What It’s Really Like to Have a Sibling Famous For Being Hot

The question first came to me while watching the most recent season of “The White Lotus.” Of all the twisted, tortured sibling dynamics that Mike White dangled for viewers, what stuck in my head from the start was not so much the incest (though flashbacks to those scenes still give me hives), but what it must feel like to have a sibling who’s categorized by the outside world as a sex symbol — or, in the case of Saxon Ratliff, one who assumes the role of sex symbol even if it’s mostly self-anointed.

Whether or not Saxon was as sexually prolific as he claimed (dubious), I wanted to get inside the heads of Lochlan and Piper, who surely had some fascinating thoughts about having watched him evolve from their annoying brother into this bulked-up frat star who’s, yes, still annoying and still their brother but now has a jawline that can cut glass.

My question, of course, applies to all people with hot siblings, far beyond the lush gardens of the Four Seasons in Koh Samui. How do the Dylan Efrons and Patricia Bündchens of society cope with the world’s thirstiness for the person who shares 50 percent of their DNA?

But the reason I’m writing this story now — months after the “White Lotus” finale — is because, at first, nobody wanted to talk to me about their hot siblings. I approached the siblings of celebrities and influencers with (polite!) inquiries, seeking their honest perspectives, but no one agreed to answer.

Frankly, as a sibling myself, I can understand why. It’s a cringey, maybe even painful prospect to grapple with the sex appeal of your other half. But that’s exactly why I was curious. Alas, it seemed nobody would talk to me — until I got in touch with Haylee Greer.

Greer’s younger brother is Greyson Hoelzel, a rising social media star whose 1 million followers have turned the comments sections on his videos into what I’ve dubbed “the thirst Olympics.” Pulling up the comments on a Greyson Hoelzel video is the internet equivalent of watching from the other side of the street as a construction crew wolf whistles and awoogas at a pretty lady — except instead of sweaty men with toothpicks suspended menacingly from their mouths, it’s a bunch of mostly anonymous girlies and queer folks shooting their shot with a handsome young man who tends to have a pretty good sense of humor about it all.

And Greer — a regular, if comparatively passive, user of social media herself — has had a front-row seat to this proverbial construction site from the start. She’s seen everything: the comments about tasting his “juices” and memorizing his “every vein,” the fan-made blog posts and videos about his body, all the DMs she’s personally received about “submitting an application” to be her sister-in-law.

Meanwhile, she works as an audiologist and lives a pretty quiet, normal life with her husband and baby. “I didn’t expect Greyson to be a hearththrob of the internet,” she tells me over the phone, thinking back to what it was like growing up together in a small California town. Greer is 27 and Hoelzel is 25. “He’s literally just a regular, degular person, so it’s so funny that people put him on this pedestal.”

As awkward as it may be for her to witness the Greyson-mania, Greer is sincere in her support of her brother and his big dreams, and always has been. Speaking with her on the phone, I didn’t pick up on even a whiff of sibling rivalry or competition. To the contrary, the two are close: they went to the same college in Nevada, and he even moved in with her after his graduation. At the time, she watched his newly popular social media presence grow, and even encouraged him to pick it back up when he stopped posting for a short period after a breakup. He wasn’t sure about his future as a content creator, but she saw his potential and pushed him to stick with it, thinking that it might lead to exposure that could help him do the stuff he’s always wanted to do, like professional comedy.

She says the whole family, including their oldest sister, always knew Hoelzel was destined for something “big.” But they’d assumed the big thing would be connected to his comedic chops, not necessarily his looks. “To me he’s just my brother, I don’t think any of us expected him to be a heartthrob,” she says. “We thought he was funny and would be known for his humor. And I actually think his personality is really what people are drawn to immediately.”

Just a couple weeks after I got ahold of Greer, her brother packed up all his stuff and finally made the move he’d been fantasizing about for a while, from Philadelphia, where he was working as an environmental engineer, to New York City. He told me in a separate interview that he’d always wanted to be closer to the NYC comedy scene. But now that he’s there, he’s worried he’ll be too nervous to dive in.

Greer worries about that, too. But she wants to see him take that risk. “I hope he finds what he loves and gives himself a shot,” she says. “I know he’s gonna fail at first, and he is hard on himself, but I hope he sticks to it.”

No one knows what the future holds for Hoelzel as he makes a new life in NYC. But for now, Greer has a message for anyone in a similar position to her own, facing the strange reality that their sibling is very hot in a very public way. “I’m sure it’s gotta be a good feeling on [your sibling’s] end to have a lot of people following them,” she says. “Always remember that they’ll always be your sibling in your eyes. They can have a different persona on the internet, and it’s fine.”

If his acting career were to indeed take off, it’s fair to assume Hoelzel’s sex symbol status would be cemented on the silver screen, not just the iPhone screen. And I have to say, as the sibling of a budding sex symbol, Greer has an excellent attitude overall. She’s gracious and reassuring; she knows when to put up some boundaries, and when to step in.

She gets messages all the time from people who are looking for an in with her brother, though she’s never responded. Occasionally, though, she’ll pop into the comments section on his videos with a zinger of her own. No matter how famous he gets, she’ll never shake the evolutionary instinct to tease her little brother.

Her last bit of advice is simple, though one she’s obviously still learning to follow herself: “Don’t take it too seriously, and try not to read the comments.”

Emma Glassman-Hughes (she/her) is the associate editor at PS Balance. In her seven years as a reporter, her beats have spanned the lifestyle spectrum; she’s covered arts and culture for The Boston Globe, sex and relationships for Cosmopolitan, and food, climate, and farming for Ambrook Research.