If there’s one thing that unites all suburban teenage goths from the 1970s through to the 2020s, its Anne Rice vampires. It’s Louis and Lestat against the world. You can be a extreme as you want, a velvet-draped Edgar Allen Poe Acolyte poet, a Bauhaus Batcave backcombed traditionalist, a greasy nu-metal clown-faced grebo, a tumblr soft-goth dark-academia love witch, or even a TikTok GRWM Liberty Spikes scare-maze/Dragula aspiring star, Anne Rice vampires will have touched your life in some way. For me, as a 34 year old millennial, it was the infamous Queen of the Damned film from 2002 starring Stuart Townsend as Lestat, and Aaliyah as Akasha, mother of all vampires. This was considered a bit of a tacky, trashy, pulpy experience (how can a story about a vampire becoming a rock star not be?), but Lestat and his gang have come back to public attention in the 2020s through the very slick, well made AMC television series, recontextualising our favourite bloodsuckers for a modern audience.

In 1976, Anne Rice released her debut novel Interview With The Vampire and she changed the world forever. The first book of what came to be known as the Vampire Chronicles focuses on Louis de Pointe du Lac, an immortal vampire, recounting his life story to a reporter, starting with his life as the master of a Louisiana plantation in the late 1700s, following through to his relationship with the decadently hungry Lestat de Lioncourt and the proto-family they create, and eventually to his escape to Europe and ensuing search for other vampires. It garnered mixed reviews critically, but it found its audience and soon became a cult obsession. The text itself is exciting and poignant, part dark historical romp tinged with romance, part existential essay on living through and losing love. As has been reported before, Rice lost her own young daughter shortly before writing her novel, and thus the character of Claudia, a child vampire doomed to be five years old forever more, takes on a deeply emotional quality, a symbol of grief and its attendant atrophy.

The 1980s brought further installments of the Vampire Chronicles; The Vampire Lestat, Queen of the Damned, and more, forming a ten book series after which Anne Rice declared the story finished. After her return to Catholicism though she would revise this statement, and write a further three Lestat books, including one where he goes to Atlantis, which sounds absolutely wild. The lore becomes complex and strangely textured; we meet ancient vampires and body snatchers, Lestat hangs out with the Devil himself in a Divine Comedy-esque retelling of world history and we are introduced to a cavalcade of apex spiritual entities. My favourite is Akasha, the First Vampire, who, frozen since the time of Ancient Egypt, is reanimated by Lestat’s sick electric guitar music and immediately starts trying to take over the world by eliminating all men. Quite relatable honestly.

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Interview With the Vampire was made into a film in 1994, starring Brad Pitt as Louis and Tom Cruise as Lestat. Anne Rice famously was very against the casting of Tom Cruise, talking at length about how wrong he was for her favourite anti-hero, but after she saw his interpretation on screen, she changed her mind and apologised, calling him wonderful. Indeed, Cruise’s performance was unlike anything he had done before, no hunky leading-man nonsense here, just Lestat’s capricious evil, his feminine cruelty, his vindictive humour, his horny little freakiness that all came together to make a far more memorable character than Pitt’s strong and stable Louis. An extremely gay fact about this casting process is that at one point, Anne Rice thought that Hollywood wouldn’t be able to cope with the homoerotic nature of Louis and Lestat’s relationship, so she rewrote Lestat to be a female character, so the pair could be openly romantic. The prime actress considered to play a female Lestat was CHER, who even co-wrote an original song for the production, but all this was thrown out after the casting of Pitt and Cruise. Cher’s rejected song Lovers Forever can be found mutated into a dance-pop form on her 2013 album Closer To The Truth. Who knew?

The second film to come out of the Vampire Chronicles was Queen of the Damned in 2002, made by an entirely different team than the first one, and designed to be more of a stand alone feature. The very sexy Stuart Townsend plays Lestat, a slumbering vampire awoken by the songs of a punk band, who then rises to rockstardom and accidentally disturbs the sleep of Akasha, the ancient Egyptian vampire queen. Thematically, this is actually both the second and third books fused together into a monster mash of Lestat’s backstory and Akasha’s dystopian future, and it really does it for me. The soundtrack is dirty, full of nu-metal bangers and grimy guitars, the clothes are insane, punk fashions made in nickelodeon colours shot through a gunge tinted filter, and the cast are great. The big star here is Aaliyah as Akasha, who actually died at the tender age of 22 in a plane crash before the film had even been released. Her performance is truly great, the right mixture of raw sexual magnetism and camp-vamp-knowningness. Her undulating dance of death as she sets fire to a vampire bar can not be easily forgotten and became inspiration for many drag queens, nightlife creatures and showgirls in the years to come (look up Dominique Jackson performing as Akasha at Miss Continental 2002, back when she was known as Tyra Allure).

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Queen of the Damned wasn’t big slick cinema, it was something brought out at sleepovers, kind-of-scary without being pure horror, kind-of-sexy without being porn, but wholly sensory and a fully realised manifesto on baby-goth coolness. Lestat and Akasha making out in a hot tub filled with rose petals as the world burns around them makes for the most aspirational kind of boy soup. But Akasha’s impact wasn’t just for teens with Deftones mix CDs and too much eyeliner, she was implicated in a highly publicised murder in Scotland. 23-year-old Allan Menzies killed his best friend in 2003 and attempted to drink his blood after claiming that Akasha had appeared to him and promised him immortality if he made sacrifices in her name. Menzies was convicted of murder and died in prison in 2004, and Akasha joins the ranks of fictional horror characters that inspired real murders, alongside the likes of Slenderman and Holden Caulfield.

Louis and Lestat lay dormant for a few years, constantly bubbling away in the fandom, but out of sight of the mainstream until a new adaptation came out in 2022. After purchasing the rights to eighteen of Anne Rice’s books, the AMC network announced Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire as a multi-series television show, seasons one and two focusing on the first novel, and the soon-to-be-released third season being about The Vampire Lestat. The series, frankly, is incredible. It recontextualises Louis and Lestat’s relationship and position in historical New Orleans in the best way, intersecting with the politics of the period and creating dynamics heretofore unexplored in Anne Rice’s own novels. Lestat remains pretty much the same, a glamorous, decadent, evil hedonist thirsting for death and destruction, but Louis is reimagined as creole brothel owner, a man with a little power but who is consistently blocked by the wealthy white men that run the city. This reframing of Louis from wealthy plantation owner to black business man brings a whole host of new issues Louis must face, including how he and Claudia (aged up, but also black in this version) interact with Lestat’s eurocentric aristocrat narcissism.

One of the most satisfying changes made to the narrative is the amplification of what was a subtle homoerotic subtext into a full blown romantic affair, complete with sex in coffins, cannibalistic threesomes, vampires telling coming out stories, and even more outrageous dandyism. Louis and Lestat grow together with an all consuming love that completely consumes both of them, almost reminiscent of Mina and Dracula in Coppola’s Dracula, before the inevitable breakdown of the relationship that leads to violence, estrangement and attempted murder. Season 2 sees Louis and Claudia escape to Paris in search of more vampires where Louis finds new love in Armand, but is constantly devilled by the memory of Lestat. Jacob Anderson is a fantastic Louis, brooding and cautious, desperate for the connections that seem so lost to him now, but of course, Sam Reid as Lestat is the breakout star. This role is so expressive and delicious that it can’t help becoming the audience’s favourite, much like it became Anne Rice’s favourite to write. Reid is wild and unhinged, aggressive and strong but still with moments of uncanny vulnerability that touch the viewer.

The upcoming Season 3, named The Vampire Lestat, is making more buzz than a thousand beehives and I can’t wait for it. Lestat is such a sexy and charismatic presence that there is no doubt that he can carry his own series. How the screenwriters adapt his story will be interesting, and I wonder how much can be recontextualised, like Louis’ story. Will he become a 00s goth icon like Stuart Townsend, or a late 70s prog rockstar like in the book? Sam Reid not only recorded his own music for the show, but gave a live concert at the Beacon Theatre in New York completely in character for The Vampire Lestat: One Night Only, singing songs like Butterscotch Bitch and All Fall Down, and the audience went feral. Whilst I can’t wait for the new season to air and to delve more into Lestat’s story, one thought refuses to leave my head: Will we see Akasha?

Akasha is so important to the canon of pop culture vampires because she teaches us that vampirism is not owned by whiteness. We’ve all seen decades of European aristocratic bloodsuckers, but to be told that the most ancient vampire, the First Vampire, was an African woman breaks the narrow views of a Tim-Burton-esque white-bread goth culture. Our black vampires from cinematic history, Grace Jones in Vamp, Teresa Graves in Vampira, Sanaa Lathan in Blade, all stack up to help usher in a new diversity in vampire story-telling, through to new cult hits like Sinners, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, and Abigail (v underrated).

