Basic B*tch Can anybody find me a himbo to love?

This year it feels like

we’ve been speaking an entirely new language; the vocabulary of our day-to-day would have been unrecognisable last summer. Familiar words and phrases have shifted: distance, cocoon, household, indoors; and we’ve had to make up some new ones to fit the moment: quar’, covidiot, doomscrolling.

And we’ve had to call ‘himbo’ out of its 1980s retirement. Lockdown pushed the he-bimbos out of the gym and on to the internet, into our hearts: this is to be the summer of the himbo, the golden age of big, dim, lovely boys.

We’re sick of the fast-talking smart-arses in crumpled shirts playing devil’s advocate and mansplaining identity politics. We don’t want hot takes and thought experiments; we don’t want explanations of US politics that somehow take longer than the podcast they were initially lifted from. We’re tired.

Himbo-fever has permeated all subcultures and fandoms, evidence of a cultural return to the simpler things ushered in by quarantine: growing your own tomatoes, cultivating a sourdough starter, having a boyfriend who loves flatpack furniture and has no strong opinions on what to watch on Netflix.

2020 is a tumultuous, uncertain time: we crave George of the Jungle’s big, optimistic arms that say everything is going to be OK.

At the centre of contemporary himboism is the idea of safety: though himbos may be burly, they are unthreatening. They are an oasis in an arid desert of toxic masculinity.

It’s less about IQ than being straightforward, relaxed, perhaps possessing of certain naive gullibility. It’s less about beauty than that unique, confident simplicity that some beautiful men who were beautiful children have about them: the world has been kind to them, they have not had to develop guile. They are excited, not jaded.

A pandemic is not a time for irony, or sarcasm, or verbal sparring. This is a cultural moment when we crave big, uncomplicated arms. We’re sick of clever assholes: Himbo is not attempting to write an answer to Sally Rooney, he just wants to make sure he’s hitting his protein window and that you’re warm enough.

These boys will make us whole again: release the himbos.