The Rise of the Gay Himbo: A Conversation We Simply Need to Have
Is he unique to our fraught moment in history or just a rebrand of the '90s Muscle Mary? I turned to my friends, film and TV producer Greg Scarnici and Queerty editor Johnny Lopez, to find out.
Hi, Caftaners! It’s Monday night and I can’t believe NYC (the whole northeast, in fact) is buried in snow YET AGAIN. As it came down hard last night, I could barely enjoy the view from a certain someone’s picture window as I thought about what a filthy, slushy, barely navigable mess the sidewalks are going to be this coming week—and only days after coming out of the subarctic temps and filthy street mess of the LAST blizzard. THIS WINTER IS BREAKING ME!
Perhaps all that hibernal exhaustion is why this week’s Caftan is admittedly so silly—although you do know that occasionally I like to depart from the VIP interview format to discuss THE CULCHA and THE ZEITGEIST. That’s what this week is—a chat with my friends Greg Scarnici (SNL producer and drag icon Levonia Ciccone… (Yes, she of the tasteful club classic “Breed My Bussy on the Dance Floor”…)
…and his friend-since-high-school-in-Queens and Queerty editor Johnny Lopez. Here we are together on our chat!
And what pressing topic brought us together? Well, about a year ago or so, one of my best friend started declaring that he wanted to be a HIMBO. (Sadly for him, he is actually quite intelligent underneath his Himbonic strivings.) I thought for a while that this was his own cute variation on BIMBO—until I realized that in the gay club world where we spend too much time, this was actually “a thing” and what all the rave gays were calling themselves and one another. In fact, I learned that Queerty itself had written about Himbos as far back as 2023, calling the Himbo (hilariously) “an attractive but unintelligent man—the equivalent of a bimbo, but re-gendered for him.” It also notes “Saying something silly on occasion or playing stupid for laughs is not the same. Himbos obliviously make being hot and dumb a lifestyle, aspirational even.”
I guess Ryan Gosling as Ken in Barbie comes to mind—as does Kronk from The Emperor’s New Groove…
…and of course Joey from Friends. My personal favorite Himbo is probably the hunky, dim sweetheart Lance Arroyo from funniest-TV-show-of-all-time The Other Two.
But then again, those are straight Himbos. Is there anything special about a gay Himbo? Is he (or they! for the nonbinary Himbos) allowed to be less dim than the standard I’m-just-Ken Himbo? Is there anything about the gay Himbo that was wrought by, or reflects, the seismic events of the past few years—Covid, AI, social media on steroids, the end of “high woke” and the resurgence of Trumpian fascism and a particularly fake, performative and misogynist brand of heterosexual masculinity as evinced by the likes of Andrew Tate? Or is the Himbo just the latest version of the gay gym rat, the Muscle Mary—an archetype that has predominated since at least the 1980s?
As you will see, Greg, Johnny and I break it all down for you. But first allow me to exhume a memory from the 1990s, when I was living in Chelsea, NYC’s ascendent gay mecca of that decade. I was walking down Eighth Avenue when I passed two typically inflated such archetypes, like Michelin Men boyfriends in near-matching tank tops, tiny shorts and the obligatory baseball caps, hand in hand. Onward they waddled in their steroidal immensity. Then I passed a straight couple and overheard the woman say of the Himbos, “They look like a cartoon.” And the man scoffed: “That’s because they are a cartoon.”
Admittedly, I blushed with shame for my people, briefly relieved I was nowhere near as outsize or as minimally clad as the duo in question. I was a gay Chelsean, yes, but at least I wasn’t a cartoon.
But thinking back on it all these years, I ask myself: What’s so wrong with being a cartoon? Maybe it’s even fun to be a cartoon, especially if you hold the idea—rightly so or not—that you’re more complex and nuanced than that. To be perfectly honest, I’d happily be a cartoon these days if it spared me having to constantly think about the darkness we’re living in—or even having to expend the mental energy to make myself not think or talk about it in certain settings where nobody wants a Debbie Downer around.
