Twink (gay slang)

"Twink" is gay slang for a gay man who is usually (but not always) in his late teens to twenties whose traits may include a slim to average physique, a youthful appearance that may belie an older age, having little or no body hair, flamboyancy, and general physical attractiveness. Twink is used both as a neutral descriptor, which can be contrasted with bear, and as a pejorative. The term is often modified by various descriptors (e.g. femme twink, Euro twink, muscle twink) and is commonly used in the gay pornography industry. The exact origins of the term twink are disputed. Some trace its first appearance to 1963, although it may be derived from an older British gay slang term twank, which means: "The quarry of a homosexual prostitute (male); a man willing and ready to become any dominant man's 'partner'. Oxford Dictionaries claims twink has origins in the 1970s. Another possible origin of the term may be a derivation from the American snack cake Twinkie, commonly regarded as the quintessential junk food. The food is described as "little nutritional value, sweet to the taste, and creme-filled"; by comparison, the young men are described as "short, and blond, and full of creme", with creme being a euphemism for semen. A backronym has been constructed for twink, according to which it stands for "'teenaged, white, into no kink", although these specified traits are not universally accepted as either necessary or sufficient to classify an individual as a "twink". In his book, Never Enough (2007), about a murder committed in 2003 in Hong Kong, described by the New York Times Book Review as hard-boiled clichés with a cartoonish first impression, Joe McGinniss describes a court case in which twink was defined as "a gay slang term used to denote an attractive, boyish-looking gay man between the ages of 18 and 23, slender ectomorph and with little or no body hair, often blond, often but not necessarily Caucasian." Essayist Zeb J. Tortorici notes that gay twink porn thrives on the production and performance of "consumable and visually/anally receptive masculinity.