White men on TikTok: We're kinky!
Plus: 'millennial maternal dread,' a clit Fitbit, literary it-girls, and more in the weekend roundup.
I dunno if you know, but white men are currently announcing their kinkiness on TikTok. A recent trend has dudes dancing and singing along to Jack Harlow’s “Lovin On Me”—specifically, the line, “I'm vanilla, baby, I'll choke you, but I ain't no killer, baby.” These videos clearly play with the association of “vanilla” with both skin color and non-kinky sexuality. The men in these TikToks seem to say: I’m one of those things, but not the other. I’m white and kinky. Also: I’m into breath play but not, you know, murder.
Okayyyy. Cool. Coolcoolcoolcool.
As far as I can tell, the TikTok trend took off thanks to Quinnickle, a cute-but-nerdy guy with a facility for the Rubik's cube. He spins that cube like it’s a sexual metaphor, then he acts out the song’s lyrics with some dance moves: a so-brief-you-could-miss-it choking gesture followed by a hand-waving “no.” He is smooth and charismatic. The Rubik’s cube is a pleasingly dissonant touch. It’s no surprise that the video has gone viral with 11 million views. Considering the broader TikTok trend, though, I find myself thinking about how white men are allowed to play at “badness” in ways that men of color are not.
They benefit from the double-meaning of “vanilla,” even when they’re talking about choking-but-not-murdering you.
Here come those links…
What happens after you’re dubbed a “literary it-girl”? “It’s hard to imagine male novelists being objectified on Reddit or threatened persistently over DM,” writes Allie Rowbottom.
Rachel Cohen at Vox considers the cause of millennial maternal dread. Jo Livingstone suggests that, oh, I don’t know, maybe “the heterosexual nuclear family as the compulsory unit of social organization has morally expired.”