Beefcakes Are Back

Each time I opened Instagram this week, I was confronted with something triggering: friend after friend posting images that flashed back a decade to 2016, a hellish year that is now apparently looked back on with some fondness. But as I reviewed throwbacks to our younger selves (complaining rather cutely about the worst election of our lifetimes), I was also reminded that 2016 was when Timothée Chalamet began to take over our world. That was the year when Chalamet filmed lauded roles in Call Me by Your Name and Lady Bird that would soon catapult him into Hollywood’s A-list. Such was young Timmy’s power that, two years later, the New York Times’ T Magazine gazed upon the army of young, slim men who followed him in the collective cultural imagination — from Troye Sivan to Lucas Hedges — and confidently declared, “Welcome to the Age of the Twink.”

Call it “twink death,” if you must, but a lot has changed in the intervening years. In 2026, it’s the beefcake who is back. Muscles, mustaches, and mullets are all now firmly in vogue. Sure, the machomen among us have never really suffered from any true social exclusion, but it’s now fashionable once again for the rest of us to be openly thirsting after the bubble butts on the Heated Rivalry boys or the snake-catching, bicep-bearing Love Island alum Rob Rausch (who was the subject of a story in The Cut this week entitled, “I’m Obsessed With The Hot Snake Guy on The Traitors”). Think of how Benson Boone became the breakout male pop star of the last year or two, thanks not only to his powerful pipes but also his penchant for wearing tight bodysuits that show off a physique tailor-made for backflips. Or how certified “sad boy” Paul Mescal packed on muscle for Gladiator II and didn’t really let it go, lending his turn as Shakespeare in Hamnet a noticeable buffness. Even in the world of politics, brawny leftist commentator Hasan Piker is now posing in little more than soap suds in a bathtub for GQ. These heartthrobs don’t need to be chiseled, per se, but they are all strapping, strong, and sculpted. Much like our new food pyramid, with men, it’s now all about protein — didn’t you hear?

It perhaps makes sense why so many of us might be imagining comfort in the strong arms of Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie. After all, it’s a scary time for the world and we’re craving guys who look like they might make good hunters or protectors in the coming collapse of society and not, say, get blown away by a post-apocalyptic nuclear wind. There’s also something very hot about a guy who, amid the seeming collapse of social order around us, still finds the time to take care of himself. And there’s still something attainably human about their hotness, too — Rausch has more in common with an Abercrombie model of yore than the 0%-body-fat Dorito-shaped torso of a superhero action star.

But it’s not as simple as upping the creatine powder and joining CrossFit, otherwise, RFK Jr. would be considered a sex symbol. (I think I need a shower after typing those last words.) Sensing our changing tastes, the New York Times Magazine declared in August — with the air of a new pope being selected in Vatican City — that the age of twinks was seemingly over, and that “himbos” like Travis Kelce, Jason Momoa, and Channing Tatum were our new pinups. But the hotties ruling the present moment don’t fit neatly into that archetype; in 2026, we can and do want more. In an era of stupidity, competency is sexy, which is part of the reason we’re all watching The Pitt. Our beefcakes should have brains as well as brawn. Think of how Storrie apparently managed to learn Russian in a manner of weeks to play Ilya Rozanov on Heated Rivalry, apparently doing it so well that he confused his actual Russian-born cast members. Hot! Or the masterful gameplay Rausch demonstrated when he pretended to teach Lisa Rinna chess on The Traitors as the pair secretly discussed elimination strategies in plain sight. Hot! Or at the roundtable when Rausch gave Michael Rapaport a fiery vocab lesson — while wearing just a pair of overalls. Double hot!

Indeed, while we’re thirsting over butts and biceps, we can still be hungry for more. Our appetites are complex, after all. The last few years of dreamboats have proven we like them to be ripped and talented, like Bad Bunny or Michael B. Jordan. They should be kind and courteous, too, like David Corenswet’s turn in last year’s Superman. They should be able to cook us a delicious meal in a tight white T-shirt (and a pair of Calvin Kleins) like Jeremy Allen White in The Bear. And they should be endlessly affable and smiling, like Glen Powell, whose arrival as a movie star could not be more apt for encapsulating this particular moment.

Yes, our current hockey-playing, snake-wrestling obsessions are muscly, but they’re not macho; they’re hunky. They don’t peacock; they possess a cool confidence and warmth. Like Williams, they’re self-assured enough to do a 20-minute skin care routine or sport a set of earrings and a Bulgari necklace to the Golden Globes — while still giving us a flash of his pecs, of course.

And as I think about Heated Rivalry for the [redacted] time this week, I realize that Kip Grady, the character played by Robbie G.K., may best exemplify our new ideal. The dude works at a smoothie shop and studies art history, but is somehow so jacked he is evidently packing his smoothies exclusively with protein powder (and bananas). “I want you so bad,” Scott Hunter (François Arnaud) understandably tells him. “I want you more than I’ve wanted anything in a long time.” Amen.