I love vampires, I love doomed romance, I love rock music, I love nihilistic hedonism, andI love ancient vampire queens. I love Interview With the Vampire, I love The Vampire Lestat, and I love Queen of the Damned. Anne Rice owns my whole heart, and we can do nothing now but celebrate the vampire legacy she has left for us to revisit and reinterpret whatever ways we like. Long Live Lestat.

Non Threatening Boys* is Polyester’s platform for exploring all things masculine. To read more of our work, visit our Dollhouse platform, and subscribe to get Non Threatening Boys* directly to your inbox every other week.

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Every drink is $20 now. Those drinks turn into more. Suddenly we’re slumped over a sticky table at Taco Bell and contemplating a split on a $40 Uber. But to me, the conversations and memories (or lack there of) from a night out are - or were - priceless.

That was until I met the wine night.

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[spoilers for Euphoria season three abound below!]

On this week’s Euphoria, Nate Jacobs (Jacob Elordi) met a gruesome end by way of a coffin and a snake bite (sounds like a night out for me aged 19 at my local emo bar, but I digress). He was one in a long line of “complex” TV bad guys - and while I have been compelled by many a complicated hero over the years, like Jon Hamm as Don Draper in Mad Men, or, obviously, the great James Gandalfini as Tony in The Sopranos, I do wonder whether it’s time that the cuties got a look in.

I’m not talking about Nice Guys – the likes of Ted from How I Met Your Mother and JD in Scrubs get a bit too “where’s my hug???” for my liking - I just mean silly little sweeties who are there to offer a bit of levity, because so often, they’re the cherry on top of a great show. Here are five of my fave true TV NTB*s - they may not be towering characters or performers, but they always make me that little bit keener to watch the shows they appear in.

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Gerran Howell as Dennis Whittaker in The Pitt

Obviously, the cutest person in The Pitt is Dr. Mel, played by Bryan Cranston’s daughter Taylor Dearden, but in the silver medal position is Dr. Whittaker. In season one, he’s the butt of the joke (he does get pissed on more than everyone else put together, after all), but Welsh actor Gerran Howell plays him with total sincerity - his reaction to a particular patient’s death in season two was genuinely really moving - and a little precociousness that it’s impossible not to respond warmly to.

Alan Carr (all appearances)

This is one for the Brits, though, global audience: if you are not watching the UK’s version of Celebrity Traitors (as Samara Weaving recently pointed out in her Polyester Trash Talk interview), you’re absolutely missing out. This is largely because of Alan Carr, a UK comedian, presenter, and general national treasure - one of his TV shows is literally just him decorating a house with his bestie - who was far and away the star of season one.

While, as a Traitor, he should have been a controversial figure, it basically just made him more universally beloved - especially the part when he burst into tears upon winning the show, because keeping up the lie of Traitor-dom had been so hard. Also, Polyester EIC Ione recently sent me a video of him at a surprise birthday party that was thrown for him and it almost made me cry because he was so adorably shocked. Whenever anyone asks me who my dream NTB* cover star is, my answer is always Alan - so if anyone can make it happen, hook me up.

Ekow Quartey as JJ in Amandaland

This is another very British reference, but again, I do have to strongly recommend Amandaland, which is basically about middle-aged parents living in a London suburb. It features the fab Lucy Punch as delusional lifestyle influencer Amanda, and her group of friends. Sweetest of all among the group is JJ, stepdad to teenager Ned, and big old nerd, whose fact-finding tendencies sometimes get the better of him (like in season two where his hunger for discovering the source of a confusing monthly bank charge). Ekow Quartey plays him as a true and total delight and I cannot wait to see more of him next season.

Ronald Gladden as himself in Jury Duty

Being thrown into the weirdest situation of all time - you are enlisted as a juror on a trial where the jury (which includes James Marden from Hairspray) gets sequestered and therefore cannot contact the outside world - is bad enough. Being thrown into that whole thing while you’re the only person not in on the fact that the action is actually being filmed for a (fictional) TV show is quite another - but Ronald Gladden, the star of Jury Duty, somehow effortlessly comes across as an extremely sweet guy, who is always on board with the other jurors’ stupid plans and schemes to pass the time. I have no idea how he manages it because in his shoes I’d have probably throttled someone.

Martin Short and Steve Martin as Oliver and Charles in Only Murders In The Building

Probably the most self-explanatory entry on my whole list. If there are hi-jinks to be getting into, these guys will be right at the centre of it - frequently I find myself chuckling and shaking my head at their silliness, which is exactly what I am after from my TV NTB*s. Impossible to see them and not immediately wish they were your grandads.

Comment your fav TV NTB*s below <3

Non Threatening Boys* is Polyester’s platform for exploring all things masculine. To read more of our work, visit our Dollhouse platform, and subscribe to get Non Threatening Boys* directly to your inbox every other week.

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Drudging through the discourse in algorithmic echo chambers, a singular voice cuts through it all. With all the wit and fervour of someone unafraid to immediately open their front camera and hit record, Evan Lazarus is a Brooklyn-based comedian, writer, and Housewives expert.

On their Instagram and Tiktok, Evan’s quick cultural commentary interacts with and fuels online conversations, with up to the minute monologue videos and stories, and their newly-launched Substack thoroughly reflects on media moments.

From thoughtful conversations around scripted television in their acclaimed Girls Rewatch podcast to discussing and interviewing reality television stars, Evan’s analysis has catapulted their voice across the internet and beyond. Driven by boldness and authenticity, here Evan walks us through how their commentary manages to stand out among the overwhelming amount of online topics and takes - and how they ensure their point of view always feels totally their own.

Understand what you want to talk about and have real thoughts about it

I do lean towards topics that are fairly buzzy, because people naturally want to have those conversations. I find that this shared broad interest allows me to have my own fun with any conversation. There’s so many shows I gravitate towards, like Girls or Sex and City that we talk about on Girls Rewatch, because they allow their audiences to participate in crafting the narrative. I think that’s why I feel that reality TV is such a great way for us to communicate. Because reality stars aren’t actors, there is a level of authenticity that draws us to reality TV. You, the audience, is the one that applies the archetypes, rather than a writer. In that way, our analysis lets us be our own writers.

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Date my bestie!

• A newspaper “Personal” style post which advertises your bestie to possible boos (think of those events you see on TikTok where people recommend their mates as dates via PowerPoints)

• First, tell us about your bestie - what they’re like, what they’re into, why they’re amazing - be as specific as you can

• Then, tell us about the qualities they’re looking for

• 50 words max - keep it short, snappy, and representative of their true essence!

Example:

Sweet, smart dreamgirl based in Bristol, 28, interested in illustration and finding the best croissants around, seeks hot lesbian bf for bakery crawls and bookshop binges. She’s looking for someone considerate who cares about feminist politics and wants to get a dog and go on trips to the beach <3

Send your submissions to hello@polyesterzine.com with the subject line PERSONALS SUBMISSION. When the issue is live, we’ll give people an email to contact if they’re interested in any of the ads, and with everyone’s permission, we’ll put them in touch with you.

Must be 18+ to enter. Applications close on midnight, 24th May.

Twenty five years ago, in 2001, something happened that changed the face of teenage goth boys for decades: Donnie Darko came out in cinemas. Written and directed by Richard Kelly, and starring Y2k heartthrob Jake Gyllenhaal as the dreamiest juvenile delinquent since James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, Donnie Darko gave bad boys everywhere a darker image to aspire to than the bubblegum teen flicks of the late 90s and early 00s. Gone was the 80s jock-nerd dichotomy, no more 90s freaks-and-geeks style besties (the coven-based comradeship of The Craft is distinctly absent here), this was for the outsiders and the weirdos, and, more importantly, for the boys.

Donnie Darko is the story of a troubled teen who narrowly avoids a fatal accident when a jet engine falls through the roof of his house and is subsequently thrust into a parallel timeline as the universe tries to right itself and adapt to his continued existence. A mysterious entity in a monstrous bunny costume called Frank frequently appears to Donnie and persuades him to act on his darkest impulses, telling him the world will end in 28 days.

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There’s also something about time travel and destiny, but the specifics tend to blur in service to the general “cool vibes” of the bigger picture, plus it gives its audience something to dissect and discuss when thinking about the film later (imagine that, films that trust in its audience’s media literacy, crazy). It features all the familiar tropes of the teen films that came before it; well-meaning-but-distant parents, sassy siblings, high school bullies with mullets, a deeply sensitive English teacher (shoutout Drew Barrymore), a romance with a new girl that culminates in tentative teen intercourse, sticking it to the man, wild house parties, and, of course, Halloween, just all with the Edge factor dialled up to eleven. This is John Hughes for the nu metal generation.