And on that profound note, I’ll proceed to my chat with Greg and Johnny. I promise that future Caftans won’t be this silly. Just indulge me this week. The winter is really getting to me, as you can probably tell.
Greg and Johnny, thank you both for joining me this week. I love that you have been friends since high school in Queens. So can I start by asking you both: when I say “Himbo,” what three words come to mind?
Greg: Big. Dumb. And kind.
Johnny: Muscle. I think Daisy Dukes. And blonde, for some reason.
So you picture almost like a male version of Daisy Duke?
A big white muscle—
Johnny: When I heard the word “himbo,” sort of, even though I know it doesn’t mean just that.
The word “Himbo” has really trended in the queer world in recent months. Johnny, as someone who’s really following everything and aggregating it, does that sound accurate to you?
Oh yeah, absolutely. We don’t use it as a pejorative. We’ll call an actor in a muscle hot-guy role a Himbo. We’re not necessarily going into the historical meaning of being dumb and good-natured, even though that is a part of it. It’s like “So and So’s new Himbo photo shoot for Calvin Klein.”
It’s the new word for thirst trap?
Greg: Like the new He-Man?
Johnny: Right, like Nicholas Galitzine as the new He-Man [in the new Masters of the Universe movie coming out in June].
“His himbo muscle makeover…” We use it loosely on Queerty. Not necessarily like the classic “Duh?”, like the rentboy cowboy in The Boys in the Band.
That’s an archetype—but nowadays you don’t have to be dumb. It’s more the aesthetics.
Greg, what about you?
Greg: It has a loose meaning for me as well. I think it can mean a super-hot guy with a great body who embraces his sexuality without hangups. But when I dove into it, I realized that it can also mean someone who doesn’t try to be overtly masculine in a toxic way. They’re very comfortable being gentle and emotionally engaging and intelligent—while also having a body. I think that comes from the fact that our gender norms have been blurring in recent years. So now it’s kind of cool to be this guy with a fucking great giant body but you’re not toxic and terrible.
Johnny?
Johnny: Yeah, I definitely think being a Himbo has become aspirational in certain circles. You see influencers, people actively calling themselves Himbos. But they mean the look—not being devoid of brain cells. I know there’s always been body culture, but hipsters didn’t have bodies a few years back. A hipster would not be at a circuit party 20 years ago. But now all of Brooklyn is at a circuit party.
The eighties and nineties were very shirtless, smooth bodies, pumped up, steroids. Very Himbo-esque, and certain circles didn’t go there. When I was living in L.A., if you went to a circuit party, it was like, “Girl? What were you doin’? You can’t be at the Silver Lake bar if—” [Tim: Silver Lake sort of embodying the hipster indie bohemian side of L.A. gay life] It was like, “Bye.” That person in Bushwick 20 years ago would not be at a warehouse shirtless. And now everyone is shirtless. “I’ve got four tattoos and I’m nonbinary but I’m pumped up.” It’s much less so that you have to be one thing if you are in that muscle Himbo world.
Greg: Tim will tell you, Johnny, we go out clubbing together and the lines are so blurred. Now you go to Basement and it’s like, “Oh, is that a muscle gay from Hell’s Kitchen or a creative director from Williamsburg?” Because everyone’s shirtless and they all have a great body.
I’ve noticed that hybrid as well, the merging of what I’d call muscle gym gay with sort of indie hipster arty Brooklyn gay.
My theory is that it’s a denoter of wealth and income. There was a time when—I mean, no, you don’t need to be rich or even middle-class to work out. You can go to Planet Fitness or Blink. But overall, cultivating your body correlates with wealth to some extent, and Brooklyn has become wealthy. Twenty-five years ago, the queer living in Brooklyn was not working in tech or a corporate marketing director. They were a real struggling artist or musician. Do you guys think that this merging, or the glossification or optimization of the hipster, is a marker of wealth in these once affordable neighborhoods?
Johnny: There’s definitely the affluent hipster versus—in Bushwick, there can be someone in a $5,000-a-month loft and someone in a run-down place, and one is the high-end hipster and the other is the actual artist hipster.
Then we start talking about the himbo phenom as it relates to straight men…