The headline grabbed me. It popped up on a popular newsfeed I frequent.
“Inside the race to be crowned North Carolina’s sexiest collard farmer” took me to an article posted to The Telegraph. The headline tells you everything you need to know about what the article had in store, and it focused on a particular picture.
You can search out the picture if you like, but I’ll describe it for you: The man stands on a sunny day in a nice collard field. He’s middle-aged but in pretty good shape. We know this because he has no shirt or pants on. He wears a big smile, a crown because he won last year’s competition and a strap around his waist with several collard leaves dangling from it, covering up what needs immediate covering. Imagine Tarzan: King of the Collards. He proudly holds in each hand stout collard plants. Got to say, I admired him instantly. It’s a great photo.
The man’s winning submission last year was less stark, but his submission this year was not included on the competition organizer’s main contest posting. According to the article, they feared running afoul of Meta’s nudity rules. The reigning champ had to include his photo in the comment section, which he felt put him at a disadvantage to be seen or voted for.
I went to the Facebook page to make my vote the day before the winner was declared. About two dozen farmers vied for the crown, including men and women of many ages. All modestly dressed, fine-looking folks you can trust to handle your collards. One man held his little baby in one hand and a collard in the other. I voted for him, mainly because it was so cute, and the baby had a killer grin and confident face. Looked like a little Bruce Willis in his prime.
I don’t have feelings on if the competition organizers should have gambled on the man’s controversial submission. It’s their page, and it’s up to them. The competition is a tongue-and-cheek nod to collards, the people who grow them and a fun way to draw positive attention to agriculture in the great state of North Carolina. That’s a good thing.
I’ve had a personal Facebook account since 2009. Much more risqué images and reels than the photo of our natural man in the collard patch pop up regularly on my feed. Things a middle-aged man, such as myself, might find interesting, but I don’t seek such content. Just magically appears.
We all accept now we live in a world where social media algorithms and rules wield scary influence, but did they influence our sexiest collard farmer choices? I don’t know. I do know there is a new king. Patrick Brown of Brown Family Farms in Henderson is the 2024 Sexiest North Carolina Collard Farmer. He got the votes and crown Nov. 26.