How much do you really know about the history of the word "twink"?
Find out on this episode of InQueery, hosted by YouTuber, author, and entrepreneur Connor Franta.
In partnership with Google, InQueery is the series that takes a deeper look at the meaning, context, and history of LGBTQ+ vocabulary and culture.
In partnership with Google
- You are what you eat, so...(girl laughs)- [Girl] Cute!- Thought that up just now.
(laughs)(beep)There are plenty of tribesin the gay male community,bears, otters and daddies, oh my!But, we're here to dive intothe wonderful world of twinks.So, what is a twink, andwhere did it come from?Let's take a stroll back through timeto figure out just wherethe concept originated.These days, we're all pretty muchin agreement of what the word twink means.It's a pretty exclusionary termtightly focused on youngmen who are hairless,slender, usually blond and usually white.Webster's Third NewInternational Dictionarydefines twink as a noun,a wink or a twinkling,and as a verb meaningto punish or to thrash.Oh Webster, you dirty bird.(bouncy keyboard music)Go back 100 years and you're unlikelyto hear twink in queer circles.But in England, you mighthear the word twank,referring to what wecall today sugar daddies.Of course, young, hairless,fair-featured men still existed.But, they had differentmonikers back then.They went by mollies inEngland, or knabe in Germany,a problematic term sinceit translates to boy,which raises questionsabout age of consent.Sadly, there isn't much gay pornthat survives from the 1800s,so if there was a Victorianversion of BelAmi,it's lost to the ages.Twink might have evolved as the shorthandfor the term twinkletoes.In the 1919 novel calledTwinkletoes a Tale of Limehouse,a girl is first-named Twinkletoes,which is then just shortened to Twink.In the book, one observer comments,"Ain't she just a damn queer kid?"Twink as gay slang might havecome from straight culturewhich simply wasn't using theword to its full potential.In the early to mid 20th century,the word was widely acceptedto refer to twinklingas something sparkly or shiny and new.There was a home perm kit called Twinkand a baseball team in Los Angelescalled the Hollywood Twinks.I know a few Hollywood twinks myself.A lot of people assumethat the word twink derivesfrom the fluffy insubstantialcream-filled snack,tasty to eat but no nutritional value.Linguists are skepticalabout that, though.It's a cute story but there's no evidencethat queers were particularlyinvested in Twinkiesas a basis of slang.Just the opposite in fact.In the late 1970s, Twinkies developedan intensely negative associationafter they were implicatedin the murder of Harvey Milk.It sounds unbelievable but it's true.Harvey Milk's killer, Dan White,claimed that he had beensuffering from depressionand pointed to his binge-eatingof Twinkies as proof.It was a super weirdargument to make in courtand gave rise to the term twinkie defense,meaning an outlandish excusefor committing a crime.If any slang is derivedfrom Twinkies, it's that.Prior to internet porn,there was a lot of confusionabout exactly what a twink really was.The book, Homolexus, defines it asan attractive youth, in 1985,which is pretty closeto what we'd say today.But, if you go back to the70s, there's a lot of variety.The 1972 book, The Queens' Vernacular,defined twinkletoes as effeminate.In 1975, the leather culture resource,Drummer magazine, definedtwink as a masochist,or a slave in a relationship and addedthat twinkie was an unrelatedterm referring to young men.And in 1978, a languagesurvey called Maledicta statedthat a youthful, effeminate young manshould be called Twinkletoes.The term seems to have become commonand accepted by the 90s,when a 1995 article in The Advocatecasually uses the word twinkto describe the band Take That.Fair enough.The spread of twink in queer communitiesmight have been relatedto the internet makingtwink-related pornographyreadily available.For a time, twinks werea bit of a novelty.It was impossible totroll the 90s porn siteswithout being bombarded byimages of slender young men.By the early 2000s, the wordwas broadly used in gay media.You can hear twinks jokingly referencedin the movie But I'm A Cheerleaderand hissed like an epithetin the first season of Queer As Folk.The late 90s and early2000s were basicallythe time of peak twink,when young, thin, palebodies were often prizedover larger, furrier bodies.Despite the growingpopularity of dad bods,twinks are all around us.The word popped up on recentepisodes of mainstream showslike Veep and It's AlwaysSunny In Philadelphia.- Yeah, he's a bear.You see, some gay guys aretwinks and others are bears.This gay guy's a bear.- And when Andy Cohen recently referredto One Direction as "a bunch of twinks,"their PR rep shruggedit off as a compliment.It seems like it should be easyto refer to young skinny men,but it took a hundred yearsof shifting words and meaningsto land the definition oftwink as we know it today.Twinks are an enduring part of queer life,but as gay clones fall out of fashionand the community welcomesmore diverse body types,twink has earned a bitof a bad reputation.Being skinny and pale is fine,but it's no longer seen asthe height of desirability,and thank God for that.These days there's room for all types:bears, otters, high femme,sport dykes and more.In other words, if you wanna twinkle,you don't have to be a twink.