The Glorious, Sexy Confusion of #FineMenThatEatAss

Ass-eating — are people tweeting about it? Always.

Some folks are dead against it:

Others can’t get enough of the sex act, or the torrential flow of web content about it.

https://twitter.com/modernalmight/status/981315035409633280

Then there are a variety of nuanced takes — theories? — as to the import of ass-eating.

Whatever the ongoing debate about who really loves eating ass, whether they even know how, and if it should be a standard service in any intimate relationship, you can’t deny that the heterosexual crowd has jumped aboard the analingus bandwagon in a big way these past few years. We still can’t decide whether this should be read as a progressive “queering” of straight sex or cultural appropriation; as the gays have teasingly pointed out, salad-tossing isn’t exactly new, and they bravely pioneered it.

But the egalitarian aspect of eating ass — in theory, everyone has an ass, and anyone can eat one — makes for an exciting, if sometimes bewildering, mélange of horny social media posts. Whereas references to blow jobs and fingering, etc., may presume anatomy or gender identity, rimjobs exist in an erotic continuum accessible to all. So when a hashtag like #FineMenThatEatAss starts trending on Twitter, one can’t safely jump to conclusions regarding the intended audience (or how it actually caught on).

https://twitter.com/fuxkrihanna/status/983064453355921410

https://twitter.com/hoelymexicana/status/983064894621679621

Ostensibly, #FineMenThatEatAss originated as a way for men to post attractive selfies while advertising their experience in the oral/anal arts. As a thirst trap formula, it’s fairly straightforward — until you consider the difficulty of determining the guy’s orientation. Are they straight, gay, bi, or something else? They may eat ass, but whose ass do they want to eat? The tweets themselves do nothing to dispel this ambiguity. Almost as soon as the hashtag turned up, women announced they were trawling it for a suitable mate…

But so were dudes, which made for some hilarious complications. It was, in effect, impossible to court women with #FineMenThatEatAss without drawing male suitors as well. Accidentally or not, the virtue-signaling of a promise to devour the booty like groceries — a woke, unembarrassed, body-positive form of submission to a bedroom partner — extended to the entire pool of online horndogs seeking that pleasure.

https://twitter.com/pettyblackboy/status/983162655404974081

Even so, as the phenomenon took hold, almost no participant telegraphed his sexual preferences apart from comfort with the specified favor. To position oneself as up for grabs from any side and add to the messy free-for-all became part of a joke about nebulous lust in the digital age. We hardly care who gives us aroused attention as long as we get it, because 99 percent of these interactions will never be more than virtual. Guys who might feel awkward about flirting with other men in real life can open up to their flattery, and women can shamelessly hit on gay dudes in a more or less platonic way. Sure, a couple of cranks will get mad at unwanted advances, but most are satisfied to celebrate human beauty and ass-eating in all their multifarious glory. Given that we connect with strangers on these platforms for ego-stroking, it’s just common sense.

https://twitter.com/LIBGyal/status/983164943271976960

The negative response to this moment, as captured in the tweets above, seems limited to disapproval of ass-eating’s hype. These contrarians may hate analingus itself, or simply how much we strive to keep it cool. I concede we may reach a terminal threshold of butt-munch fever — a state of oversaturation — that robs the ritual of its taboo or inherent humor. That day, however, has not arrived. When men are still touting their eagerness to bury their face between your cheeks as a trait that sets them apart, the behavior isn’t totally normalized. We remain in a world whose ass-eating economy is largely predicated on FOMO, the fear of missing out. Just as we envy the Instagrammer on apparently permanent vacation to tropical locales, the collaborative obsession with rimming causes us to wonder if we’re doing it (or having it done to us) enough. The consensus, from what I’ve seen, is that everyone could use more of it in their life.

So ignore the tweets that claim #FineMenThatEatAss for one group over another, or look to embarrass a demographic that doesn’t “belong” in the conversation. When it comes to eating ass, we all have a golden ticket — the more the merrier. We ought to consider this kind of nonpartisan titillation a victory for kinkdom at large. You can disagree on the need to announce such hobbies as a hookup strategy, but let’s be real: there are far grimier avenues to orgasm. Hot people are hot, asses want to get eaten, and we may as well keep this stuff on a public record. Have a seat and enjoy the ride.

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Miles Klee

Miles Klee is MEL’s resident tank-top dirtbag, shitposter and meme expert. He’s also the author of the novel ‘Ivyland’ and a story collection, ‘True False.’