What is a sexyman, again?

When it comes to knowing whichever male character’s the sexiest, especially among some geek women, he’s not always what you think it is. It’s like the difference between what the fair folk at Comics Alliance consider sexy and what a sizable number of Tumblr users consider sexy. Okay, there are those at Tumblr who lust after the more conventionally attractive ones and it could be a generational divide between Livejournal and Tumblr users, even though a good number of Livejournal users (including myself) headed to Tumblr in the 2010s.

My understanding of what makes a male character a sexyman is that he’s attractive in a surprising way, in that he’s not supposed to be attractive but he’s attractive to certain people. He’s the sort of character who doesn’t conform to male beauty standards, other than being stylish of course, he gets sexualised a lot by fans who pair him with anybody else and/or doppelgangers of himself. This may not be true for all Tumblr sexymen, but I get the impression that they are the kinds of men certain women are attracted to.

Some women aren’t attracted to buff men, so this might play a role in what makes a Tumblr Sexyman even if a few of these sexymen are muscular themselves. Characters who don’t look humanoid are often anthropomorphised as skinny white men, which makes you wonder which person a good number of Tumblr users find sexy. Not that there aren’t any Tumblr users who find muscular men sexy, but a good number of them would say otherwise.

If it’s true, then the Tumblr Sexyman canon and phenomenon is pretty much almost any male character that some Tumblr users find seriously sexy. They’re not always buff, they’re not even superheroes and super characters in general. (Surprisingly, not a single Jojo character is deemed part of the Tumblr Sexyman canon either that Jojo has a lot of straight male fans or that Jojo characters are too conventionally attractive to qualify.)

While Tumblr sexymen are sexy in a surprising or shocking way, there are characters deemed sexyman bait such as Alastor from Hazbin Hotel. Technically Alastor was created or begat by his author when she was still a schoolgirl but the fact that she did a webcomic called Zoophobia (where he first appeared along with a few other Hazbin Hotel characters) and the fact that she likely had a Tumblr and a DeviantArt account (according to the good people at 4Chan) means she would’ve unconsciously gone with the flow.

Or likely developed the same tastes as almost everybody does, so that’s why Alastor looks the way he does. Who knows what sort of men his creator lusted after, but there’s a good possibility that either she went with the flow or likely had the same tastes in men as nearly everybody else in Tumblr does meant that Alastor was every much informed by whoever’s deemed hot on Tumblr. Well some Tumblr websites, as there are others with more conventional tastes in men.

Even then, it does influence the way Alastor and his ilk ended up as. That same post on 4Chan pointed out that his own author is/was a fan of the series Invader Zim, which was definitely a thing for some geeks growing up in the early 2000s that would’ve influenced character designs and what they find attractive. It surely does a lot to their formative years, which’s also true for the latest generation seeking a sexyman to thirst over. As for Sans from Undertale and Jevil from Deltarune, I think they garnered a fanbase mostly and unconsciously because they’re cute.

It’s not something some of their fans are conscious of, but compared to the rather blandly attractive Mettaton (in his humanoid form) and Rouxls, they are rather babyish and cuddly. Okay, they might not be that infantilised by their other fans and I could be wrong about this, but I do get the impression that they have rather cute designs that appealed to certain fans. Even if you have the conventionally attractive pin-up design of Mettaton in his humanoid form, some fans go for the cuter Sans instead.

Same goes for Jevil, maybe a good number of Tumblr sexymen are often cute instead of purposefully sexy as with those appearing on Arrow and the Flash. But there’s also a good possibility why some characters, no matter how attractive they are, never become Tumblr and fandom sexymen has to do with an air of sexlessness. Okay, this isn’t why some attractive characters aren’t considered sexymen that’s if they actually have sex and get sexualised in canon which gets them disqualified from sexyman status.

But being rather sexless might also disqualify them from sexyman status, in the sense that no matter how sexy that character is if they come off as unsexy and no forbidden fruit aspect to their being then they won’t be considered Tumblr sexymen. The forbidden fruit aspect makes sense in that they’re not supposed to be sexy, but get sexualised a lot by fans. If true, then a good number of Tumblr sexymen are either cute (Sans, Jevil), come from children’s media (Onceler from the Lorax, Bill Cipher from Gravity Falls, Bruno from Encanto) or ugly but still get sexualised by fans.

