No fancy introduction for this post. I’ve noticed that people of any gender who do (visual) art tend to be attracted to twinks.
So why is that? Let’s overanalyze it.
Feelings can be scary
Usually “everything happens for a reason” is a bullshit platitude. My blog, Overanalyzed, is what happens when I actually take it seriously. And sigh. Here, I’m going to make a slightly sketchy psychoanalytic interpretation.
So. Imagine being a young child. You have been put into a scary world with no language other than your feelings. And damn, your feelings, which can go from the most delighted joy to the most infernal rage to the most heartbreaking sob, are scary too! In particular, one of the most painful things for any child is bearing the mixed feelings of being enraged at loved ones, and having remorse for it. It shows too, because young children are prone to acting out their rage, but also able to feel guilt and a desire to undo the harm they have caused.
Eventually, as long as basic emotional needs are met (so that they achieve a neurotic level of personality organization, versus a borderline level), bearing the mixed feelings of rage and guilt becomes less scary for the child as they learn to represent them. You can see a rudimentary version of this in their play: toy soldiers are knocked down (rage)… and then brought back to life (guilt).
As a random aside: even young children can have a deep emotional investment in grand concepts like apocalypses and resurrection, because it represents repairing what they once thought was forever destroyed.
However, just because they have the ability to represent these mixed feelings doesn’t mean that those feelings are fully tamed – they can still provoke anxiety. Usually, it is ideal if those feelings can be represented in words and allowed to be fully felt. But even if the latter doesn’t hold, the feelings are still usually bearable, since even the act of representing feelings makes them more tolerable.
Without direct access to the feeling, representing a feeling is still a defense that aims to reduce the anxiety over bearing it. Still, the neurotic defenses that represent the feeling in some way are better than the more primitive ones, which include splitting the world as all-good and all-bad, projecting, or denying obvious truths. Everyone uses defenses, since constantly letting feelings through would cause too much anxiety in daily life. We all need some distance from feelings at times. Contrary to pop-psych Instagram posts.
So where does art fit into this?
Art as a beautiful defense
Generally, putting feelings into words is best for managing their intensity. Hostage negotiators, dealing with hot-headed hostage takers who most likely use primitive defenses, extensively rely on helping the hostage taker label their feelings to calm them down.
That’s because words do two things. First, they identify what is happening in the body as the feeling arises, reducing activity in the amygdala (which mobilizes fast responses to perceived threats). Second, they put the feeling into a separate space where it can be acted out in imagination instead of in the real world. When you imagine a rageful but regrettable action, it doesn’t actually happen, and the brain knowing that fact actually does much to put it at ease. That’s a big reason, too, why children engage in play: to put their feelings into a space where it doesn’t hurt anyone.
So where does (visual) art come into play here? Even though not as efficiently nor effectively as words, art can be another way to represent mixed feelings so it can be less scary. And for those who did not get to learn to represent their feelings with words, art can actually be an appealing alternative for a couple reasons. Like play, art provides another space for feelings to be acted on without hurting anyone. Instead of directly experiencing imagery of their feelings, which can be disturbing without the apparatus of words, they can distract their imagination with art instead.
However, as it is difficult to represent rage and guilt at the same time with art, and it is taboo to even represent rage (although a representation is NOT actually acting it out), it is easier and more acceptable and to produce art representing positive feelings like desire, and it’s fairly easy to leave rage out of art. Art is a beautiful defense: the beauty distracts you from the more fiery parts of life! Unfortunately, that means the rageful charge gets repressed or, worse, split off, even when the person feels guilt for it and can ultimately learn to bear both rage and guilt.
What I’m suggesting though is the opposite relation: those who split off or repress rage are drawn to art, because it allows them to reduce the anxiety about what they can tolerate more consciously – desire – while also giving them a liminal space where rage need not be acknowledged. (Beware though: for now, it’s just my barely-informed theory!)
Now the twinks make sense
You might see where this is going. Regardless of gender, think about what a twink represents: beauty and softness. Now, as a twink myself I know myself and other twinks can be quite catty, so maybe reconsider the latter! And I am perhaps too unashamedly biased about the former. But it’s because I like twinks too. Alas.
Looking at someone within your sexual orientation is one of the quickest ways to evoke mixed feelings from the past. Feelings of desire are fused with rage and guilt as well. As a result, it can evoke tremendous anxiety without a stopgap to curb the tide.
