Consider the Babygirl Man
A new social media microtrend is dubbing very tall and very menacing men ‘babygirl’ to describe their occasional show of soft, cutesy energy. Patrick Kho breaks down what this means for online masculinity in a post-RedPill internet.
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not like other guys 👉👈 is a monthly musing on masculinity in the media and on the internet.
He’s six-foot-five. And menacing. A sinister black side part and a razor-sharp jawline: the scariest high school junior to exist. A face if looks could kill. He could hold a revolver to your head and joke, “There’s no bullets in this gun.” Elsewhere, he’s a fifty-year-old man, bald and broad-shouldered, sporting serial killer Heisenberg glasses. “I’m not in danger—I am the danger,” he declares, a meth-stained goatee froths around his chin. In another world, he’s clad in a black suit. He speaks in pistols and punches more often than in words. “He’s not the boogeyman,” they say. “He was the one you sent to kill the fucking Boogeyman.” What is he?
He’s babygirl, apparently.
There is a new, peculiar internet man in town—call him Babygirl Man. A new trend on social media is calling male actors popular male actors like Jacob Elordi, Bryan Cranston, and Keanu Reeves ‘babygirl.’ But how can these men be likened to a girl, no less a baby one, when they play some of the most ruthless characters on film and television? (These being Euphoria’s Nate Jacobs, Breaking Bad’s Walter White, John Wick’s John Wick).