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notion of who’s a bottom and who’s a top is rooted in notions of gender and masculinity and femininity that are really outdated as fuck.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.