Throughout the film, we see Donnie speaking to the therapist his parents are paying to find out what’s wrong with him, and she diagnoses everything from daylight hallucinations to paranoid schizophrenia. I think it’s here that we start to see how Donnie took hold of the public imagination. Whilst we may have seen tough outsider boys in school films before, such as Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club and Heath Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You, they were always played off as being misunderstood hoodlums who are redeemed by the love of a girl, usually a haughty one that they managed to knock off her pedestal during the course of their flirtations.

Donnie is different, he isn’t a young offender acting out of boredom - he has his own distinct pathology, an ongoing mental health crisis that will not be averted. He cannot be saved by the princess: he is the sleeping dragon that lives under the castle. His problem is not one that can be solved by community, or love, or softness; the entire world is ending because he is Lonely. It reminds me of the children’s book Angry Arthur which features a little boy so furious that he ends up ripping the fabric of the universe apart, just because he can. Donnie Darko gets into fights, commits arson, and even guns down his peers, all because he doesn’t know what else to do with his big feelings.

A new delinquent idol was born from this film, a new male archetype for the lost boys of the middle classes to emulate and aspire to be. Donnie laughs in the face of parental concern and rolls his eyes and sulks in the grandest of sprawling suburban houses, he stands up to the pedantic injustices of his conservative school teachers and cuts them down with his dry wit, he fights (and beats) the bullies who are even more nihilistic than him, but more importantly, he creeps people out. He talks to people who aren’t there, sees things no one else can, obsesses over books no one else has read, he even shocks his usually unflappable therapist by starting to touch himself in front of her whilst under hypnosis. He practically invented the Stay Out Of My Dark Twisted Mind If You Want The Voices In My Head To Stop Laughing At You edgelord persona that swamped the chatrooms of the early 00s internet, fuelled by goth music and the reactionary moral panic. He scares parents in the same way that the Columbine shooters did, but appeals to the downtrodden teens looking for a Robin Hood for the new millennium, someone who can cut down the establishment and look out for the weirdos who think they’ve been forgotten.

Like all good young toughs, Donnie also brought about a sartorial revolution. Original Rebel James Dean had his rumpled hair and red Harrington, Marlon Brando had his leather jacket in 1953’s The Wild One, pieces now considered timeless classics, but Donnie had his own flair. Despite spending most of the film in his drab school uniform, his grey zip-up hoodie became an iconic piece, one that touched such a visceral memory in me that it sent my mind reeling. It wasn’t just a hoodie, not the baggy, oversized solid hoodies of today, all 2010s Ariana Grande and fleece lined Oodies, it was ratty and thin with skinny arms, and it sent the boys wild.

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The shape of this hoodie was everywhere, as though H&M had taken the exact pattern from the costume designer and produced it endlessly for well over a decade. Even the specific proportions of the hood just screams 2003 to me, not quite big enough to cover the whole head, but enough to feel moody with the requisite floppy fringe hanging out front. To me and my generation, Donnie Darko is a film immeasurably linked to the early 00s due to it’s impact on audiences, coming out on VHS and DVD and hitting the schoolkid sleepover circuit from around 2002 onwards, but also in its visual elements. Myspace ruled the teen world and Emo (in the way we remember it in the 00s) was about to explode, all deep dark sensitivity, lyrical nihilism and self diagnosed mental conditions, and Donnie Darko widened the gateway for it to hit the mainstream. This specific film reads as so 00s to me that on my recent rewatch, I was shocked to see that the film is actually set in 1988.

There seem to be very few recognisable 80s markers in Donnie Darko, at least to a non-American. The clothes are not big blown out pastels and shoulder pads, but standard school uniforms worn in varying degrees of sloppiness, and rather drab officewear for the adults, clothes that look like they’d have been worn by real people, which is what makes Donnie’s specific pieces seem more impactful. For years, one of the standard boy-halloween costumes was a skeleton print on a black top and trousers with a grey hoodie on top, and everyone recognised it as Donnie. Perhaps it is also my Britishness that obfuscates the film’s time period, because the political conversations about the Dukakis election mystified me at the time, and still do today. There is, however, an exceptionally good soundtrack featuring bangers from Joy Division, Tears for Fears, and Echo and The Bunnymen, but as young teens it just came off as cool music rather than 80s indicators.

Donnie Darko holds up in ways I didn’t expect, being not just a nostalgic, dark teen romp, but an indicator of the culture to come. The dark sensitivity of Edward Cullen, the teenage angst of 00s pop punk, the mind-bending multiverse speculative fiction of Christopher Nolan, it can all be traced back to Donnie and his looping storyline, maybe not as its originator, but as something that primed us for what was on the horizon.

It also gave us one of the five publicly acceptable ways for school-age goth boys to dress during that decade, the others being modelled on Billy Joe Armstrong, Pete Wentz, Gerard Way, and Brendon Urie. In some ways, Donnie Darko was all of us, troubled by mysterious-but-certain-death in a post 9/11 future, but he was able to buy himself time. What happens when you stray from the path laid out for you? You get to experience the joys life has to offer; young love, righteous anger, violent justice, personal glory, and even if the world rights itself later and puts you back on your inevitable path to middle age and corporate life, you will always have the memories of what you have been. I have always loved Donnie Darko - and I have never once doubted my commitment to Sparkle Motion!

Non Threatening Boys* is Polyester’s platform for exploring all things masculine. To read more of our work, visit our Dollhouse platform, and subscribe to get Non Threatening Boys* directly to your inbox every other week.

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Raven-Symoné walks through a crowded train station in the middle of Barcelona. She starts hearing voices, seemingly in her head, and can’t make sense of anything. But when she turns around, her three former bandmates and best friends are standing there in pyjamas, singing.

“This song was written for four part harmony…” they say.

Raven rolls her eyes, laughs, and hugs her friends tighter than ever before. She officially rejoins The Cheetah Girls, after a simple vulnerable display of sisterhood.

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When the movie ends, I hear an aggressive set of footsteps coming down the stairs into the basement. I’m curled up on the floor in my blanket and slippers. Three girls beside me. It’s the man of the house - my friend Abigail’s father. He looks at me like I’m on America’s Most Wanted.

“I think it’s about time you head up to the couch.” I walk upstairs following closely behind him - looking back at my Cheetah Girls.

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In June last year, my girlfriend and I were watching a music video chart show on free to air TV (yes, those still exist.) In between the familiar megahits by popstars like Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan and Charli XCX emerged a figure that was completely unknown to me. Number 3 in the official charts was a song called ‘Back to Friends’ by an artist named Sombr.

This was the first time in my life I’d seen something clearly extremely popular and had literally never heard of it before. I watched the music video in fascination, witnessing this depressed Timothee Chalamet and Finn Wolfhard composite croon about a lost love over slow motion clips of dead eyed skinny white women holding red plastic cups at a house party. The video was, of course, interspersed with a performance scene, featuring Sombr in a suit, backed by a band and belting into a microphone, while images of a white rose losing its petals, or sometimes lava erupting, was projected onto a wall behind them. I turned to my girlfriend and said: “This is the most 19-year-old shit I have ever seen.”

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Sure enough, following a cursory Google, my suspicions were confirmed. Shane Boose, known professionally as Sombr, was born July 2005 in New York City. Despite my initial intrigue, however, the next day I continued on with my life and forgot about him.

But over the next few weeks, however, it seemed as if Sombr was following me everywhere. ‘Back to Friends’ played at nearly every shopping centre I went into. Another song, ‘Undressed’, infiltrated the radio as I listened on the way to work. My friend casually mentioned that her 19-year-old brother is a fan. With my curiosity piqued once again, I revisited the video for ‘Back to Friends.’ On rewatch, I realised that I’d succumbed to the thought pattern that plagues everyone as they begin to reckon with the reality they’re no longer part of the 18-24 age bracket: I dismissed something not made specially for me as meritless. I saw the music and its visual accompaniment as shallow and pointless, a vapid replica of the Tumblr aesthetics of yesteryear. I thought to myself: these poor kids don’t have anything new to enjoy.

When Sombr was nominated for Best New Artist at this year’s Grammys, I stumbled upon an interview where he said the person he was most excited to see at the award show was Harry Styles. Suddenly, it all clicked into place. These male musicians of ten years prior aren’t his peer - they’re his influences. Sombr is the new age male popstar, the latest in a long line of male musicians who darken their aesthetic to legitimise their pop music.

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In a progressively online world that disproportionately portrays toxic masculinity as the default for young men, male pop acts that centre romance and heartbreak can play an unexpected role in the conversation: it presents a counter argument that a man unabashedly yearning for a woman can be financially successful.

