What is sexy?

A project I’ve been working on is related to helping people express and play in a novel way. It’s a useful feature, it’s technically challenging and has been satisfying to work on and you could imagine certain communities and personas using it to express themselves. But it’s not sexy.

Wrestling with this leads me to an ongoing exploration - what even is sexy?

You might think porn is sexy. And just like porn, the original formulation of the prototype I made is largely is a single player experience. But that’s exactly the problem. Porn is sexual. It gets the job done. It helps trigger particular mindsets that are arousing. But it’s not sexy.

I would posit that sexiness is a multi-player attribute. It is fundamentally interactive in a way that pornography and shooting a video or taking a photo cannot be. Both observing and creating a piece of content cannot be imbued with sexiness without there being an object and an audience and an interaction.

Let’s think through it.

What’s some scenarios that are sexy?

• The tension of two strangers sitting in public, their knees lightly touching, neither making an effort to move away. The wonder in one’s mind whether this is an intentional signal on the part of the other, or a thoughtless gesture as they do not mind or even notice the contact. Will they increase contact and press closer, find an occasion to brush their fingers in a just so slightly less innocuous manner, or will the tension diffuse rather than attenuate?
• Two idle and horny strangers messaging one another on Grindr. They’ve been here before. There’s an unspoken code, a gay social etiquette that while bland and rote has been developed and refined over global iterations innumerate. “Hey” “Sup” “Nice pics” “Thanks” “Looking for?” “Fun. You?” “Same.” “Trade albums?” and on and on. They love to complain about the code, but getting it just right is critical. And following the code is a sort of mating ritual which demonstrates to the other party safety - knowability, comfort, preditability - while demonstrating continued and escalating interest. Is there really going to be anything surprising or shocking in that Grindr album? It’s unlikely. If there is an element of particular niche communities and kinks there likely would have been some coded hint of them previously in the mating dance - a tag or an element in a photo or a manner of introducing. The knowability and the affirmation and the very slight variations (size, tatoo, setting, etc.) provide another element of escalation.
• A show at a party - the type of flabmoyant performance with ridiculous costumes and silly elements that you might watch under the influence of your intoxicator of choice. Watching the performance alongside a stranger, acquaintance, or a partner and describing your reaction and moments of delight with a gasp or a cheer or a phrase spoken softly in their ear. Pattern matching one another based on these reactions, that which is familiar and that which is novel, and learning a bit about one another - learning things that may be vaguely related to but likely have nothing to do directly with your sexuality itself - with the pressure off of full attention on one another but continuing to affirm one another’s relevance through the casual touch and phrase.

What is not sexy?

• Speed dating. Highly formulaic, intentional, inquisitional attention leading to a binary yes / no outcome. The feeling of a defined measure of success with high stakes out of the gate. The inability to escape or diffuse or divert, in the way that social animals do using ritualized displacement behavior when feeling undue pressure or attention, and without the option to reengage when the pressure has dissipated. Speed dating is contrued to have one shot and one shot only, and one mistake has little to no avenue for recovering and course correcting on the part of the offender who perceives the discomfort of the other.
• Repeated messaging, nigh on pestering, by an individual in real life or - even worse, god forbid! - on a digital messaging app, whether dating or sexually focused or entirely social. The intentions to bumping up for attention might be pure, and the offender might be completely sweet and normal, but in our social parlance we can’t help but describe this repeated second, third, fourth!?, inquiry as the horror of desperation on the part of the offender. But I don’t think the problem is really the desperation, it’s that the offender is not respecting the unspoken rituals that make up our social humanity as humans. That social animals are conflict avoidant, regardless of what any one individual might profess about themselves, and that social animals have developed signaling gestures and manners to diffuse attention. That our sexuality is one of our most vulnerable states, and that sexiness requires comfort and the feeling of safety affirmed by the behaviors and engagement in the rituals that the other party demonstrates and themselves accepts.

Let’s put it together. This is not an exhaustive descriptor but here I will make a first attempt at answering the question.

What are the elements of sexiness?

Suspense: the sense that the interest you feel may be present in the other party, signaled by that certain look or attitude or moment of interaction that triggers a pattern match in your mind as the start of a snowball to a possible avalanche of eventual sexuality.

Anticipation: Your mind making a prediction of the consequence of your actions, foreseeing what the object of your attention may do in response to your unspoken question, and having that prediction come largely true with perhaps minor but not overly attenuated deviations from what was predicted. Even overly affirming or explicit escalations at a moment that rituals mandate that are inappropriate can absolutely kill the sexiness of an interactio.

Respect: Signaling to the other person, either unconsciously or because you understand the nature of emotion emotionality, that you understand the social pressure and risk you present when broaching on sexuality, that you are asking another to be vulnerable in the most intimate of ways, and approaching it in a manner that is unthreatening and accepted by the other. Demonstrating that you respect “back off signals” as simple as a look away, a diversion to another topic of conversation.

Curiosity: not just demonstrating sexual interest in a person - for otherwise sexiness would be as simple as explicitly asking for sex out the door or dropping pants - but demonstrating interest in that person’s particular manner of ritualistic interaction. The discovery of a person’s “yes, escalate the ritual” affirmation as well as the other person’s subtle (or, on the less sexy end of the spectrum, explicit and firm) attempts to diffuse and relieve social pressure. Discovering that the ritualistic manner of the other person is compatible with your own.

Context: an environment in which both parties are at ease and have put themselves at a time and place in the universe where they will be open to novel interactions. That they have bared themselves in the path of the universe.

Predictability: the comfort that comes from your mind having made a projection about what is happening with another individual and being affirmed. Occasional surprised and moments of delight can attenuate sexiness but blind siding is totally unsexy, regardless how “hot” the other person might be.

Consent: the social ritual, our human version of a birds mating dance, by which two souls discover, touch, come apart, and revert to touching again, through repeated and varying and escalating and affirming movement.