This may not be true for all characters and the stories they come from, but a good number of sexy (and sexualised in canon) characters never become Tumblr/fandom sexymen. The select few who do have the forbidden fruit aspect to their beings: they could be from children’s media, they could be cute and cuddly, monstrous and ugly or thin and stylish. That’s what I get from going to the Tumblr Sexyman wiki, which tells you whichever character is deemed Tumblr sexyman material.

If a good number of sexy male characters aren’t attractive to some women, then it does make you wonder and realise where their real tastes and preferences lie. If having a muscular body isn’t sexy to some women, likewise being tall isn’t always a prerequisite for sexiness either since Jevil and Sans are short. Maybe being tall and buff would rub others the wrong way, since it can come off as intimidating rather than arousing.

So they go for guys who are not conventionally attractive or cute and nonthreatening (this extends to how they unconsciously feel around Sans and Jevil). Maybe that’s why Sans is a Tumblr sex symbol and not Mettaton. Okay, my take on what makes a character a sexyman isn’t the best. But it does make sense why Tumblr/fandom sexymen are the way they are if there are cishet women whose tastes differ from the expected norms. There are women who aren’t attracted to muscular men, some of them aren’t attracted to fat men either.

So skinny men are their forte. Maybe that’s how the Tumbly sexyman phenomenon came to be, even if some Tumblr sexymen are fat (as with Jevil) and some are muscular (as with Patrick Bateman from American Psycho). If it’s something that most people don’t expect to be attractive, that’s probably the case with some straight women. This is why a good number of Tumblr sexymen are the way they are.

Attraction

When it comes to whoever becomes a sex symbol, especially among geeky cishet women, there are the more obvious choices then comes the more unexpected ones. There are some women who’re (sexually) attracted to the actor Christian Bale, but it’s Adam Driver who’s become an unexpected geek sex symbol mostly because he’s so unlike most actors we’ve come and known. I could say many of the same things about Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hiddleston, two men whose roles have made them into Tumblr sex symbols.

When it comes to fictional characters, there are also unexpected cases where in the case with the video game Undertale while many of the characters also got sexualised by fans it’s Sans who’s become a major male fandom sex symbol in a way that Mettaton hasn’t. When it comes to what some women are into, they’re not always beholden to what’s expected of them to be into. Some women aren’t into muscular or fat men, some women aren’t into tall men either.

Then there are men het women aren’t supposed to be attracted to in any way, which probably accounts for why Tumblr sexymen become the way they do. Some of these characters aren’t buff, some of them tend to be thirsted after whenever they tend to be skinny and appear in a suit. Dick Grayson is sexy, but he’s not a sexyman the same way Riddler and Venom have become. That doesn’t stop Grayson and his ilk from being the subject of many slash fanfics, but when it comes to sexymen they’re a class of their own.

They’re pretty much major geek sex symbols in a way the more conventionally attractive men aren’t, not that they aren’t unattractive but they don’t garner a big, defensive fanbase the way these characters do.

What makes a fandom sexyman?

Usually any character not deemed as sexually attractive to many people, but get sexualised by a vocal minority (usually on Tumblr or any social media site frequented by geeks). In the early 2010s, the characters made into fandom sexymen were Wheatley from Portal, Onceler from The Lorax and Benedict Cumberbatch’s take on Sherlock Holmes. Towards the mid-2010s we get Sans from Undertale and Kylo Ren from Star Wars, though it could be argued that regarding Kylo’s actor (Adam Driver) he was already being sexualised by fans when he played a character on the programme Girls.

When it comes to what makes a fandom sexyman, there are characters who don’t make the cut. When it comes to the video game Undertale, while it could be said that all of the characters got sexualised by fans yet it’s Sans who became the fandom sex symbol for many cishet female fans rather than Mettaton. As what somebody said on Yoututbe, Mettaton in his humanoid form seemed too conventionally good-looking to ever qualify as a fandom sexyman so it goes to Sans instead.

I could probably say many of the same things about Star Wars where while Anakin Skywalker is played by a conventionally attractive man and there was Star Wars slash fanfiction before, it’s his grandson Kylo Ren who became the fandom male sex symbol. Someone on an archived 4Chan thread pointed out that many of the fandom sexymen (and sexywomen) tend to be popular with young girls and possibly women in general, if true this may explain why their idea of a sexyperson differs from those of men.

Maybe not always the case as there are some people who agree whichever character’s sexy, but it’s safe to say that when it comes to some geek women (both wlm and wlw) their idea of a sexy character/sex symbol does differ from their male counterparts. Maybe that’s why sometimes their idea of a sex symbol can differ so much from common expectations, they’re not always conventionally attractive. They’re sometimes even rather unexpected as it is with Sans from Undertale.

