Towards a Theory of the Tumblr Sexyman

https://www.tumblr.com/itsscaredycat/760002826385670144/so-ok-yeah-fine-i-watched-gravity-falls-again-and

Amazing sexy Bill Cipher art on tumblr.com 

    In this blog post I wish to define the fascinating phenomenon that is the tumblr sexyman. I will look at the various attempts people try to nail down this elusive concept, try to work out the logic underlying these attempts, and discuss their potential shortcomings. At the end, I will try to propose my own, hopefully satisfying, way of defining the tumblr sexyman. 

    It is worth noting that I am very much a tumblr outsider. Growing up, I was dimly aware of tumblr as the place to look at nice drawings of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes kissing, but even then tumblr has already passed its heyday. I was never on tumblr, I never participated in the fandom and the discourse, nor was I as a teenager shaped by my experience on the platform the way many in my circle were. My tumblr account was made on August 2024, and it is set up primarily as an extension of my instagram art account. It is for me a way to maximize the reach of my drawings, to "cover all bases".

     All that is to say, I come to the topic of the tumblr sexyman primarily as an intrigued outside observer who, while looking at the topic with a somewhat fresh point of view, also comes with many blind spots and lapses in knowledge. It is therefore not my intention to provide the ultimate correct definition of the tumblr sexyman, ending the conversation once and for all, but rather to contribute humbly to the existing discussion and offer some observations and thoughts. 

    My hope is that this post would at the very least provoke the reader to think about their own definition of the tumblr sexyman, and, better yet, go on to critique, elaborate, and refine the very rough definition I propose here. 

 

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      Let us begin with the most basic definition we can find. The definition of the tumblr sexyperson given by the Sexypedia (tumblr sexyman wiki) is as follows:

1. Proportionately large amounts of fanworks focusing on the sexyman (keep rules 3 and 4 in mind).
2. Proportionately large amounts of social media posts regarding the sexyman, usually with captions along the lines of "Hear me out...".
3. Fans shipping themselves or a character meant to represent themselves with the sexyman.
4. Fans shipping the nearest available character with the sexyman.
5. Humanizations of the sexyman or popular fandom-created designs for the sexyman.
6. If the sexyman does something morally wrong or questionable, fans defending them or simply ignoring what they did. This may cause controversy within the fandom.
7. Common shared fanon regarding the sexyman.
8. Fans focusing on one aspect of the sexyman, until it's their main personality trait within fan works (also known as Fanon Flanderization).
9. Fans creating their own characters based on the sexyman and/or the sexyman's design.

    The definition given here boils down to this: a tumblr sexyman is a character tumblr finds sexy and does fan-stuff with. Now while this is undoubtedly the most literal and correct definition of the concept, it is an empty and tautological definition that doesn't tell us very much about what sexymen are, what causes a character to be sexified, and what unites the sexymen as an object of study. 

     

    Yet any attempt to give a more concrete definition of the tumblr sexymen immediately runs into two difficulties. The first problem is that as the idea of tumblr sexymen becomes a meme, and as a result the internet becomes bemused by tumblr's propensity to sexualize seemingly random characters, it becomes increasingly hard to distinguish between sexymen that organically attract sexification and characters who are ironically sexified to parody that randomness. This is what I call the hear-me-out cake problem, after the phenomenon of influencers participating in the hear-me-out cake trend only to propose characters not out of genuine sexual attraction but out of a desire to shock and confuse (I know for a fact you do not find the quadratic formula sexy).

 

    As the distinguishing between genuine sexymen and ironic sexymen is outside the scope of this blog post, I will bracket the hear-me-out cake problem by taking Sexypedia at its word and limit the analysis to the sexymen that are categorized by the wiki to be in the Apollyan and Tiamat class –– that is, roughly speaking, the widely agreed upon sexymen that the general internet user can name. 

 

    The second problem with a unified definition of tumblr sexymen is the dazzling diversity of characters commonly understood to be tumblr sexymen. While the Once-ler and Alastor might have more in common with each other, the same can't be said about Sans Undertale. Yet any definition that excludes the behemoth that is Sans Undertale should immediately be discarded as a useless definition. Sans Undertale rebels against the usual characteristics of tumblr sexymen, yet he is unmistakably a sexymen (perhaps even the sexyman). In this way, Tumblr sexymen are similar to pornography, famously defined by US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart with a thought-terminating cliché: I know it when I see it. 

