Apps “create this expectation that you check these boxes and they send you to a certain type of person,” Sharabi says, citing the Viral TikTok “The Finance Man” For example, applying dating app heuristics to people in this way can also be objectifying, not to mention potentially offensive to both so-called “fruity” men and the people they are being compared to.
Sharabi suspects that those looking for partners are looking for kind, decent men rather than misogynistic jerks who don’t take responsibility for their bad behavior. But she’s wary of categorizing these qualities as “fruity,” noting that some queer people find the term offensive. She also acknowledges that “this specific archetype is incredibly complex.”
In addition to passive homophobia from seemingly straight women seeking “fruity” or “gay” boyfriends, on queer dating apps like Grindr, for example, internalized homophobia and rejection of male femininity puts men at odds with softer men. blatant discriminationSo even if this trend is ultimately about finding feminine traits desirable in ways they weren’t before, the effect is still a reinforcement of gender stereotypes and norms.
In a recent rehearsal For The Point, Derek Guy writes about how the persistent fear of being perceived as gay or effeminate still scares straight men away from openly expressing their interest in fashion. “The prevailing attitude,” Guy writes, “is that ‘real men’ are too down-to-earth, serious and rational to worry about such trivialities.” He quotes the book Cultures of masculinity by sociologist Tim Edwards, who wrote that fashionable men “are perceived not just as potentially homosexual or sexually ambiguous, but as people who somehow don’t fit in.”
That’s why the “fruity boy” discourse is primarily concerned with recoding aesthetic signifiers rather than challenging long-standing, persistent prejudice against feminine men: it’s a branding exercise used to legitimize a once-deviant set of traits as acceptably masculine, so that the next time you open Tinder and see a guy wearing a dangly earring, he’ll now be a legible archetype.
As queer culture moves closer to the mainstream, distinctions between the “auras” and style of gay and straight men are blurring. The internet has enshrined stars like Josh O’Connor, Harry Styles and Timothée Chalamet as prototypes of the latter trend for playing queer characters and wearing T-shirts with embroidered flowers. They represent the model of evolved masculinity that values emotional acuity over stoic bravado and rejects the cartoonish manliness embodied by far-right personalities like the Bronze Age Pervert.
Nowadays, straight guys wear dangly pearl earrings, painted nails and Skirts They embody “the new masculinity” and are perceived as more sensitive and even ethical than those muscular and robust men who dress a henley shirtSo why is Levi’s now categorised as “fruity”? Arbitrarily recoding gender-neutral styles as such reflects the discursive ouroboros that simultaneously aims to expand visions of modern masculinity that include “feminine” or queer-coded traits, while paradoxically penalising men who incorrectly display them. This ultimately works to reinforce the norm through gender essentialism that upholds a social hierarchy that marks effeminate or ambiguous men as second-class citizens.
This latest trend aims to bridge the disorienting chasm that exists between a dyspeptic online discourse and the offline dating experience, magnified by dating apps that compress people into archetypes. It provides a framework that superficially elevates the social status of feminine men without confronting the ways they are subtly marginalised in the dating market, such as championing body positivity while ignoring the rise of Ozempic. The concept of a “fruity guy” is a projection, not a person. It allows people to square their progressive politics while swiping left on guys with overly racy auras, to mask disgust with feigned desire.
As far as TikTok goes, he’s just a Bode boy with a pearl earring.
