Research
The following essay details the research, background, and concept of Twink '25. It should be noted that I am writing from my personal perspective, and although my thoughts have been considered intentionally, they are not factual, and may not be “correct.” As the reader, I ask you to consider my musings critically, and keep in mind that I am viewing this work through a lens that is colored by my unique life experiences and contextual surroundings.

A Twink Prescription
I can imagine myself walking up to the CVS counter at the age of 15 or so. My pubescent eyes beaming toward the pharmacist, who happens to be one of my peers. She’s a blonde, girlypop classmate of mine, with a Snapchat addiction and a step-father. She looks at me cautiously, as if to say that she will take me under her popular-high-school-girl wing, but only if I accept her decree. She hands me a crinkly brown paper bag containing an orange tube of pills. The precious Twink pills. With one swallow, I am suddenly assigned the historically significant and hotly contested classification of Twink.

Googling the word Twink results in the following definition: twink | noun (among gay men) a gay or bisexual young man with a slim build and youthful appearance.

When the popular-high-school-girl calls her gay-boy-classmate a Twink, she is unknowingly referencing a storied history of language patterns, sexual trends, and cultural class shifts. How has it become that Twink rests in the vocabulary of the average heterosexual teen? And why are they so excited to say it? Through my research and commentary, I investigate both how we got here, and my potential critical response to this phenomenon.

Twink Birth
In 1977, artist Hal Fischer took upon the noble task of documenting what he entitled Gay Semiotics, a collection of nonverbal communication points that were used by the gay community in San Francisco to identify and broadcast not only their sexuality, but their availability, interests, kinks, and more. For example, placing a blue handkerchief in one’s left pocket indicates that one is interested in taking on the active role of sexual intercourse with other men (“topping”). Moving that handkerchief to the right pocket indicates interest in bottoming. This lan- guage is also referred to as the Hanky Code or Flagging. Beyond the Hanky Code, Fischer’s research included other symbols such as wearing one earring on either ear or jangling a set of keys from a belt loop. These modes of communication were understood by gays and indiscernible to straights, allowing a vibrant cruis- ing culture to fly under the radar of the dominant, oppressive eye. Beyond these choices in accessory, Fischer also denoted five archetypes that he claimed represented the interests and visual ideals of the gay male community at the time. They were: Classical, Natural, Western, Urbane, and Leather. Some of these archetypes might be most noticeable to the average straight person in the costuming and performance style of The Village People, famous for their song “YMCA.” Although Fischer did not mention the existence of Twinks at this time of his research, this work can be viewed as a clear example of a developing subcon- scious gay language. Through an erotic game of self-expression, gay men have historically reinforced stereotypical classifications in order to advertise themselves to others in their community. When your primary mode of finding other people like you must be stealthy, then you may resort to becoming a caricature of what you think they will be attracted to, so as to increase your chances of developing rela- tionships and sexual encounters.

Understanding how and why gay men often seem to automatically categorize themselves is important when investigating the birth of the term Twink. In May of 2018, then-famous Twink youtuber Connor Franta so eloquently, and teleprompt- er-ly, explained the origins of the term. In front of soft pink-and-blue lighting, he strings along the same handful of tidbits that every attempted entomologist of the term has access to. It goes a little something like this:

1. Nobody truly knows the origins of “twink”
2. “twink” usage came about during the mid-20th century
3. In Great Britain, “twank,” was sometimes used to describe gay men
4. In the US, “twinkle toes” began popping up as an insult in the 1950s
5. At the same time, “twink” began to describe anything shiny and new
6. Many also mis-attribute the origins to the snack cake “twinkies”

Regardless of its scattered history, Twink as a word floated into more regular usage throughout the 80s and 90s. By this point, the definition was more-or-less locked down. A Twink was a gay man, who appeared to be young, slim, and on the more feminine side. Most commonly, it also accounted for attractiveness and whiteness. These attributes were assisted by the proliferation of internet porn and gay porn categories.

Alongside this linguistic growth, however, was an acute loss in life and culture at the hands of the AIDS epidemic. Prior to this time period, historically gay, black, and latine neighborhoods in New York City thrived on a communal sharing of progressive ideas, art, and sex. As the AIDS epidemic began to wage war on these communities, bolstered by the deliberate inaction of the government, a geographical and cultural gentrification took place. Gay culture, which routinely feeds the greater pop culture (often with biased or absent credit), was sanitized in favor of the dominant conservative class ideals. As the ubiquitous Fran Lebowitz adage states: “The first people who died of AIDS were artists. They were the most interesting people.” This effect on gay culture is crucial to an understanding of how Twink became a commercialized identity in the social consciousness a few decades later.

Twink Boom
Fast-forward to the year 2018. On May 14th, writer Nick Haramis published an article in the New York Times titled Welcome to the Age of the Twink. This article quickly became an infamous piece of literature in the gay community and set off a chain reaction that would shift social awareness of Twink on a grand scale. I am calling this period the Twink Boom. In his article, Haramis postures that a new age is upon us: the age of thin, artsy-looking men, with bouncy hair and cutting bone structure – a group of men he labels as Twinks. He primarily bases his argument on the success of the movie Call Me By Your Name, starring Timothee Chalamet. Haramis claims that the driving force behind a larger interest in so-called Twinks such as Chalamet is shifting attitudes in young women, who are less interested in “toxic masculinity,” and more interested in soft, sensitive men. Haramis goes on to mention other celebrities who were on his Twink list at the time, such as actors Tye Sheridan, Lucas Hedges, and Nick Robinson. He also throws a bone to a few other more outwardly queer-presenting celebs, including textbook Twink singer Troye Sivan (albeit he misspelled his last name as “Silvan”).