 

    Faced with an object as fuzzy and perplexing as the tumblr sexyman, it might be helpful to take a page from the analytical move made by Umberto Eco in his celebrated essay, Ur-fascism. In the essay, Eco demonstrates the slipperiness of defining fascism –– a set of ideas he describes as "a fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions." Instead, he understands fascism in a similar way Wittgenstein writes about games, "A game can be either competitive or not, it can require some special skill or none, it can or cannot involve money. Games are different activities that display only some 'family resemblance.'" That is to say, a game is not define by any single trait, but rather a cloud of many common traits. Game ABC could be said to be similar to game BCD and game CDE, and has nothing in common with game DEF. But because both ABC and DEF are similar to BCD, a relation is established, and the entire set can be grouped together as one thing (game). With this understanding, Eco goes on to list the 14 characteristics that characterize fascism. A movement need not satisfy all 14 of the criteria to be called fascist, nor is every movement that displays these traits fascist. He writes, "These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it."

 

    Most of the attempts to define tumblr sexymen operates in this vein. Sexypedia has a 84 (!!!) point list of "tropes/archetypes", many of which includes further sub-points. These includes European, eye imagery, object head, etc. The fantastic video essay by Izzzyzzz, The Phenomenon Of Tumblr Sexymen provide a 10 point list of features –– popularity, evilness, skinny white anime boy, non-human, formal wear, powerful, monster body parts, supposed sex appeal, has tons of AU work, and eventually becomes hated.

    In an attempt to streamline the existing lists I've seen, and partly for reasons that will become clear later, I wish to propose my own 6 point list of themes/elements, possessing one or two of which a character might be sexified:

1. Leaves space for imagination and artistic expression: The character tends to require or encourage artists to actively work to make them fuckable. In the process of transforming Bill Cipher into a sexy white boy and designing the alter egos of the Once-ler, members of the fandom get to flex their artistic muscles in dialogue with the community's desire as well as exploring their own. Related tropes: non-human, fanon splintering, object-head.
2. Fun to draw: Related to the first point, the characters having elements that are fun and novel to draw –– clown outfits, glitches, puppet elements –– encourages artistic expression which strengthens social bonds within fandoms. Related tropes: animal theming, eldritch, monster features, clown, well-dressed.
3. Outcast/loner: This is usually the result of a dark edge or backstory. The character might be unbothered by their lonerdom, in the case of Bill Cipher or Beetlejuice, or deeply affected by it, in the case of Loki or the Once-ler. At any rate, the character is alone in a goth and dark way. Related tropes: angst, capitalist, knifemurder, pathetic.
4. Marginalized identities and coding: usually LGBTQ+, mentally ill and/or neurodivergent, as well as signifiers related to these identities. Related tropes: LGBTQ+, neurodivergence, angst, parental issues, artsy, distinct voice, alternative fashion. 
5. Privileged statuses: usually white, thin, and/or upper-class, as well as signifiers related to these statuses. Related tropes: European, Burton, pale twink, royalty, well-dressed. 
6. Confident and/or charismatic: sometimes but not always a result of immense social, magical, or cosmic powers. Related tropes: artsy, deadpan snarker, dominating, egotistical, power, royalty.  

    This is all well and good, we have a shifting cloud of definition for our object. However, the family resemblance model of tumblr sexymen, like Eco's definition of fascism, has the disadvantage of being quite unsatisfying. For one, a family resemblance idea of tumblr sexyman views the phenomenon as basically a collection of traits arbitrarily grouped together. We start with the project of trying to understand the tumblr sexyman as one singular conceptual object, but this definition essentially throws its hands in the air. It cannot grasp the centre that holds these traits together, nor does it wish to say anything about this centre. In this way, this cloud of definitions that could mark a sexyman, that might allow the character to be sexified, is only a slightly more sophisticated version of "I know it when I see it." 

Was Foucault a tumblr sexyman? (No)

    To make matters worse, there is a sense that not only does the centre exist, that centre lies somewhere outside of these disparate traits. A character –– say for example, French post-structuralist philosopher and historian Michel Foucault –– may well exhibit a large amount of traits in the list (He's fun to draw; he was an outsider in society due to his queerness and mental illness; he had a dark past –– alleged sexual abuse of kids in Tunisia; he was thin, white, European, and upperclass; he was well-dressed, intelligent, and charismatic), but my conviction would be misplaced if I, by virtue of this, confidently declare Foucault a tumblr sexyman.  

     A way to solve this problem is of course to fall back to our first definition (the tumblr sexyman is a man tumblr finds sexy) and make that the essential quality of the tumblr sexyman. Doing so, we're able to anchor the manifold incidental traits, relegating them as merely the shape in which the tumblr sexymen appear. This is in fact the way Izzzyzzz rescues and stabilizes their 10 points list in the aforementioned video essay. The video tries to "[compile] a list of 10 traits tropes that these characters usually have." adding the usual family resemblance caveat that "they don't have to have all of them, but they should at least have a few. " Yet they also posit the first point –– popularity among tumblr users –– to be an absolutely non-negotiable criteria. "There's no leeway here," they explain, "the character has to at least have like a thousand pieces of fan art. There's got to be ask blogs, role plays, fan fictions, pinterest boards all dedicated to this one character." 

