The First 100 Google Image Search Results of Twink

The First 100 Google Image Search Results of Twink
by Be Oakley
2nd Edition
Edition of 200
84 Pages
Offset

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Twink was first published in 2014. This zine predated my founding of GenderFail in Fall 2015. In many ways it informed all of the future projects I would do with GenderFail. The project started with the goal of showcasing queer content that was not focused on the hyper sexualized cisgender gay male body. Twink destabilizes an overly sexualized fantasy world and also shows the slipperiness of language and meaning.

This new edition was created from the one surviving copy of the first and only edition printed in 2014. During late 2021 the surviving copy was scanned and edited into the work you are currently holding. The images evoke the time in which they were created, in the early to mid 2010s. In many ways these images perfectly play into the stereotype of the “Twink” archetype, showing a thin white young gay man over and over. These white and often idealized bodies are perpetuated as the standard that many gay men feel pressured to both become and lust after. In this it’s important to understand how heteronormativity has influenced homonormativity in its (conscious and unconscious) perpetuation of white supramacist and colonial perception of beauty.

Twink includes Whiteness as an Orientation by Sara Ahmed as an introduction to the 100 images. Ahmed work acts as an the key in how the viewer navigates the images.