Out singer Olly Alexander, the frontman
for the band Years & Years, says that the label “twink” to
describe young thin gay men carries a lot of negative baggage.
Earlier this year, The New York
Times opined on the subject, writing that celebrities such as
Alexander, Troye Sivan and Timothee Chalamet, who plays a gay
character in Call Me By Your Name, had ushered in the “age
of the twink.”
“Personally, I’ve always been
ashamed of my body and I’ve hated being so skinny – I had an
eating disorder for so long," Alexander,
28, told NME. "‘Twink’ feels like an easy way to put
someone down and say: ‘You’re dumb, you’re just a bottom that
wants to be fucked.’ There’s a lot of bottom-shaming that goes on
in the [LGBTQ+] community. I mean, my Twitter is just literally…
people are obsessed with placing someone as a bottom or top.”
“So when I saw that article, there
are just so many things I felt about it. Are we meant to be happy
that it’s the age of the twink? Are we meant to be encouraging it –
is it a good thing, or is it a bad thing we need to dismantle? I just
feel like I don’t need to refer to myself or anyone else as a
‘twink’ because it’s just lame.”
“It’s an obsession with a sexual
dynamic that feels pointless. Just get over it, get past it. Our
notion of who’s a bottom and who’s a top is rooted in notions of
gender and masculinity and femininity that are really outdated as
fuck. Say what you want among friends, but I’m a bit bored of the
online discourse being, like, ‘bottom energy!’ or ‘top me
daddy!’ or ‘that’s not gonna work – two bottoms don’t make
a top.' It’s super-reductive,” he added.