By 2026 standards, to be a young man publicly expressing sadness over a breakup could be considered radical, and it’s only logical that in between Instagram Reels of Clavicular rage bait, a tall young guy with shaggy hair singing lines like, “I’m looking at you and you’re looking at me” feels like a breath of fresh air. As such, male pop acts straddle the coming of age market where their audience of majority young women, all of whom in their own ways are experiencing an in-between of life, can find solace in a male figure who is both romantic and complex, but ultimately unthreatening.

The first musical act that resonates in the bridge between adolescent and adult feels like the creation of a new world, and usually marries the same melodic patterns we recognise from popular music of our childhood with darker lyrical themes and a more serious aesthetic. Young adults aren’t wrong for liking Sombr, they’re merely discovering their own taste. When I was 17 on Tumblr reblogging gifs from the video for ‘Robbers’ by The 1975, there was most definitely a grumpy 28-year-old bemoaning: “Do these kids not know this band is just a rip off LCD Soundsystem?” And twenty years before them, someone was definitely watching The Goo Goo Dolls on MTV and complaining they stole everything from The Smiths.

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By the time Sombr released his single ‘Homewrecker’ in February of this year, I was a full convert. I instantly recognised that the song would have been a smash hit for One Direction if it was released fifteen years prior, and hoped the 17-year-olds it was aimed at were hearing something new for the first time. Rejecting my inner old person contrarian made me realise listening to coming of age music when you have already come of age is extremely fun, and in 2038 when some 20-year-old guy is singing about sharing vapes in Brooklyn with a pretty girl he just met, you best believe I’ll be tuned in.

Non Threatening Boys* is Polyester’s platform for exploring all things masculine. To read more of our work, visit our Dollhouse platform, and subscribe to get Non Threatening Boys* directly to your inbox every other week.

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I loved Project Hail Mary. I cried in the cinema, I cried listening to the audiobook, and now, I’m crying reading the book in bed. Produced by Ryan Gosling (and starring him too), this adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel follows a science teacher sent into space to find a cure for the alien algae devouring the sun. Waking from his intergalactic coma without any memories and with his crewmates dead, Ryland Grace has to rely on his curiosity, science, and an unlikely ally. It’s hopeful and frightening and just about the perfect blend of sci-fi mumbo-jumbo and genuine emotion. I’m far from alone in that opinion: it’s this year’s highest grossing film in the US, has made $510 million worldwide, and has even been referenced by NASA during Artemis II’s lunar voyage.

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But in a podcast recently, Weir said something that hit me like a comet. “I never put any politics or messaging in any of my stories at all. There’s no deeper meaning; there isn’t even any symbolism, even non-political. There’s just no symbolism at all. My books are just purely to entertain.” Considering that this is a book whose premise relies on world governments coming together, funding a space mission, and one man saving the whole world, claiming Project Hail Mary isn’t political feels like a stretch. Even the Eridian alien he meets, Rocky, is instantly gendered male, despite no indication that gender exists on Erid. Turns out, even leaving the atmosphere isn’t enough to escape patriarchy.

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Last weekend, Coachella - the California desert site of the influencer Olympics, and, secondarily, a popular music festival - saw two very different headline sets. The first was by Sabrina Carpenter, who starred in a production on a grand scale. Pre-filmed sections and onstage skits featured Hollywood guest stars including Susan Sarandon, Will Ferrell and Sam Elliott, and the denouement of the concert saw Carpenter performing her song “Tears” in a car on stage, which became a working fountain, kind of like if a Transformer was aggressively slay.

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Despite a minor cultural insensitivity scandal (Carpenter failed to recognise a fan’s zaghrouta - a traditional Arabic celebratory call - and called it “weird” onstage; she has since apologised), the set was roundly met with praise for its production value and professionalism. As such, some have favourably compared it to the following night’s headline set, by Justin Bieber.

Bieber’s concert - which he will repeat on Saturday at Coachella Weekend 2: 2 Coach 2 Ella - was a very different affair to Carpenter’s. In stark contrast to her dancers and costume changes, Bieber’s stage setup was minimal, consisting of a laptop, decks and a mixer, and a large screen which flashed up various videos behind him. His detractors said that it exposed the stark differences between the demands on men and women in entertainment, noting that if Carpenter had played a similarly stripped-back set, she’d have been criticised for a lack of effort. I’m afraid, however, these detractors missed the point entirely.

What Bieber’s set may have lacked in bells and whistles, it made up for in triumphant and unbothered self-awareness. While of course it would be naive to deny that there are gendered expectations on performers and their styles, to put the differences between both shows down simply to that is, frankly, to undersing Bieber’s achievement in terms of the commentary he provided on celebrity and stardom, in his own way.

Bieber and Carpenter have patently not experienced the same trajectory. Both started out young, and have become incredibly well-known, but Carpenter is only now really cresting the peak of her fame in her twenties, while Bieber was thrown into the celebrity eco-system basically as a child. Though he is only 32, he is for all intents and purposes a veteran of the fame game, having been through so many iterations of himself in the public eye. Over the years, he has been an overnight child celebrity; a globally famous teenager who owned, among many other things, a pet monkey, and was filmed pissing into a restaurant kitchen’s mop bucket; a deeply jaded and unhappy man in his early 20s, reluctantly touring a global arena show for an album called Purpose which, unexpectedly, was an instant modern pop classic; a born again Christian recluse; a husband and father; and lately, both a meme (“it’s not clocking to you…”) and the artist behind not one but two R&B records which were made with some of the world’s most interesting young songwriters, including Dijon and Mk.gee.

Bieber’s Coachella show, then, was a survey of all of these “eras” - he was, after all, a popstar living through “eras” (as I’ve outlined above) before such things became self-conscious, marketable and defined by costumes and haircuts. While it may not have had the visual magnitude of Carpenter’s, then, it more than delivered on emotional heft in a way that hers never could have, because we as an audience just don’t have the same history with her. Bieber, however, used our parasocial relationships with him, formed over two decades, as a way to turn a huge, momentous performance into something that felt like it could have been happening in a friend’s living room (there were, you may have seen, loads of tweets calling it the greatest gay music video night of all time, and I’d be inclined to agree). Over the course of his set, Bieber played footage of himself from throughout his career, and interacted with it onstage.

To see him harmonising with a younger self - as he did, extremely movingly, with a video which showed singing Chris Brown’s “With You” as a pre-teen - that he’d previously attempted to separate himself from, acknowledging and laughing along with the “it’s not clocking to you” meme, and performing tracks like “Beauty and the Beat,” which most of us would assume we’d never hear coming out of his mouth again because of their perceived cringe factor, felt like a full circle moment, and a victorious one at that.

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Bieber’s voice has always been incapable of sounding anything but perfect - I am not someone who especially believes in the existence of a deity but when I hear him sing I am convinced that there may well be some of us on this earth who have a divine purpose - and his performance, while low-key, felt special and emotional because it was largely a vehicle for him to simply show off this gift, light and happy and unburdened. He has cycled through so many personae and versions of himself over the years that it is only in his public embrace of them all that he has been able emerge newly, as the adult he actually is. Celebrity - especially child celebrity - is a terrible, difficult thing to navigate. To see someone come out of the other side of it, proud of his past, seemingly optimistic for his future, and still equipped with the thing that made him special, is a lovely thing - even if there was no car-to-fountain Transformer onstage.

Non Threatening Boys* is Polyester’s platform for exploring all things masculine. To read more of our work, visit our Dollhouse platform, and subscribe to get Non Threatening Boys* directly to your inbox every other week.

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At the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion on March 11th, 2026, Erika Kirk’s speech included the statement: “Don’t let anyone disenfranchise you because you are a young white male man.” Of course, Kirk’s messaging is not truly to uplift young men but instead seems to suggest a furthering of a Christian Nationalist agenda. This careful phrasing undermines the genuine struggles that young American men might face during late-stage capitalism - and in setting out to write this piece, I wanted to explore the positions of young American men whose personhood might be conflated with far-right propaganda.

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I want to consider what spaces are available to young men who are navigating friendship, romantic relationships, and their own identities in America in 2026. It is an attempt to offer a welcome break from media like the recent Louis Theroux documentary, Inside the Manosphere, which was presented as an insight into the lives of conservative influencers.

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Has life been unfair to Frankie Muniz, star of Malcolm in the Middle? Right now, seemingly not.

He quit acting to become a full-time NASCAR driver, which he loves, is happily married to Paige Price and relishes in being both a proud father to his son Mauz, not to mention the hairless family cat called Cookie Dough Butters. Plus, Malcolm in the Middle is coming back to our screens in a four part reunion featuring the full cast, minus Dewey, and some extras.

