
Ah, 2004. It was a simpler time. Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, and Katy Perry were still in the womb (well, the womb of Celebrity, anyway), Tom Cruise hadn't married that chick from Dawson's Creek yet, and Tom Brady looked like this: slight scruff, little hipster rhino horn, and overall cuteness.

By 2005, Tom had clipped his locks into a buzzcut (though he still hadn't shaved, although he looks so cute I don't mind that he has a pathological inability to mow the lawn). The best part of this photo, though, is the visible thong of Tom's seatmate, which she is presenting to him like a baboon in heat.

There .wasn't much movement on the follicular front until 2008, when he went back to the longer swoop, and a hairy neck.

I am wondering if this is where the trouble started. Tom is trying to support Gisele at the Met Ball, and she looks all schemy, like, "My man cannot be prettier than I am. What can I do? This will not stand. I must harness the power of my vagina."

And so it begins.

Gisele's eyes say, "My vagina is more powerful than even I imagined."

This was when the Justin Bieber comparisons began. It is not, despite the location of his hands in his armpits, where any Mary Catherine Gallagher comparisons began.

I feel like this is the cover of a lost Doors album.

Whereas this is the cover of a stand-up comedy album by some dude who counts his idols as Dane Cook, Josh Groban, and Scarlett Johansson.

Whoops. How did THIS photo get in here?

And now things have degenerated into Hair Band, Post-Concert, Winter: A Tribute to Crystalline Sweat.

I MEAN.

And now, this: Gisele and Tom at Carnivale, her in a Pantene shirt -- which he obviously could not wear for fear of incurring the sponsor's wrath -- and him in an Oral-B top (yet not showing his teeth) and my hair after I've been on the treadmill.

Right down to the nub of a ponytail. Oh, TOM. What have you become? When will this end? You are TOM f'ing BRADY, not the inexplicable Jamie Campbell Bower. Sweat on a hot night? Sure, fine. But if you show up somewhere with a French braid I swear to God we are going to lock up Gisele in, like, a meatball parlor, and stage an intervention.
