@capitainrogers I wholeheartedly agree! I think a lot of people/casual fans might forget that Steve’s post-serum body is something radically new for him. He was 23 years old when he got the serum. He was what, 39 during Endgame? Before he was viciously character-assassinated went back in time, he had lived longer without the serum than he did with it. He grew up as a small, disabled man in a time when eugenics and the goal of breeding “fitter” people was at its peak. Eugenicists targeted minorities, the poor, and the disabled; the movement eventually led to the forced sterilization of more than 60,000 people in the United States.
So you can be sure that Steve was used to people looking down on him and thinking he shouldn’t even be allowed to exist. Not only was he physically unfit, he was the son of two poor Irish Catholic immigrants, raised by a single mother. (Marcus and McFeely even implied that nobody desired him sexually before the serum, thinking he finally found the opportunity to lose his virginity during his USO tour, LOL!) Steve himself, I think, doesn’t feel that he is a “real man” if he is not allowed to participate in the war as a soldier, as other men were called to do. And who could blame him for feeling this way?
Even after he gets the serum, some people still felt he had nothing valuable to contribute to the war effort (judging him based on his pre-serum appearance)– Chester Phillips wanted to put Steve in a laboratory, and Steve only got out of it by becoming a senator’s dancing monkey.
So I think that people coming up to Steve and fawning over him, while amusing to watch, would not be amusing for Steve himself. Having grown up being loathed by his contemporaries and beaten up in various alleys, suddenly being loved and desired by every stranger (including those who would have spit in his face pre-serum) primarily because of his change in appearance would not have felt good. If anything, I think it would have made Steve feel more inferior. As someone who values honesty in his interactions, the fakeness of it all would get old for him real quick.
Even Peggy looks at him differently pre- and post-serum. I’m seeing perhaps polite, amused interest here when they talk in the car…
…versus shocked and flustered desire here, where she also touches him without permission.
You know the one person who never looked at Steve like he was garbage, a piece of meat, or someone to put on a pedestal?
Who was immensely popular with women and yet paid more attention to Steve than he did his actual date, on his last night before going to war?
Who offered Steve a home when he had nothing left?
Whose response to seeing Steve for the first time after the serum was not triumph or desire, but disbelieving elation?
Who was the only person who was not happy about the serum, because now Steve would know the full horrors of war for himself, no longer safe at home in Brooklyn?
Whose teasing Steve not only welcomes, but reciprocates?
I do think there was only one person in Steve’s life who loved him unconditionally before and after the serum, who saw him as Steve Rogers no matter what he looked like. Who swore to follow him to the jaws of death, and kept his promise.
turnnoffyourmind
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