While Mettaton could be a fandom sexyman, he’s not regarded as such to the same extent as Sans is. Likewise DC’s Dick Grayson would be too conventionally attractive to be canonised as a Tumblr or fandom sexyman, but Marvel’s Venom and Loki are widely regarded as such.

What makes a fandom sexyman?

To put it this way, it’s any male character deemed attractive by cishet geek women despite being unattractive or unsexy in some regards. Take the video game Undertale, the male character that became a geek sex symbol is the short grinning skeleton Sans. Meanwhile Mettaton is a robot who could turn into a pretty boy, while also sexualised by fans he’s not subjected to the same extent as what Sans got.

As what somebody else said, Mettaton’s humanoid form’s too manufactured to be a proper sexyman. Maybe it’s that too paint by the numbers pretty boy aesthetic, which as another pointed out, seems to be something some women are raised or socialised to be attracted to. For instance, it would be like being raised to find symmetrical facial features attractive despite being more attracted to more off-kilter assymetrical faces.

That’s what prevents Mettaton’s humanoid form from achieving fandom sexyman status the way Sans got. For a nonfictional example, this is pretty much why Adam Driver and Benedict Cumberbatch have become geek sex symbols in a way the more conventionally good looking actors like Robert Pattinson and Henry Cavill haven’t and likewise will never be. In the Sexypedia website, there’s even a list of forbidden characters or characters who can’t be fandom sexymen for being too conventionally attractive.

(Though ironically, somebody pointed out that this is the same website that lets Sephiroth off the hook.)

While any unconventional looking male character could be a fandom sexyman, there are reservations to who gets to be one. Aside from anime characters, there’s not a lot of fandom sexymen who are men of colour. There’s only one Western example of a fandom sexyman of colour and he’s Bruno from Encanto, even if somebody pointed out that there are black characters who might qualify.

Then again one of the expected traits of a sexyman is either being anthropomorphised as a skinny white man or already white himself. So it seems when it comes to fandom sexymen, there are already standards and a consensus for who gets to be called as such. Not to mention when it comes to sexual racism, black men are only sexy if they fulfill stereotypical expectations like having a big penis even if not all black men have one.

(There’s even a study where Tanzanian men actually have shorter than average penises and another study where it does mention the existence of Kenyan men with shorter or average sized members.)

That might be why there’s yet to be a black fandom sexyman, or at least one of the reasons for it as what Stitch pointed out if a fandom sexyman were to be outed as black he’d be disowned by many fans as what happened to one character (Blaise Zabini). The black fandom sexyman might as well be cishet female geekdom’s white whale, that’s if sexymen are expected to be attractive by being unconventional and defiant of norms that women grew up with.

True, not all sexymen are ethnically white (a handful of them are Japanese by the way of anime) but it’s also true that there’s really not a lot of black fandom sexymen. Fandom sexymen, as I said before, are often those mostly awkward looking white or white passing blokes in fiction who get sexualised a lot by cishet geek girls. There’s not much room for more brown and black sexymen well other than Bruno.

Bruno, as it stands, is the only fandom sexyman who’s neither white nor Japanese. He might as well be the near-exception to the rule when it comes to the prevailing ethnicity of many sexymen. When it comes to sexymen, while the term’s first coined in Tumblr in reality they’re almost any male character who aren’t conventionally attractive who still get sexualised by cishet geek women.

The Onceler from the Lorax might be one of the earliest characters to be deemed a sexyman but there are characters whose appeal goes back before Tumblr got popular, that’s if you consider L Lawliet and Severus Snape (two fictional characters from entirely different stories) precursors to the modern fandom sexyman. Maybe further if you include Star Trek’s Spock, the ancestral sexyman in that it’s Star Trek that got the slash fanfiction ball rolling.

If there’s ever a common thread about who gets to be called a sexyman, they’re not just troubled or edgy but also not commonly intended to be attractive (and not supposed to be attractive) yet eagerly sexualised by fans and oftentimes white, made white or white passing. Star Trek’s Spock might be a far better example of an early sexyman than Final Fantasy’s Sephiroth will ever be.

Sephiroth’s intended to be attractive, Spock was never intended to be attractive but fans paired him with Captain Kirk anyways and it’s Star Trek that kickstarted the whole slash fanfiction meme. Therefore Spock should actually be considered the earliest fandom sexyman, though for some reason he has yet to be mentioned in the Sexypedia website. Even then, he sets the tone and standard for not only slash fiction but also later fandom sexymen.