    However, this opposition between the essential quality of the tumblr sexyman and the incidental and arbitrary shapes of their appearance introduces its own troubles. The problem is this: why does the sexyman necessarily take on these particular shapes described in our cloud of traits? Why is it that these traits attract sexifying from fandoms? The answer seems simple: The sexyman takes these particular shapes because these are the things tumblr finds sexy. The cloud of traits thus once again become the essence, the truth of the sexyman. In this way, the truth of the tumblr sexyman is caught in the oscillation between the sexyman in its singularity and its diverse manifestation. The tumblr sexyman is the cloud of traits that tumblr happens to make popular; tumblr makes a character a popular because they exhibit this cloud of traits. A circular and ceaseless shifting of emphasis that cannot get us anywhere close to grasping the tumblr sexyman as an object. 

    The point of all this pedantry is simply to say that the tumblr sexyman is both "whatever tumblr finds sexy" and "the cloud of traits commonly exhibited by the tumblr sexymen." And it is in the working out of how these two poles relate and how they unite can we finally be able to understand the tumblr sexyman as one singular object. And it might be quite obvious from the way I structured and laid out my 6 point list of traits, in contradistinction with how lists like this are usually laid out, that the way I am trying to establish the relationship between these two poles is through a somewhat functionalist understanding of the tumblr sexyman –– that is to say, trying to locate the definition of the tumblr sexyman not in what it looks like but rather in what it's doing. 

    What I am proposing is this: the tumblr sexyman is best understood as a process. It is a process through which the primarily adolescent tumblr users may try out desires and identities with the materials available on the 2010s online spaces. Through the tumblr-sexyman-process, the teens are able to fashion for themselves desires and identities in collaboration and negotiation with the community at large. As such, the tumblr sexymen condenses the desire of the community –– desire at it's most vague and unspecific –– with the specific desire of the burgeoning individual. It is at once mainstream and counter-cultural, repressive and transgressive, assured and anxious, included and excluded, bland and interesting. It is this process, this drive, that motivates the popularity of the sexymen and necessitates their manifold appearance. And if the list of traits appears fuzzy and contradictory, it is precisely because it is a process working at the intersection of the individual struggling to assert themselves, and society with its most mundane common denominator –– that is to say, the tumblr sexyman is contradictory because it is the contradiction of adolescence working through and captured on the internet. 

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    I think this definition of tumblr sexymen as process is a pretty satisfactory one for this blog post, but it is not without faults and shortcomings. Therefore, as a closing remark, I would like to point to a few of the more significant limitations with this definition that requires more investigation, thinking, and refinement.

    To start, this definition assumes the identity of the average participant of the sexyman process to be the stereotypical tumblr teen –– that is, generally speaking, the white, middle class, artsy, angsty, queer, and neurodivergent child. While this might make intuitive sense, it is something that should be and could be verified through surveys. If this assumption turns out to be true, it might be interesting to further articulate why this might be the case; if it is not, we would need to discuss why certain elements of the cultural hegemony (whiteness, thinness, class identity) are reinforced while others (cis-heteronormativity, neuronormativity) are transgressed. 

    Secondly, as this definition stresses the developmental function of the tumblr-sexyman-process, it would imply that people grow out of their need to sexify as they fashion more complex and individualized desires and identities for themselves. As such, the definition is dangerously close to pathologizing the desires and identities fashioned through the tumblr-sexyman-process, and perhaps even pathologizing adolescence itself. However, the fact remains that many adults continues to desire tumblr sexymen no less passionately then the so-called tumblr teens. 

    I can think of two ways of bypassing this problem, neither of which is ideal: 1) maintain the definition as it is and understand the adults who enjoy tumblr sexyman as being improperly individualized. This solution has the flaw of being judgmental and condescending. 2) Expand the definition to include the construction of all kinds of identities and desires –– tumblr sexyman as a macro process lasting one's entire life. As long as the individual constructs and negotiate their identities and desires with society (they always do, as desire and identity are always social), the tumblr-sexyman-process continues in perpetuity in a more and more defused form. This solution is a bit better, but it forgoes the specificity of the tumblr sexyman altogether. 

    Perhaps there are more elegant ways to address these shortcomings, perhaps these are no shortcomings at all, or perhaps these problems prove themselves to be so intractable it points to an opening to construct a more sophisticated definition of the tumblr sexyman. At present, I will leave these questions in the hands of more skilful thinkers to tackle.