Without spoiling, Malcolm’s own story arc finds him also navigating parenting his teenage daughter whilst trying to avoid the rest of his family who bring out his angry streak. Turns out America’s least threatening fictional boy of the 2000s has blossomed into an endearing wife guy, and he’s mostly having a great time.

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In real life, however, Muniz’s X account often tells a different story. In 2018, he revealed that his pet cat had accidentally turned a tap on whilst he was away at his Uncle Skip’s funeral and his entire house flooded, everything he owned being destroyed in the process. In 2021, the cat then got stung by a scorpion. Last year, The Independent reported that he described himself as being “oddly cursed” and “emotionally/mentally at a new low” in regards to a series of unfortunate technical issues in his racing career, including falling off a ladder and breaking his wrist.

For years, it was also rumoured that the former child actor had had a medical condition that caused memory problems. He cleared this up on the Joe Vulpis podcast this year as a misunderstanding of a quote taken out of context - actually, constantly having to learn and forget scenes in quick succession for TV has had a lasting impact on his recall. It’s not a health condition.

Not to kick him when he’s down but his almost teenager-like irritable public gripes are incredibly Malcolm-esque, revealing a short fuse that’s easily blown at life’s organically occurring streaks of bad luck. Although, these could also be easily explained by his posts complaining about his terrible sleep quality. Somehow, it’s his most relatable trait.

For your perusal:

★ “Can’t sleep. Hard when you realize your friends aren’t really your friends”, 21 Dec 24

★ “Maybe one of my biggest pet peeves on the planet are heart hands. I literally gag.” 18 Dec 24

★ “I think I’m madly allergic to happiness.” 18 Dec 21

★ “No... I’m not naming my son Malcolm.” 22 Oct 20

★ “God I hate hearing actors talk. Do I sound like such a tool when I talk?” 11 Mar 26

In the full longer cut of Vulpis’ 1 hour 30 min podcast with Muniz, he reveals that while he loves acting again and had “the best time of my life filming this reboot”, there’s dislike for how subjective it can be whereas with NASCAR there’s a clear ranking of who is the best. Let’s kindly help him out with an appreciative look at his back catalogue whilst dissecting some of his best and least threatening starring roles.

Malcolm in the Middle, 2000-2006 / [TRAILER]

“I think I became Malcolm just because I had to be Malcolm more than I had to be me in my growing years,” admits Muniz. The uniquely hilarious single-camera sitcom spanned seven seasons, 151 episodes, starting from when Muniz was 13 and ending aged 20. That was his entire teenage life and early adulthood. “It just was my life then,” he says. “You don’t realise how good things are until you step away from it.”

Based on the real-life upbringing of the show’s creator, Linwood Boomer, Malcolm in the Middle was a relatable peek into the unglamorous lives of an ordinary American family. The least threatening middle child Malcolm acts out in response to his shitty life but also has the double edged sword of being a genius, which sees him begrudgingly getting bumped up to the gifted class at school within the first episode.

Alongside his parents Hal (Bryan Cranston), Lois (Jane Kaczmarek), and his brothers Dewey (Erik Per Sullivan), Reese (Justin Berfield) and Francis (Christopher Masterson), Malcolm spars against his family in a household battle of everyday proportions (though they would heartwarmingly come together as a family unit when the time really called for it, eg. the full blown fist-fight with a troupe of clowns on Lois’ birthday in Season 2).

Muniz told People magazine that he had never watched the show back until adulthood, where he discovered his character “actually sucked” and that his favourite character was actually Reese, which he was surprised by, as he just presumed he was an idiot. His wife, who joined him in the watch party, claimed he wasn’t actually acting at all. Despite this, being the title character of one of the best shows of all time naturally makes him an icon.

From 6pm in the UK on BBC 2, Malcolm in the Middle was part of the legendary trifecta of television scheduling sandwich alongside The Simpsons and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. My Mum also tells me this was her favourite time of the day as she’d leave me to it and get stuff done.

★★★★★ - If my brain was wiped I’d be thankful to watch this with fresh eyes.

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Big Fat Liar, 2002 / [TRAILER]

During his downtime on Malcolm, Muniz would be sent twenty to thirty scripts to consider with roughly time to shoot two things maximum if he was lucky. Some of these would be from some of the biggest directors in Hollywood and Muniz, as a kid, remembers turning down Scorsese to play Jason Shepard in Big Fat Liar opposite his former crush Amanda Bynes. Having wanted to be on All That or The Amanda Show, this was literally his dream at the time.

As you could guess from the title, his cheeky character is infamous for telling porkies, which leads him down a path of trouble as an untruthful and evil-leaning film producer, Marty Wolf, steals his homework and turns it into a movie. Nobody believes him, obviously, but his quick thinking and over the top storytelling becomes occasionally useful when he and Kaylee (Bynes) wind up in trouble. The soundtrack goes hard with Smashmouth, Fatboy Slim, Duran Duran and Eiffel 65 - and as far as kids movies go, it’s pretty watchable.

Whilst he may have a skateboard, backtalk his teacher and have the confidence to take on the film industry, Muniz’s character is pretty low down on the threatenometer. His first scene sees him bullied by bigger kids, he’s the smallest dude in Summer school and even the little kids at the birthday party beat someone up and seem a lot scarier comparatively.

★★ - I just really wish Dan Schneider didn’t direct this.

Agent Cody Banks, 2003 / [TRAILER]

The early 2000s was peak spy media for kids so pitching one of the biggest child actors as the lead in Agent Cody Banks made total sense.

At the time, Hilary Duff was one of Muniz’s first friends in LA after moving from NY from his hometown in North Carolina. He’d met her at the Oakwood Apartments in the Burbank area pre-Malcolm era, then had eventually been invited to play himself on a Lizzie McGuire episode where her “epitome of a stage Mom” badgered him for information about this new junior James Bond and whether there’d be a female counterpart role for Hilary. The very next day, it’s revealed her Momager had somehow worked her magic to get her cast on the project, her intense presence on set eventually ruining Frankie and Hilary’s friendship and they haven’t spoken since.

Even with this IRL drama, Agent Cody Banks is entertaining for a kid’s movie. Banks gets immediately bullied by the rich kids at the new school where he’s placed on a mission and makes a complete fool of himself in front of Hilary Duff’s character. He couldn’t even talk to a hologram honey so he’d have no chance dropping rizz on a real girlfriend, though he does slowly get better throughout he movie and learns to kick ass in self defence.

Spoiler: he successfully completes the mission and gets the girl. Realistically, it’s amazing to have starred alongside two of the biggest female actresses defining the golden era of tween entertainment.

★★★ - Thank you executive producer Madonna.

Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair / [TRAILER]

“It was one of the most rewarding things to get to play Malcolm again,” Muniz admits. “It just felt whole and safe and comfortable.”

Without giving away any spoilers, the grand finale brings all the cast and a lot of the original crew members back together 20 years later, although Dewey is now played by Caleb Ellsworth-Clark on an iPad which is truly the only reason I’m removing a star. You could presume that this was a cash grab in the wake of all these other reboots but this show has been on the horizon for only ten years as Cranston and Muniz have been trying to make it happen. Its creator Boomer kept putting it off until he finally had a fully formed idea where both he, his IRL family and Malcolm ultimately found closure.

One thing that can be revealed is that Malcolm has a daughter, and it’s immediately clear that he’s inherited a whole menagerie of his own dad’s strangest and least threatening traits. Our non-threatening boy has grown to be a non-threatening Dad both on and off the screen.

Did I write this entire article so I could get a Malcolm reunion screener? No comment.

Would I recommend it? Yes if you were already a fan, no if not.

Did hearing Malcolm scream “you can’t be serious” at Lois heal something within me? Yes.

Is Reese still the best character? Yes.

Did I shed a singular happy tear? Yes.

★★★★ - Overjoyed to see my family again.

Non Threatening Boys* is Polyester’s platform for exploring all things masculine. To read more of our work, visit our Dollhouse platform, and subscribe to get Non Threatening Boys* directly to your inbox every other week.

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When my college best friend became a child bride at 26, she had to decree who was worthy of attending her destination wedding. She offended every significant other of our friend group by omitting their names from the calligraphied envelope.

I was overjoyed.

For the first time since scattering across the country after graduation, my friend group was reunited under one roof. We didn’t have to navigate introducing significant others, force any platitudes, or ostracise any single friends. Our priorities were reoriented towards friendship, incubated from the plus ones who traditionally run rampant at weddings.

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Best of all, I didn’t need to say what is often so hurtful to hear: I don’t want to hang out with your boyfriend.

