"Age of twink"

There was a piece in the New York Times called, "Welcome to the Age of the Twink". If, like me, you had no idea, it's a term from the gay subculture that means a small, skinny, hairless manboy. That such a term would exist is no surprise. If there is a body type, there is a type of person with a fetish for it.

A lot of people have heaped abuse on the article and with good reason: it's poorly written, poorly argued and poorly researched. It's the last that I want to focus on. Just the title makes a claim that twinks are culturally important now. What sort of evidence is given to back up this claim? Here's a list of what I can find in the article:

1. There is one character in the movie Call Me By Your Name who fits the definition.
2. there is a Slovak porn company that specializes in the type
3. Zac Efron looks the part in a muscular sort of way
4. figure skater Adam Rippon
5. You can find a history of the type in the work of a fashion photographer named Ryan McGinley
6. You can also find the type in fashion photographs chosen by a designer named Hedi Slimane
7. Three movie stars: Tye Sheridan, Lucas Hedges and Nick Robinson plus a bunch of guys in Dunkirk.
8. Musical artists Olly Alexander and Troy Sivan
9. A German male modeling agency called "Tomorrow is Another Day" specializes in the type.

 That is one awfully narrow set of cultural references. Most of them (#s 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9) are closely connected to the gay subculture.

Even opinion journalism should be based on something. That the writer had a feeling about something, which is all we have here, is not enough.