Many readers considered Haramis to be mis-defining and mis-appropriating Twink as a concept. His list of modern-era “Twinks” was composed mainly of straight actors, many of whom did not express any of the personality-based character- istics historically required to be entered into the Twinkhood. What they did have was an appealing look that could be sold to mass audiences. Readers felt that Haramis was applying the Twink label to any skinny and vaguely attractive man in pop culture at the time. He was accused of disregarding the historically queer cultural underpinnings of Twink in favor of a watered-down, heterosexual-friendly version of the word.

Haramis’s article prompted multiple editorial responses in quick succession. Writ- ing for The Atlantic, the day after the release of the Times article, journalist Spen- cer Kornhaber summarized the controversy and expanded upon why Haramis’s article fell short. He attributed the phenomenon of the “Age of the Twink” instead to a more general shift in popular culture. Simply put: people were becoming more comfortable with picking apart men’s bodies in the ways they had done to women for so long. This perspective is useful when analyzing what it is that made the Twink archetype, albeit a mis-identified one, appealing to straight audiences. Haramis’s article posed it as something new and harmless: a little piece of gay culture that straight people get to hold on to for a bit, and perhaps an opportunity to playfully dissect the bodies of up-and-coming male sex symbols. However, this one-sided use of Twink fails to acknowledge an entire history of desirability politics that rest underneath.

The next day, writing for Them (a week before their YouTube release of Connor Franta’s Twinkfomercial), journalist Mikelle Street interviewed Dr. Jonathan Katz, an influential historian and scholar of queer art. Katz explained that these Twink identifiers – slimness and youth being the most common – have actually been around and sought-after for centuries. Twink sensibilities can be traced all the way back to the ancient Greek practice of pederasty, where male sexuality operated along the lines of a power-based relationship, with a young Twink boy being the object of utmost desire. The article also expanded upon the exclu- sionary nature of the term, as many trends in desirability typically revolve around whiteness and class. The Twink club was originally reserved for those who were only white and blonde, eventually opening up to Asian men, and slowly moving toward acceptance of Black men. While the linguistic history of Twink may begin within the past century, the historical foundations of something as ubiquitous as a beauty standard run deep. So, while the Twink Boom may have posed the sanitized Twink as the best thing since sliced bread, it perhaps was closer to an old moldy loaf placed in new packaging. These considerations, none of which were present in Haramis’s article, are necessary when coming to terms with what Twink means and how it operates in the present-day.

It is also worth noting that the discussions surrounding Twink as an archetype in the entertainment industry are extremely contemporary when compared against the landscape of the gay club. Five years before the Twink Boom, gay writer Thomas Rogers described many of his experiences while clubbing and hook- ing-up where he was called a Twink as a pejorative. He writes, “Calling someone a ‘twink’ has become an easy way for a gay man (and now, straight people) to prove that he is manlier, smarter, more tasteful or successful than the person he is talking about.” Rogers’s unfavorable experiences and analysis of the word give us a glimpse into a vastly different portrayal of the Twink archetype when compared against the artsy, attractive, and mysterious Twink that Haramis claimed was on the rise just five years later. Twink means something different depending on who says it and to or about whom.

Haramis’s article and the discourse that followed created a sudden, massive increase in public awareness of Twink as a concept in early 2018. It primarily affected straight people, whose awareness of gay culture was digested only through a post-AIDS entertainment industry, and young people, whose burgeon- ing identities were being rapidly influenced by access to the internet and social media. This rise in Twink usage – whether it was correct usage or not – is what I am referencing when I mention the Twink Boom. It was a perfect storm of cir- cumstances. All of the sudden, anyone could learn about what a Twink was, from conservative mothers to the aforementioned popular-high-school-girls. It allowed Twink to take on a new, commercialized life, often at the disregard of queer his- torical politics, and to the dismay of those who reveled in the previously exclusive nature of the Twinkdom.

Twink ’25
We are now in the year 2025. It marks our collective entrance into the next quarter of the 21st century, and it marks a full seven years since 2018. If we take into account the (untrue) myth that your body replaces all of its cells every seven years, then we are all about to be born-again for the first time since the Twink Boom. Perhaps Twink could also be born again.

Twink usage has undoubtedly grown since 2018, especially with the advent of TikTok, the expanding social capital of Gen-Z, and the post-post-post ironic state of humor and trends in pop culture. Twink has achieved a seeming ubiquity. How- ever, it has been morphed into a confused existence, one that results in rampant misuse. I think there is room for a new era of Twink to be upon us. One that is explored and upheld by Twinks themselves and the communities that they inhabit, and not by New York Times writers or billionaire advertisers. I will never claim to be a superhero (or superTwink) of any community. However, I do think that I have the ability as a designer to create interesting work that responds to the marred history and social understanding of what it means to exist in the Twinkdom.

Drawing from combinations and permutations of my own experiences and research, Twink '25 responds to the baggage outlined in this essay, and attempts to carve out a new Twink niche, one that both calls upon the historically queer, DIY, communal aspects of the culture from which it came, and one that forges ahead to explore new Twink territory.

The great philosopher Hilary Duff once said, “when you say ‘that’s so gay,’ do you realize what you say?” I am here to ask a more specific question: When you say “Twink,” do you realize what you say?