The Twink to MILF pipeline
age in, not out
Six years ago the New York Times welcomed us to the age of the twink. The cultural impact of Luca Guadagnino’s movie “Call Me By Your Name” and Olly Alexander’s band, Years & Years, were presented as evidence of this new era, providing as the article put it, “a new answer to the problem of what makes a man.”
As much of life pre-pandemic does, 2018 seems but a distant memory now, so let me refresh you. The UK government was muddling towards a Brexit deal at the time, in the US Trump was fucking up the Iranian nuclear agreements, internationally #metoo was going hard. The suggestion of that NYT article was that twinks had broken out into the zeitgeist at that particular moment because they offered an “anti-alpha softness,” so very much needed in the age of Putin, Erdogan and Kim. They were the antidote to abusive masculinity and all of its bloody outcomes. Twinks, the argument goes, act as inoffensive objects of desire, they are living embodiment of Lisa Simpson’s Non-Threatening Boys magazine, if you will.
The effects of all the c.2018 upheaval are still very much with us today. UK living standards continue to plummet post-Brexit, we shudder at the idea of Trump’s attempted return to power, and shake our heads in shame that, with the exception of one major criminal case and few new TV show commissions, it’s business as usual this side of #metoo. A quick scout about in 2024 will tell you, the twinks have failed us. The consolation they were tasked to provide has proved real thin soup.
Where are they now, our saviours? Troye Sivan is advertising Magnum ice cream bars, Olly Alexander was roundly trounced at Eurovision, Lil Nas X is locked in a perpetual squabble with his label. Even the CEO of twinkdom, Timothée Chalamet, has been outclassed on every level by his anima, Zendaya. I’m sorry boys but you have missed the mark. It’s apparent to myself and everyone else on the UN Security Council that it’s time to bring out the big guns; MILFS.
Truly this is the age of the sexy older woman. NB that just as the NYT ascribed twink status to several heterosexual men, giving it a new plasticity, I am putting forward a clear agenda that anyone can be a MILF if they believe themselves to be one (and wear enough leopard print).
Skinny fuck boys are well and good if you want to split a shake and paint each others nails, but when the world is on fire, only Mommy can make it all better. You wouldn’t trust a twink with anything more important than a Diet Coke, but a MILF is your domme and your spiritual director, the one who holds you close in strict control though terrifying times. Twink is an absence of substance, MILF is the presence that fills the void. Jennifer Coolidge, Gillian Anderson, Halle Berry, Nigella, Naomi; these are the titans who offer us succour now. Unlike twink, MILF is an expansive category. Mommy can be soft or stern, glamorous or homey, and despite its pornographic appeals, it isn’t a two-dimensional position. This stance is contradictory maybe, but it is embodied. To paraphrase Glenn Marla’s truest aphorism, “There is no wrong way to be a MILF”.
And I should know, for sure, haven’t I had the rare experience of transitioning between the two categories? I didn’t ever explicitly opt in to either identity, they were both sort of foisted on me by dime store svengalis and other admirers. But as Bowie once told UNCUT, “I guess I am what the greatest number of people think I am,” and besides I do look smashing in a pencil skirt and a silk blouse.
I always hated being referred to as a twink (obviously). I felt that it undermined everything I wanted to say about myself and my gender, my work even. Still, I ran into it for decades, couldn’t ever get around it, no matter how I argued the toss. Time and time again people (usually older men) would insist upon forcing this identification on me. In New York I used to do cabaret turns in bikinis fashioned out of gum balls and hot glue, with the most insane make-up looks, channelling a sort of Acid Queen Crawford. I remember how one distinguished gentleman of the demimonde took me aside after a show and gave me a strangely paternal lecture, about how I needed to quit it with this draggy nonsense and accept that I was a handsome young man, a dandy even. I felt quite chastised. I very much admired this man and it was embarrassing to be patronised so, but also humiliating to feel so completely misread.
