Is This the Dawning of the Age of the Twink?

So the New York Times recently published an article written by Nick Haramis entitled “Welcome to the Age of the Twink” which is a horrifying title. It sounds like the opening line to a conservative’s nightmare about a gay Hunger Games. Like, first they wanted to get married, now they want blood. It’s not just their nightmare either; it’s mine too.

For those of you who’ve been living under a rock or in Alabama, a twink is a young gay male with no body hair and a slim physique. Think Justin Bieber or the impossible to spell Timothée Chalamet (Did I get it?). For as much as I dislike the title, Haramis is right. Young Tom Holland with this hairless chin and ripped body has become the new face of Marvel, knocking out the likes of the charismatic bad boy/dad boy Robert Downey Jr., and Greek-statues-come-to-life Chris Evans/Hemsworth/Pratt.

Is this inherently bad? Yes.

Ok, no.

Maybe?

See, twink is just one of countless gay terms to break down dude's physical appearances. You’ve got your daddies, bears, daddy bears, wolves, silver foxes, chickens, and cubs. FYI, I originally threw "chicken" in there as a red herring to pull an easy joke on how ridiculous these names sound, but according to Wikipedia, chicken actually has been used as a gay term with a meaning identical to twink. The gays really classified every single trait imaginable into their “tribes,” as the quintessential gay reference source Grindr puts it.

As for myself, personally I’m an otter; a slim guy with body hair that’s kinda the cross between a bear and a twink. And there's a sort of thrill in figuring out what you are, like a sexy Buzzfeed quiz. Oh hey, there is a Buzzfeed quiz about it, go figure. Take it for yourself and try it! It’s a much safer high than crack probably.

Seriously, though, more often than not in that first conversation I have with straight people after I tell them, they want me to place them, like some gay sorting hat. A sorting tiara, if you will. Anecdotally I, along with the help of said Buzzfeed quiz, have single-handedly diagnosed a Nebraskan twink, a geeky Staten Island otter, and the world’s youngest Brazilian daddy at age 18. That last one was all Buzzfeed’s fault, but I agree.

Look to television and you’ll see the same thing. In an early episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Mac, Dennis, and Frank argue in a strip club over who's a bear, whos a twink, and what it means to be a power bottom after they find out the guy they took to the strip club to bribe was gay. It’s a hilarious scene, especially considering that after he tells them he’s gay, the guy is excluded from the conversation as Dennis and Mac seem to know a little too much about these gay subcultures. Or at least, they think they do. In a later season, the show repeats this same gag with the same man, this time in a gay strip club with Frank and Dee being the ones to bribe him. This time Dee acts as the sexpert as she starts bringing up otters, being versatile, and my personal favorite that I’m sure the show invented, a twank, or a has-been twink.

If you haven’t seen It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, you’re seriously missing out, but these scenes really help to show a problem with the perception of queer culture in popular culture. With the legalization of same-sex marriage back in 2015 to Call Me By Your Name gracing the big screen, to RuPaul's Drag Race currently airing its thirteenth season (yeah, 13), being gay has been more mainstream than ever, but what does this mean? Well, the representation of being gay on television had to switch from gay men and men in general acting feminine being the butt of the joke, but we don’t necessarily see a complete switch. Or rather, this switch wasn't entirely positive.

So if we can’t laugh at a gay dude for being gay, what can we laugh at? And it seems television has replaced that low hanging fruit (pun intentional) with another slightly higher, but still not too high, fruit. It’s become so easy and so common place to throw in a joke about being a twink or bear that these sexual terms have penetrated (pun also intentional) the social sphere to the point where even my straight 52-year-old dad knows what a bear is.

And herein lies the problem, or at least, why I hesitate at Haramis' wording in deeming this the age of the twink. I’m not mad that queer culture has become mainstream or that gays are being represented on television, but I want to question what kind of image this fixation on these terms creates. For a group already criticized for being shallow, having the most know gay culture be these tribes from Grindr paints the queer community in only one shade.

I often think back to the day I came out to my parents, the day after the legalization of gay marriage in the US. I thought that was a sign that I would be accepted, and my parents still love me, but what my dad said after I told him will never escape my mind.

“I’ll always love you no matter what, but I don’t want you to live that lifestyle.”

That day an immense weight was lifted off my shoulders, but those words laid heavy on my mind as I wondered what he meant by the gay lifestyle before it hit me years later in college after I downloaded Grindr.

I mean, think about it. The most known aspects of gay culture are these distinctions created for sex and perpetuated by hookup apps like Grindr and Scruff. After the AIDS crisis, there was a stigmatization and stereotyping of gays as promiscuous and sex-crazed, and these ideas still seep into modern day. Being gay was already being unnatural, and AIDS was the queer community’s punishment for living a sinful life. And for lesbians, we see straight female pop stars like Katy Perry or t.A.T.u talking about “experimenting” with other girls, using overt sexualization to draw in a male crowd. Being interested in other women is akin to a sexy, sexy mistake. And of course, bisexuals exist in both realms, being seen as so uncontrollably horny that one gender couldn’t satisfy them. Or, they seem invisible, being forced to pick a side rather than stand on their own.

I’m not mad at my dad. He wanted me to be safe and to find love, because in his eyes being gay meant defying monogamy in a way I guess straight people don’t, which is totally wrong. Talk to any straight person on Tinder and they’ll tell you how many people there are on the app looking for Mr. Right-Now over Mr. Right. And there’s nothing wrong with that, just like there should be nothing wrong with a gay man using Grindr for the same reasons. Personally, I’ve found two boyfriends off Grindr, but there's nothing wrong with using either app for whatever you want.

I’m not criticizing shows like It’s Always Sunny that use these terms to clever effect. In fact, they seem to reflect my point with the actual gay man being disgusted at being “straightsplaned” this oversexualized and sometimes inaccurate view of gay culture. I’m not blaming Nick Haramis, who as far as I could tell is a gay man, for using twink to describe the popularity of the young body type in pop culture today. I just want to question what the widespread dissemination of twink and other tribes has done in normalizing the oversexualization of queer culture. There’s nothing wrong with being sexual or embracing sexuality, but because of the troubled past of queer culture in the United States, there is a stigmatization against queer sexuality. There are plenty of queer people looking for something serious, something fun, or nothing at all, but by overemphasizing these tribes and this one aspect of the wide rainbow of queerness paints us all in a negative light. Moving forward, we need more wide spread representation, drawing from all walks of queer life. It’s gonna take a lot to heal the wounds of the past, but through presenting the real picture of “The New Homo” in all his/her/their strengths and faults, we can dismantle that gay lifestyle and simply live our own lives.

Well, in any case, I can’t wait until we’re in the Age of the Otter and I’ll be the new hot thing.