Beginning with Father Christmas himself, we horny little Yuletide revelers clearly have no problem turning Christmas into a sex thing. From the blatantly horny Christmas songs that fill radio airwaves to the ever-growing abundance of Santa porn available online, the annual celebration of the birth of Christ has long since morphed into an unabashedly kinky sexual feast day.
In recent years, another, perhaps more surprising character has joined the growing cast of horny holiday icons: the Grinch. From Rihanna posing in a fluffy green bra and panty set to Kylie Jenner and Lizzo taking turns flaunting sexy “Mrs. Grinch” outfits, the grouchy character once synonymous with a lack of Christmas cheer has clearly taken on new life as a seasonal sex symbol.
According to the New York Times, this growing “genre of sexualized Grinch content” includes everything from a NSFW Grinch-themed photoshoot that has become something of a social media tradition since it was posted three years ago, to a Yassified version of the Grinch anyone can achieve this year thanks to a “Cute Grinch” Instagram filter that gives users glowing green skin, long eyelashes and curling green brows. Last year, an SNL sketch starring Pete Davidson as the Grinch who spiced up a married couple’s sex life features a suggestive quip about the Grinch’s heart not being “the only thing that grew three sizes” last night, and earlier this month comedian Meggie Gates penned a horny ode to the Grinch’s sexual prowess for Cosmopolitan, hailing the holiday villain as a “green goblin bad boy” simply “dripping with raw masculinity.”
While the Grinch’s newfound sex-symbol status may seem surprising given the character’s origins as a villain described as “a three decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich” in a children’s picture book, this recent evolution seems all but inevitable given the current state of sex and the internet today.
In our current horny era, we have little interest in sex without irony (at least online). From Victoria’s Secret Angels to the Playboy Bunnies of the Hefner era, our old bastions of unironic sexiness have fallen, often revealing dark realities of abuse and exploitation behind their glossy, pushed-up exteriors. In their place have risen a new cast of surprising, sometimes ironic, occasionally absurd and always memeable new sexual icons, from the Grinch and Yukon Cornelius to Pete Davidson himself.
At a time when sex in our culture is an increasingly fraught, heavy topic dominated by accusations and revelations of sexual abuse and harassment, there is an increasing thirst for lighter, innocuous displays of sexual desire. Publicly lusting over the Grinch and his “dump truck” ass adds some levity. It allows us to explore and express sexual desire, however ironically, in a way that feels safe, harmless and enjoyable at a time when so much of our sexual discourse is shrouded in darkness.
Conversations about sex today are often necessarily bleak, fraught and complicated. Telling the internet you want that crooked dirty jockey to bang you with his 39 and a half foot pole is not.
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