Years later in Berlin I was one-third of a spoof witch-house band (bc OF COURSE I was) with my friends Nikolaj and Josephinex. I was the femme fatale front woman, in a black bob wig, a red trench coat and stiletto heels. I called myself Anna Mosity and sang lead on our one ballad, Opportunities for Girls. As in New York, I was abraded after a performance, this time by the club promoter. He was familiar with with my output in other media and was horrified to see me degrading myself like this. A little mascara if you must, was his insistence, but stay on the right side of the line. You see twinkdom is a black hole, its gravitational pull impossible to overcome, it will pull you in, unwilling, and it will crush you. Coincidentally, when the NYT article in question ran it was illustrated with an image from the German modelling agency I was signed to.
I had flounced already out of fashion in 2010 after a shoot for POP magazine, which was supposed to be about expansive gender expression and style and blah-blah-blah, but ended with me standing around for hours in a Paul Smith frock, crowbarred into size 7 shoes, by the world’s most condescending stylist, who spoke over me to her assistant in French when I asked if I could change into something easier to sit in.
The pictures were pretty fab tbqh, and for a while my piccy was the header on Tavi Gevinson's blog (real ones will know that was a thing). Tragically the images ran in the magazine under some loathsome headline about boys being girls (or some other riff on that bloody Blur song) even though several of the models (though not myself at the time) were out trans women. The whole experience was generally so demeaning I swore I’d never do something like that ever again and I didn’t. Until I got scouted in Germany a few years later. The agency ofc promised that they didn’t see gender as black and white, and indeed they do *now* have a “They” board, but at the time I was lumped in with the boys. I thought it’d be fine, I was in fact extremely flattered it was a very, very cool agency. Everyone they handled was utterly emaciated and looked very unhappy, stomping their way down the Balenciaga runway.
The first casting (which had to be endured to even make it onto the books) was so terrifying in itself, I would’ve probably signed on to work for Michael Kors in pure gratitude for having survived it. I saw that I had a friend at the casting, Ester (the clue is in the name!) so I stood with her and watched as wannabe after wannabe went up to the desk, faintly trembling. Ester was already established as a film maker. I remember asking her, “Why are we here?” and how she shrugged “I don’t know. We already have a career. Why are we here?”
The boy in front of us was told, “Take off your shirt,” he did so and was then dismissed, “Too fat,” and abruptly swept aside. Ester and I were horrified, but also I suppose, complicit? We both signed.
After the initial corporeal assessment we had to do a little impromptu shoot, which was fine. Actually it was quite fun, I gave it the full Hepburn/Avedon. Why they didn’t know at this point that I was not for them remains a total mystery, I was a total disparity from the first. I got some really groovy castings though, Prada was a trip, walking up and down at different tempos in a video for Miuccia, but I booked almost zero. Clients said they liked my look but needed something more conventional. It was all I could do not to roll my eyes at my agent and say, “No shit! They want to sell jeans babes, not curling irons!” The one big gig I did get was to walk for Rick Owens in Paris, but only on the condition that I cut my hair. I politely declined, and was quietly dropped from the agency.
I’ve had a few run-ins with fashion since, usually when someone finds me on social media and says that so-and-so or such-and-such a magazine wants to do a gender bending thing. I always tell them that I’m glad that they thought of me but that they should know I’m not a man, and don’t want to be framed as any kind of fashion drag queen. Inevitably the convo creaks to a close after that. Such is life, I can’t very well go back in the closet, can I? Not even for a free sweater and guestlist (standing) to the show at LFW.
Not that it was all horror. I did have one pretty great late-career moment when I got a call to go into McQueen that same day, the day as it happened that I was having my first Covid jab. I arrived straight from the vaccine clinic, in something extremely unsuitable for a casting I’m sure, on account of it being mid-pandemic. I thought I’d smile for a Polaroid maybe and go home, but no, I had to try on pieces from the upcoming collection and meet Sarah Burton. I was wearing a scrunchie. I vividly remember that. I met Sarah Burton whilst wearing a scrunchie. She was very nice and the clothes were divine but, perhaps unsurprisingly, it didn’t pan out.
Probably I was getting a bit long in the tooth for the game anyway, and in the meantime I’ve segued from twink to MILF. This you see, is how I know where strength, power and mystique truly lie. Unlike twink positioning, you can’t really age out of MILFdom, which is another of its very many points of appeal. Besides it can only be a matter of time before the older transsexual woman gigs come through, then I’ll claim my rightful place on the side of a bus advertising moisturising shower gels or oat milk truffles. If not I can I always fall back on my writing, I guess. Dream big guys!