As the latest advent of quarantine horniness, extremely online guys and two-dimensional mascs are balancing shampoo bottles on their erections. Yes, the latest trend in horny on main culture is sexualizing Head & Shoulders.
Part shock value and part thirst trap, the Shampoo Challenge is better understood as what happens when torso Twitter thots share a timeline with an increasingly mainstream furry and anime art communities.
In fact, the Shampoo Challenge started as a trend in an anime Facebook group before slowly proliferating across the internet. Twitter user @_Sugar_Senpai, in a now-deleted tweet, posted two anime drawings from Facebook of chiseled men standing in bathrooms with bottles on their erections. She captioned the tweet, “New challenge 👀”
Quickly, the challenge spread through queer and furry communities before hitting the straight men of Twitter. Alex, a straight 23-year-old from Michigan, hopped on the trend with his girlfriend’s encouragement. He balanced Head & Shoulders’ Classic Clean shampoo on his baby-blue Fruit of the Looms. “It just seemed kinda funny, so we said fuck it,” Alex tells me.
I was curious: How hard is it to balance a bottle of shampoo on your dick? Not too challenging if you’re leaning it on your stomach, Alex says. “I’ve got a good platform, I guess.”
Some have even monetized the Shampoo Challenge. Angel, a 23-year-old trans girl from New York, did the Shampoo Challenge after seeing backlash to a cis girl’s version with a strap-on. She posted a selfie with her Yves Saint Laurent clutch sitting atop of her penis and captioned it, “The boys lose again! ✌️”
Angel linked to her recently launched OnlyFans account, garnering 30 new subscribers from the post. “It’s just kind of tongue-in-cheek for a girl to participate, and I love to confuse people,” Angel tells me. “Women do everything better, including balancing stuff on their dick.”
Bradley Zadrozny, a 25-year-old gay man from Sydney, Australia, posted his Shampoo Challenge after seeing drawings of masc bear and wolf fursonas stabilizing shampoo on their stiff ones.
oh boy…. #ShampooChallenge pic.twitter.com/K7Jl2LI3Ub
— zephyxusAD (@ZephyxusAD) April 27, 2020
I bet that's something Ray would do. 🧴#ShampooChallenge pic.twitter.com/erfTOPjDOj
— Takemoto 竹本 (@arashi_takemoto) April 24, 2020
i….i can explain………. 😳😩#ShampooChallenge pic.twitter.com/qzf1kvvyKl
— Drakonika (@drakonika123) April 25, 2020
It’s rare to see a furry trend hit the mainstream without a little bit of real-life skin. Fursona drawings, after all, can be time-consuming and expensive when commissioned for detailed portraits. Zadrozny, a furry, says he didn’t have much time to spare: By the time a fursona piece is finished, the trend may have passed. So he opted for a selfie, balancing a conditioner bottle on his AussieBum briefs. “Guys will jump at the chance to have fun with their dicks. This is just an excuse to do that [and] show it off,” he tells me.
“I just saw some of the people I follow doing it, so I figured why not. Just something to pass the time while being stuck inside,” says Rickie, 21, from Washington, D.C.
As with any trend, artistic internet challenges will usually be co-opted by hots looking for any opportunity to show those abs and go viral. What better way to get those reply guys gagging than thot-posting during a pandemic when everyone is living online?
Joseph Longo
Joseph Longo is a culture and entertainment journalist whose work has appeared in The Associated Press, Entertainment Weekly and more. He's still trying to understand what it means to be a Gemini Rising.