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Like a lot of other people with a television and a looming sense of dread about the state of the world as it currently exists, I recently watched Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere documentary on Netflix. It is sad and grim for many reasons - not least because so many of the fans featured in the film are so young or vulnerable or otherwise impressionable - and for a lot of viewers, it has offered a revealing look at a very scary corner of the internet.

For those of us who live our lives on the internet, though, these influencers and their grift is nothing new. While I enjoyed the film and thought it was a fascinating insight into how the manosphere operates in real time, I was left with a few more questions than I’d had answered in the previous 90 minutes, so I’ve decided to write a bit about those queries and observations here. Maybe yours were the same, maybe you had others - regardless, despite the film’s shortcomings, you almost definitely have an opinion, and perhaps that is the conversation starter that was needed on a wide scale. In the interests of delving a bit more deeply into this issue, however, here are my thoughts:

1) I’d have liked to understand what’s actually *behind* manosphere influencers’ popularity a bit more

If you’ve been anywhere around the internet over the past few years, you’ll be familiar with a lot of the guys who are featured in Inside the Manosphere, and their talking points. Some brief interviews throughout the film with fans give minor indications as to why so many young men have found manosphere influencers so compelling - there are mentions of individual tragedies, money troubles, dissatisfaction with a 9-5 lifestyle - but little in terms of the political and sociological causes. Everywhere we look right now, we hear about male loneliness epidemics, the rise of incels and looksmaxxers on the internet, cost of living crises and so many more widespread problems, all of which are real issues that contribute to the manosphere’s popularity. I’d have liked to hear a little bit more about those on a macro level.

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2) I wish I knew what these guys are actually selling

I get that a lot of what is appealing about these men is in their personalities. It’s their confidence, the way they present themselves, and their unabashed way of speaking about quote-unquote “woke” talking points (gender, sexuality etc.). Most of them, however, have also built followings by promising to offer ways in which subscribers can glow-up financially, if only they pay a monthly fee or use a specific investment platform or whatever (interestingly, throughout the film, it’s money which, time and again, is positioned as the major marker of successful masculinity). The details of these financial schemes in the film, however, are very vague and remain mostly uninterrogated - it’s clear that these guys are con artists, so why not talk more about how they get away with it?

3) Does Louis Theroux’s style work well here?

Since the documentary aired last weekend, there has been some commentary surrounding Louis Theroux’s signature interview method. His style has long been based on calm, grounded, almost kind questioning, which tends to allow subjects to fall on their own swords - but many have asked whether, when the stakes are as high as they are here, it may have been better for Theroux to issue more challenges on camera.

I’m conflicted about this, because in some cases, Theroux’s stoic, assured, and gentle version of masculinity offered enough opposition to the ugliness we saw onscreen elsewhere (I laughed at his knowingly rubbish attempt at the arcade punching bag), but I’d also have liked to come away feeling like the regressive ideas put forward had been challenged more blatantly, instead of the film’s clear assumption that “any sensible viewer” would surely disagree. Plainly, as we know, considering these influencers’ popularity among so many men - these could be people we work with, or are related to, or sit next to on public transport, or encounter in any manner of other ways - that is not the case.

4) Will the tide turn on the manosphere?

Fairly obviously, however, there does come a point where even those persuaded by manosphere arguments and talking points might start to raise an eyebrow.

We know from the film and from our experiences online that the manosphere is a branch of the alt-right politics that have surged in Europe and the US in recent years. There are a bunch of references to MAGA and Donald Trump across the documentary, and in the case of HSTikkyTokky especially, there’s a savagely individualist philosophy which undoubtedly comes as a product of our increasingly siloed society. But when manosphere influencers start espousing conspiracy theories about pop stars and Satanist cabals - as Sneako does near the end of Inside the Manosphere - you do have to wonder whether there aren’t followers who might tap out based on quite how wild it’s all become. And as manosphere influencers become more and more extreme in their views, they inch closer towards the mainstream because they are garnering attention, but their opinions also inevitably become more fringe.

This is a tension that can’t hold, and there are two possibilities: conspiratorial ideas enter even further into our cultural consciousness, or the manosphere loses relevance. In a world moving faster than ever, it’s tough to predict what the outcome will be. The fact that we’re all talking about this in such a public manner, however - that these influencers are being discussed in the open rather than existing in private on the phones of the young men to whom they speak directly - is probably a useful start.

Non Threatening Boys* is Polyester’s platform for exploring all things masculine. To read more of our work, visit our Dollhouse platform, and subscribe to get Non Threatening Boys* directly to your inbox every other week.

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A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms – HBO’s latest Game of Thrones spin-off – pokes and prods at what it means to be a knight. Its penultimate episode was (briefly) the highest ever rated episode of TV on IMDB. With over 48.6 million posts on TikTok, the miniseries has been racking up fancams and hopecore edits for its underdog protagonist Ser Duncan the Tall, played by Peter Claffey. Wide-eyed and bushy tailed, Dunk is utterly committed to doing the right thing. Both in the show and as a viewer IRL, it’s infectious.

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Based on George R. R. Martin’s novellas, this dramedy takes place almost a century before the action of Game of Thrones. When Dunk’s master – the humble and only somewhat laughable hedge knight Sir Pennytree – dies, the squire is left with nothing but a sword and a staunchly naive idea of what it means to be a knight. Joined by a bald-headed runaway prince, Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell), Dunk attempts to join a lancing tourney to seek glory and win his fortune. Instead, he sleeps under a tree, punches a Targaryen prince to save his crush and plunges himself deeper into trouble.

Between chainmail fashion, embracing whimsy and swoony romantasy, pop culture has been having a Middle Ages renaissance. But beyond silver and swords, this trend is bringing back medieval masculinity, too.

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Scroll long enough, and he will appear. He has glass skin, defined curls, and a jewellery stack that’d make any Claire’s Accessories devotee jealous. His outfits are algorithm-approved, he documents every trip to the gym, and his camera angles are rehearsed but casual enough to appear effortless. He takes pride in his appearance, and he wants everyone to know it. The male baddie has entered the chat.

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Once a term reserved for hyper-feminine Instagram glamour, “baddie” has been re-annexed and retooled. These days, it’s also used to describe a growing cohort of men who treat appearance as a craft: impeccably styled, aesthetically meticulous, beauty-literate. Their fashion is experimental while their physiques are optimised, and they’re fluent in the language of grooming. Male baddies aren’t embarrassed to care, because caring is the point.

This new male archetype is the product of a decades-long aesthetic evolution. The noughties metrosexual laid crucial groundwork: it was an era of meticulous grooming, tinted moisturiser, threaded eyebrows, and men openly investing in self-presentation. Look no further than David Beckham, a figure who made self-tanning and masculinity culturally compatible.

Then came Tumblr-era soft boys with their smudged eyeliner, poetic captions, and performed vulnerability of artists like The 1975 set the tone. Add to the mix the high-gloss confidence and swagger of SoundCloud rappers, such as Lil Uzi Vert, and the global dominance of male K-pop idols, who have helped normalise male beauty labour globally. Throw in Instagram’s fitness boom, aka the algorithmic elevation of sculpted torsos and transformation reels, and things are shifting.

The result is an era of masculinity assembled from mood boards that read as transactional, digitally native, acutely self-aware, and always on brand. It borrows freely from gender codes across the spectrum – a pearl necklace here, a varsity jacket there, a “clean boy” skincare shelf with all the latest releases. The male baddie is less a single look than a posture toward the self, one that assumes the body is a project and the mirror a site of authorship.

For decades, straight masculinity in particular was defined by a cultivated indifference to beauty. Effortlessness was the ideal, while visible labour was frowned upon and given the side eye. The grooming aisle for men was a narrow, sterile corridor of unsexy products such as three-in-one body wash and muted packaging, barely given a second glance. To care too much risked being read as vain, frivolous, or insufficiently masculine.

The male baddie? He disrupts that script. He moisturises publicly, he experiments with silhouette and nail colour. He may even post “get ready with me” videos without irony. He understands that presentation is power; socially, romantically, and professionally. There’s liberation in watching men admit that they want to look good, that aesthetics matter to them, that beauty can be a form of pleasure rather than shame.

All of this is happening alongside an explosion in the men’s grooming and cosmetic industries. Injectables, hair transplants, laser treatments, and meticulously engineered fitness programs are discussed in comment sections and DMs. “Looksmaxxing”, the practice of optimising one’s appearance through everything from jawline exercises to orthodontics, has migrated from obscure forums to mainstream TikTok discourse.

The male baddie might speak the language of emotional intelligence, champion therapy, and embrace fluid fashion cues, but he’s also relentlessly optimised. His physique is lean, defined, and just so. His skin is clear, while his outfits signal cultural literacy and disposable income. He’s expressive, yes, but also strategic. Social media has made beauty standards not only more visible but more measurable. Likes, shares, and saves are the new desirability metrics. But it’s here where the male baddie thrives, because he understands how to play the game.

