in a North Face jacket (good news) or suit jacket (bad news), flanked by members of his cabinet who knew stuff about viruses and the like.
Remember how scary it was? Some of us hadn’t yet watched enough YouTube to become epidemiologists, and there were moments, as the daily case numbers crept above 20, when we thought the end of the world might really be upon us. Barred from visiting our own parents for comfort, we had no choice but to invent a father figure who could keep us safe.
The rise of Brett Sutton: Sex Symbol came shortly after we all noticed Dan Andrews had developed crazy eyes from weeks of perpetual hypervigilance. As a sidekick, Sutton had it all: hair, open collars, evidence of employment. He was the Robin to Andrews’ Batman. The Donkey to his Shrek. The Piglet to his Pooh.
A certain kind of Victorian was enraptured; and by “a certain kind” I obviously mean “one who’s been fortunate to work from home since March but has grown deeply tired of the people she loves most in this world”.
Unlike Andrews, who had the tone – and policies – of a schoolmarm scolding her students, Sutton was a guy who rocked up with a surfboard under his arm, told you to stay safe, then winked so you knew he especially meant you, the person he would find and kiss if the pandemic ever ended.
I must stress that this hypothetical person was not me. I was more of a Jeroen Weimar girl, drawn to the exotic accent and powerful title of “response commander”. But it wasn’t long before other attention-starved Victorians were filling their homes (the only place they were allowed to be) with Brett Sutton doona covers, tea towels, mugs and wall hangings. The CHO’s silver-fox aesthetic featured in calendars, slashfic (Google at your own risk), thirsty TikTok content, and the Facebook group “Brett Sutton is HOT” (emphasis theirs).
Now, more than three years after we first went alarmingly parasocial on him, Sutton is leaving the Department of Health to become director of health and biosecurity at CSIRO.
“As CHO, Brett helped keep us informed, and above all, safe,” the premier tweeted after the resignation was announced, cleverly forgetting that what Sutton had actually done above all else was grow a vaguely sexy beard.
“What does it mean?” we tweeted at that time, having forgotten in our lockdown delirium exactly how hair works. “What is he trying to tell us?” we demanded, knowing it must have been a direct response to our frankly sociopathic Insta reels. For months, suburbs in higher socioeconomic parts of Victoria were nothing but heaving, breathless sweat bags, and I don’t mean because of the respiratory infections.
That time has long since passed, but his memory lives on. Occasionally we pass by a telegraph pole with his image stuck on it. A rightwing troll responds to a years-old tweet. It’s possible some of us have even kept our face cushions out of hard rubbish.
So, here’s to hot (for a chief health officer) Brett Sutton, who led Victorians through one of the most difficult times of our lives. He tolerated the pervy behaviour that probably made his job (controlling a poorly understood killer virus) more difficult. He barely flinched as we shrieked and fainted at our live streams, failing to hear the words coming from his moderately above-average human mouth, before returning once more to our Brett Sutton body pillows and Sex and the City repeats.
For that, he must be commended. Stand down, former CHOttie. You’ve earned your rest.
