I agree with you Will is not a frail flower like people make him out to be. He’s survived things most of us couldn’t. They likely have a pro with them who handles the dirty bits given their socioeconomic status. I think he could do it - like fighting because he’s trained the same way the rest of the BC line is and they can go at it - he just elects not to. I don’t like that just because we sus he’s gay that we feminize him. That’s not fair to gay people because it puts them in boxes when in reality, sexuality has no impact on personality but stereotypes can make people hid it more.
Ok buckle up because this is a long one:
Now, I don’t like to speculate on real people’s sexualities. He could be gay, bi, etc., or he could be straight. The point still stands: his hobbies are perfectly normal, and trying to sort them into “masculine” or “feminine” categories is unnecessary and frankly, boring. What we should be focusing on, in my opinion, is how wildly multifaceted this little guy is. At his young age, he seems determined to be everything for everyone.
He holds on to the people he loves for dear life. He carves out time for his friends even when hockey consumes 99% of his life for nine months of the year. He wears matching outfits with them, curates playlists, designs their gear, and goes all out for their birthdays. He shows up for his coworkers’ events, supports their spouses, sends his billet mom flowers, and remembers every important date.
And then there’s his family. He prays, goes to church, shows up for every family event, prioritizes quality time with his sister, and wears his best suits to games where all 100 of his relatives have apparently mobilized like a small nation-state to watch him play, no matter how overwhelmed he might feel under the full force of that attention.
He also very clearly does not want hockey to be his entire personality, so he dances, plays guitar, bakes, reads, fixes ACs, plays golf, soccer, basketball, football, and whiffleball, starts a co-ed summer league, and joins the Stanley Pup because of course his downtime also needs to involve being surrounded by the furry friends he so desperately loves.
So rather than flattening all of that into “his hobbies are feminine-coded, therefore he must be gay, and specifically in an effeminate way,” I would rather look at the sheer amount of life he manages to cram into his chaotic little schedule and somehow still make it look effortless. Will never forgets anyone or anything because, as he has said himself, he takes meticulous notes and remembers it all with frightening clarity.
I also think Will is much more mentally strong than people give him credit for. You kind of have to be if you go through the USNTDP and come out of it with only one or two screws loose. And Will famously made it out with almost all of his personality intact, a whole harem of trauma-bonded boybesties he plans to keep for life, and a heaping load of anxiety that he has learned to mask with alarming efficiency.
Except, of course, when his coach is benching him for six games straight, the internet is begging for him to get traded, and even his own fans start bullying him under the guise of “tough love.” Then he retreats to his little corner on the bench, as far away from everyone as possible, including the one person on the team who loves and understands him to his core, because God forbid anyone realize he does not, in fact, have his shit together 24/7. He’s supposed to be the charismatic linchpin of a generational hockey duo, and he has decided his anxiety does not have a place in that mythology.
So no, Will is not a frail flower. No one who has trained as long and hard as he has, and continues to do so in an environment practically designed to break you down and rebuild you as a walking hockey stereotype, is inherently fragile. That boy is made of extremely hardy stuff.
Which is yet another reason everyone is so profoundly abnormal about him. He keeps surprising people, and in that surprise, they start searching for evidence of deceit, subterfuge, or some hidden contradiction that would prove he is not actually the person he has made us believe he is.
But unless evidence starts pointing to the contrary, I’m afraid Will Smith Hockey is, in fact, the same Helen of Troy who launched a thousand ships.