This is where the archetype grows complicated, because while the male baddie expands what masculinity can look like, he also extends modern beauty pressures into new territory. Historically, it’s typically been women who have borne the brunt of aesthetic scrutiny; their bodies picked apart online and offline, their routines commodified for capitalism’s sake. The rise of the male baddie doesn’t erase this imbalance, however much we’d like it to, but it does signal that the net has widened.

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For many men, experimenting with jewellery, skincare, and fashion is a break from the strict rules they’re used to adhering to. Having fun in this way can open up doors, offer community, platform creativity, and give a sense of agency over identity. But the line between self-expression and self-surveillance is thin. When every detail can be zoomed, filtered, and critiqued, this can curdle into something more sinister.

The male baddie, then, is giving the modern beauty realm something to think about. As he’s rejecting the stoic, emotionally repressed masculinity of older generations, he’s embracing softness and sensuality. Which can only be a good thing, right? Yet he also embodies something new. Something that demands constant visibility, constant improvement, and constant aesthetic literacy. He’s free to experiment, but he’s also expected to perform endlessly.

What makes this moment significant isn’t just the fact that men are starting to wear pearls and nail polish while investing in skincare routines, but that masculinity itself is in a state of flux. Conversations around gender, sexuality, and identity have destabilised old binaries, as younger generations are rewriting the rules on who beauty is for and what it looks like. We’re starting to come to terms with the fact that masculinity isn’t undone by beauty, but enriched by it.

So, are male baddies redefining masculinity? Yes, in that they expose the myth that men don’t care about beauty. They’re showing us that self-presentation has always been central to status and desirability; it simply used to be coded differently. They’re opening space for adornment without automatic ridicule, while making it easier for the next generation of boys to set the tone for aesthetic standards going forward.

But they’re also proof that none of us can escape the beauty economy. Not women, not men, not anyone building an identity in full view. The rise of the male baddie tells us that masculinity is loosening in some ways, yet tightening in others. And as we double-tap and scroll, caught between admiration and comparison, the question lingers beneath the surface: Is this really beauty as freedom? Or is it just a new filter on the same old demand to be desirable?

Non Threatening Boys* is Polyester’s platform for exploring all things masculine. To read more of our work, visit our Dollhouse platform, and subscribe to get Non Threatening Boys* directly to your inbox every other week.

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In January of 2026, we experienced a collective global trauma. Around the world, hearts were broken at the sight of a lonely little monkey clutching an orangutan plushie. This monkey - scared and alone - ignited something within us. We shared in his wins, commiserated his losses.

Panchi-kun, translated into English as Punch, is a Japanese macaque, which is Japan’s only species of monkey. He was born in Ichikawa Zoo, in a city about 20 miles away from Tokyo, in July of 2025. After his birth, Punch was abandoned by his mother and, as a result, has been raised by his keepers in isolation for the last six months.

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When macaques are born, they immediately cling to their mother’s body, a trait which helps them to build muscle strength and soothes them emotionally. But with no mother to cling to, zookeepers needed to find an alternative for Punch. The team at Ichikawa Zoo tried towels wrapped into different thicknesses and a giraffe plushie to mixed results — but as soon as they gave him an orangutan plushie from IKEA called djungelskog, an inseparable union was made. For six months Punch and djungelskog grew up together.

On January 19th, after months of living in isolation, Punch and djungelskog were introduced to the other monkeys in the zoo. Punch was to live the rest of his days in his new home, an exhibition called Monkey Mountain.

In many ways, it is here that the story of Punch the Monkey begins. When Punch was introduced back into his gang, he struggled to make friends with the other residents of Monkey Mountain. Onlookers took videos of Punch, holding his beloved djungelskog tightly — looking listlessly into the sky, eating his daily meals alone, or — devastatingly — being picked on by the dominant monkeys.

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When a celebrity falls from grace, it’s pretty easy for the masses to band together to get them cancelled. Maybe a Real Housewife gets arrested, a footballer has an affair, or a nepo baby does something annoyingly out of touch online. These are all deemed to be offences with no room for redemption. You mess up, you’re forever socially branded as an idiot, evil, or cringe.

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But there’s a specific genre of white male celebrity that manages to misbehave or disappoint and still continue to book major jobs and take the spotlight. I’m talking about the dreamboat actor: young, handsome, mysterious. He might put a foot wrong sometimes, but we ignore it because he’s just so gorgeous! Recently, however, attitudes amongst fans are changing. In an industry still clinging to the same star-making formulas, audiences are getting tired of the dreamboat schtick, and are moving their loyalties elsewhere.

When the whole media landscape is built by and for these men, it’s even more interesting when they start to flop, and it raises questions about the cult of celebrity, masculinity and audience fatigue. So what better subjects to study this with than what I’ve coined The Horny Trinity: Timothée Chalamet, Paul Mescal and Jacob Elordi. Over the past year these once bulletproof heartthrobs have caused big shifts in fan sentiment.

Let’s start with Timmy. Most of us will have been hooked on him since Call Me By Your Name and Lady Bird, where his elusive boy-next-door persona charmed us all and genuinely had us rooting for his success, which grew to the point where he was untouchable. Just a few years ago he was Hollywood’s go-to guy, but now fans are souring on him and are questioning whether he’s become too big-headed.

His recent Marty Supreme press tour sparked controversy after he bragged on stage, gunning for an Oscar: “It’s been like seven, eight years that I feel like I’ve been handing in really, really committed top-of-the-line performances”. Careful now, Timmy.

Online discourse quickly kicked off about the now-bulging ego of cinema’s once indie darling. He’s a great actor of course, but with great acting comes great responsibility, lest you end up down the same rabbit hole as Hollywood’s earlier golden boys who are now conservative clichés. As one TikTok creator put it: “He’s not the next Leonardo DiCaprio – he’s the next Tom Cruise.” There’s also been widespread commentary on his affinity with Black culture, with critics claiming that he deliberately leaned into a meme-ready, hip-hop adjacent persona during the Marty Supreme rollout to win over audiences, only to pivot back to classic prestige actor rhetoric when it suits. Even journalists agreed that these antics weren’t fooling anyone. The discourse has shifted from “Protect Timmy at all costs!” to “Have we had enough of Timmy?”, and it seems his increasingly calculated media presence has revealed a conventional male ego that fans never thought would rear its head.

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If Timmy’s problem is too much presence, then Paul Mescal’s is not quite enough. Despite his meteoric rise since starring in Normal People, Mescal’s career has prompted questions about stagnation. He’s consistently cast in major roles, but is often outshined by his castmates, like Daisy Edgar-Jones and most recently Jessie Buckley in Hamnet. “Paul Mescal was just a lad,” authors and critic duo The White Pube posted about his role in Chloé Zhao’s drama. “It’s like they said hey do you wanna go of this film and he put his ciggy down and went, yeah go on then.” Is the Irish charm not cutting it anymore?

When placed beside (let’s be honest) stronger contemporaries like Josh O’Connor or Jack O’Connell, the gap becomes even more obvious. The issue with Mescal isn’t necessarily that he’s a flop – it’s that he’s fine. And that’s not enough when you’re being sold as a generational talent. The pocket of social media I’m on seems to be in agreement: The Paul Mescal thing isn’t working anymore. Maybe it’s another case of overexposure, maybe the nepo-baby-ineptitude-curse of his partner Gracie Abrams is rubbing off on him, but that’s a deep dive for another time.

‘Jacob Elordi controversy’ wasn’t something I expected to be Googling any time soon. After a wealth of recent success, the actor has just hit his first cultural speedbump with his casting controversy in Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights”. A white Australian playing Heathcliff – literature’s most famous explicitly racialised character, whose narrative is bound up in being tormented by white English society – was not well received by fans of both the novel and the actor alike. Audiences took to socials to criticise Elordi for not taking a strong enough stance against the whitewashing of the character, particularly compared to how other stars have handled similar situations, like Odessa A’zion – another white actor – who recently stepped down from a role in the upcoming A24 film Deep Cuts after learning it was intended for a Mexican woman. The consensus was that if it was such an obvious decision for A’zion, why couldn’t Elordi have done the same?

So just how much are we willing to tolerate? We’re in an age of cinema where the same lineup of actors is being regurgitated in every blockbuster, so it’s only natural that fans are now asking for more, and are outraged by less. The dreamboat fantasy has actually been wobbling for decades. For every Pitt, Cruise and Brando who clung to mystique despite being deeply problematic, there have been others who have surpassed them. Robert Pattinson escaped heartthrob limbo by becoming wonderfully weird, relinquishing control of his image instead of trying to polish it. Matthew McConaughey literally branded a career pivot – the McConaissance – by abandoning his rom-com charm and rebuilding credibility film by film. Stardom used to promise endless allure, but contemporary spectatorship demands more self-awareness and humility.

