When Everyone’s Favorite DIY Pride Party Goes Mainstream

The twink’s face hit the pool of slime hard. It was the final wrestling match of the annual Twinks vs. Dolls event in New York City, aka the unofficial queer Olympics, aka the DIY smackdown that first popped up in the backyard of Singers bar in Brooklyn five years ago. Today, the event has grown in such demand that this year’s spectacle was hosted at the Palladium theater in Times Square, much to the visible intrigue of venue staff used to hosting, say, Belinda Carlisle. Instead of hosting yacht rock or a heavy metal band, the stage was home to a boxing ring in which a dozen or so twinks and dolls competitively made out, or participated in a candy spitting contest while the hosts provided commentary like, “unless an M&M, a stone butch won’t melt in your mouth.”

If you’re part of the alphabet mafia, all of this probably makes sense. Like me, you’ve probably been keeping up with the heated online discourse around the beloved Pride month event. For the uninitiated: Twinks vs. Dolls is a tongue-in-cheek competition hosted by Singers bar between trans women (dolls) and lithe gay men (twinks) who compete in several rounds of events — most famously, the cigarette race that first made the event go viral — until one team is crowned the winner by a panel of judges. Writer Tobias Hess aptly called it the “physicalization of the queer digital hyperbrain,” because no one does unhinged parties and cooked memes quite like the team at Singers, a community space that also speaks to the new aesthetic ethos of the contemporary queer bar. “Singers is just sexy,” an attendee in a rhinestone thong, Fendi kitten heels, and a cropped T-shirt reading No Pain, No Pain told me when I asked why they were attending the event this year. “All the other Pride month stuff gets so corporate and cringe.”