So what I’m saying is that, if art is a beautiful defense, then so are twinks. If a person believes that twinks are beautiful and ‘soft’ (ugh, I hate that stereotype), then they can distract themselves from the flood of rage which is too painful to acknowledge, leaving only the less anxiety-inducing feeling of desire. Even better, with a few exceptions, most artists I’ve seen like to draw characters with ‘twinkish’ builds. That means in their brain, there is plenty of their own artwork available, in the moment, to represent their desire without having to face the full feeling head-on. As the feelings of desire rise, their brain retrieves images of their own artwork to represent the feeling and reduce anxiety.
Related point: much of the reason why we, as humans, love to reduce people to specific caricatures (and I’m guilty of doing this too), is because it allows us to repress certain unacceptable feelings. Opposite to the twink is the comic-book villains that you can just call unambiguously ‘bad’ without acknowledging any mixed feelings about them, or more importantly, people in your life that have similarities to them.
Also, unless you live in Portland or something, twinks are definitely not the usual guy you see. Just like art, they can act as a liminal space for desire, further reducing the anxiety it generates. As much as unfamiliar things can stir up anxiety, not only are many artists well-acquainted with the twinkish build, but also it may be the unfamiliarity which means less of the old disavowed feelings pop up, particularly rageful ones (I don’t think most, when imagining their rage, would direct it against a twink).
Anyways, this has been a mystery that has bugged me for the longest time, but now. Eureka!
Usually, the flirting is subtle
The reason why I wrote this article is because I noticed that I tend to attract the artsy types a lot. I’m very much in a participant-observer stance (haha). And I notice that, even though the stereotype is that it’s the twinks doing this to larger, more buff daddies (not my type, sorry), I notice that these artsy types always approach me coyly with a bid for reassurance.
Disclaimer: I can’t ever know for sure what’s going on in someone’s mind. But I can speculate that there might be two threads here.
First, the coyness may ultimately act as a lid on the pressure cooker that is the disavowed repressed rage. Coyness is a repressive strategy: it softens the intensity of desire, while attempting to seduce the other person so that it is the other person who bears the desire, not them.
Second, the bid for reassurance (in flirtation!) all has to do with the true casualty of repressed rage: the guilt and eventual repair of the relationship. When rage and guilt are represented through words, even when it is difficult to feel it, there is a sequence: ‘I feel enraged’, ‘I feel guilty for that rage’, and ‘I wish to repair and continue this relationship’. But to the person who represses rage (and guilt) though, the moment they feel desire or loving feelings for someone, they are immediately concerned with the possibility of permanently losing the relationship, even when the possibility is not realistic, precisely because the guilt sees no recognition. People with integrated feelings, and even people who rely on obsessional defenses like intellectualization and isolation of affect, are less concerned by that possibility, because they know any ruptures can likely be repaired and can tolerate the uncertainty. Regardless, the fact that these feelings arise with a complete stranger can make it worse: even though the feelings belong to the past, it is transferred to the present with someone who they could, indeed, “lose” because they don’t know whether the stranger is actually attracted to them.
It can’t be a coincidence!
This blog is called Overanalyzed, so I have to go over my theory on why said coy bid for reassurance is always some variation of talking about having social anxiety (n = several at this point) usually around the 5-minute mark.
Usually, naming anxiety is the obsessional defense of isolation of affect: the underlying feeling generating anxiety is unacknowledged, but the anxiety symptoms (including bodily tension or somatic symptoms, depending on severity). But “social anxiety” usually does not refer to anxiety proper. It often refers to a primitive defense: a projection that others are going to judge them (projecting rage). When it is named in a conversation, it can even be projective identification: “you are going to judge me, and I’m scared of you, so please be gentle.”
Here, the coyness might not be enough to actually keep the repressed rage from flooding the person with anxiety, and that might be a possibility (again, I can’t know for sure) especially as it happens around the 5-minute mark suggesting it happens as anxiety starts to rise. One way to cope with such a flood of anxiety is dissociating: taking a temporary mental reprieve from the situation. But the double whammy is that dissociation also cuts off the desire, which brings to surface another painful feeling: grief. So faced with no other option, perhaps projecting the rage is the only way to avoid an overwhelming surge of anxiety. So that’s possibly why you get the social anxiety line.
Another possibility is that, because of my own hysterical and obsessional defenses, I’m reticent to provide reassurance. If someone hits me with an “I have social anxiety”, I’m more than happy to respond with a platitude like, “yeah, anxiety can be a difficult experience” and move on. Refusing the projection and perhaps not being the most soothing person. But I’m okay with that. I don’t want to be cast as the villain.