Admiration isn’t guaranteed anymore, and all these flare-ups from Hollywood’s current faves point to something bigger: an audience no longer satisfied with passive male celebrity and a particular kind of male ego that assumes desirability is eternal. Maybe we’re finally snapping out of the spell.

Non Threatening Boys* is Polyester’s platform for exploring all things masculine. To read more of our work, visit our Dollhouse platform, and subscribe to get Non Threatening Boys* directly to your inbox every other week.

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Boys are such wankers, literally. It seems like these days you can’t exist on the internet without hearing about new sex practices that would send your mother into a coma, from the popularisation of femboys and muscle mommies to the casual use of BDSM language and Puppy Play. The ABCs of passion have gone from Admiration, Beauty and Coquettishness to Ass-eating, Backshots and Cunnilingus, to say nothing of Double-penetration, Edging, Fisting and Gooning. The proliferation of porn phrases, the destigmatisation of desire and the embrace of the esoteric has brought the virtual world into a new era. The age of innocence is over. We’re on the Edge of Goon Glory.

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‘But what exactly is Gooning?’ I hear you cry. Well, dear reader, it is the art of making silly faces whilst experiencing the transcendental pleasure of Edging, pushing oneself to the very limits of pre-orgasmic release without actually diving into those crashing waves of ejaculation. Basically, it’s masturbating so hard you go cross-eyed, and people love it.

At first I thought it was just an online joke, a meme phrase that gets shared around so much it becomes common language, like furries, until I realised it actually does run deep. One of my own friends (very handsome and romantically capable) showed me the collection of drooling, cross-eyed boys who regularly send him videos, and the old school ChatRoulette sites he’d joined to find more sexual gurning, and that’s when I realised that gooning is here to stay.

Okay, so what next? What happens when a heretofore unmentionable sexual practice becomes part of mainstream pop culture? It gets fused with pop music, of course! From the licentious twist dancing of the 50s making its presence known in the lyrics of the rock-n-roll idols, to the whips and shiny leather boots of The Velvet Underground’s Venus in Furs, to Soft Cell’s seminal Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, the language of sex permeates contemporary living. Hell, even Beyonce started singing about giving head in limos and getting spaff on her gowns, and that was almost thirteen years ago. This century alone we’ve lived through Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “Wet Ass Pussy”, Janet Jackson telling us how much she wants to tough us, tease us, lick us, please us, and Peaches exhorting us to “Fuck The Pain Away” and “Rub, bitch rub!”

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So how will Gooning breed with pop? How will the sounds of young men on the internet wanking to livestreams and making bator-buddies (don’t ask) translate into modern music production? Enter 2charm.

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Words: Lauren O'Neill
Photography: Billie J Stringer
Set Build: Aoife Murray
Fashion Director: Katy Cutbirth
Grooming: Yolanda Dohr

While making his debut solo album Paw, former Girlpool musician Avery Tucker wanted to strip his process all the way back. Working with producer Alaska Reid, as well as collaborators Katie Gavin (of MUNA), A.G. Cook, and more, he made a raw, cohesive work that turned to rock standards and live recording for inspiration, with the hope of strengthening his relationship with himself through simple, close feeling songwriting.

Now that Paw has been out in the world for a while, we caught up with Avery to talk about the album, the differences between being in a band and going solo, why Julee Cruise is his dream collaborator, and more.

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Polyester: Hi Avery. How’s it going? It’s morning there right?

Avery Tucker: It’s morning, yes. I did recently rise. I was watching Fantasia last night. I enjoyed that, and then just now I made some coffee and, yeah, I’m pretty good,

Delighted to hear it. My first question is now that your album Paw has been out in the world for a little while, how are you feeling about it? Now that other people have it, and that it’s kind of bedded in with people a little bit.

I feel pretty good. It’s funny, like I feel like, right after it came out, I felt really kind of free from it, and that that was kind of like a relief, because I felt like I had been like, working on it for a while so, I feel pretty good about letting it fly wherever it needs to go, you know.

Before it had kind of come out into the world what were your feelings towards it then? Were you nervous to share it, excited to share it? What was the feeling?

I think, having dropped a few singles, I felt like the vibe of it was already kind of out there. So by the time I was dropping it, I felt like it was just, you know, people could fully walk into the room. But I felt pretty eager to get it out, because I had been working on it for a long time. I wanted to kind of like, move on, you know? Just moving on to the next just felt very natural.

I know there’ll be lots of different answers to this because of the specific circumstances around your making it, but how was making this record different to your previous experiences of making music, and particularly making albums?

Well, it was my first full album that I made without Harmony from Girlpool. It was really exciting to discover my own thing without my counterpart that I’ve been used to for a decade. So that was different, to just have basically the responsibility of all of these decisions. Like, I have to make all the decisions, and I think that in the past it’s been nice to have one other person to be like, “Okay, maybe we’re going with this decision, but like, I didn’t make it.” There’s a little bit less responsibility. So it was cool to step into choosing.

Then just studio-wise and stuff like that, me and Alaska [Reid, Paw’s producer] and our engineer, Quinn, we kind of all had our hands in it pretty intimately. It wasn’t really like, we’d track, and then all the stems in the sessions were with the producer, who was gonna change it a bunch. It was very like, communal, which was cool.

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How have you found being a solo artist so far? Obviously, there is that autonomy and that responsibility, but has there been anything else that you’ve noticed about going it alone and how that feels?

Even when Girlpool was active, we would play solo shows sometimes, or in early days, I would drop some solo stuff on Bandcamp, and I’ve had experience playing solo. I think it’s just felt really good to really dive into myself and embrace it, I think that I’ve grown a lot. I feel like outside of music, even just spiritually, I’ve made the decision to be like, “Okay, cool, I’m gonna challenge myself to go deeper within.” I feel like music is just something I have to do all the time, so at least at this point in my life right now, I was just really hungry to develop that intimate relationship with myself, or nurture it - lift some weights.

What was inspiring you at the time when you were making it? Because the sound is very stripped back and earthy, and I wondered what music you were consuming at the time.

I mean, I just love rock and songs and I just love whenever the song can speak for itself. Production wise at the time I was really drawn to no extras, you know, just kind of like if you were watching a video on YouTube of your favourite artist playing a live show at some club. I just wanted it to feel close.

Externally to music and making music, and inspirations in that sense, was there anything aesthetic - any other non musical art - that inspired you at the time, or that influenced Paw or its world?

I had seen No Country for Old Men and I really liked the cinematography in that movie, and I did a lot of the album in Montana. So I feel like there’s a lot of open spaces and earth. It’s funny how much I’ve changed since then. It’s cool to go back, but I think a lot of that record was just about suffering and struggling and kind of like fighting and tantrum stuff. And so I feel like visually, it makes sense to me that I was feeling mud - like, stuck in the mud, the paw print in the mud. I was sort of pushing through elements, was the feeling I think.

When you think about the themes of this record, or, you know, the specific events or feelings that you were processing on the record, if you had to sum them up, how would you describe them?

I think a lot of the feeling on that album is reckoning with my relationship to the grip - the grip of wanting things to be a certain way, or trying to control them. It’s kind of like a real time recording of me processing a lot of questions. It feels like it’s my mid 20s captured like: “Oh, wait. I thought that everything was going this way. But it’s not.” And this record was like, how I was coping with my resistance to like, what was occurring, and my resistance to like, accepting the rhythm of my life.

Obviously you mentioned Alaska, and I know that obviously you have the song with Katie Gavin as well, and you have worked with some very impressive, cool people on this record. But I wondered in terms of a sort of, like fantasy football type game: if you were gonna work with literally anyone next time, anyone in the world that you could pick, who would you choose?

I’m gonna say a collab with The Roches. I’m gonna say Julee Cruise.

This is a good super group. What do you envisage making with them? Are you bringing everyone together in the room?

I think we’d stack some incredible backup vocals with The Roches. Like, incredible, multi dimensional vocals. And then some, really spooky, deep, beautiful, like infinite-feeling duets with Julee.

Lastly, what’s going on for you music-wise right now? Are you kind of basking in the record for a little while, or have you already moved on to the next thing?

Yeah, I’m just moving forward. I’ve got a new project that I’m working on, that I’m pretty excited about. I’m keeping it close for now, but it’s very exciting.

Thanks Avery!

Non Threatening Boys* is Polyester’s platform for exploring all things masculine. To read more of our work, visit our Dollhouse platform, and subscribe to get Non Threatening Boys* directly to your inbox every other week.

Subscribe now