While scrolling through Instagram stories recently, I came across a mirror selfie showing the morning wood of a man in boxer shorts. I don’t know this person. This art director and I have followed each other for years, but beyond sending me the occasional flame emoji, we’ve never spoken online or IRL. Oddly enough, though, he added me to his close friends list earlier this year, and what started as shirtless gym photos quickly turned into full nudes with only a towel covering his penis – and, now, his blunder.

Conceptually, I like a man who presents photos. Cut down an oak on TikTok? Yes. Cook suggestively on the rollers? I’m locked up. Hook me up to an IV of all the sluttiest thing a man can do. I love seeing men break patriarchal norms by performing openly in front of women.

Yet in no way, shape or form did I ever want to see this quasi-stranger’s barely clad erection – and it turns out he’s far from the only cis, straight man who chose Close Friends to show a lot more of itself to fewer people. The guys shoot their shot with private displays of excitement, even though many of them feel conflicted and embarrassed about it.

A Brief History of the CF Thirst Trap

Gay men exploit their close friends it’s been like this for years, and no one hesitates to see sensual selfies of women, whether they’re influencers and models or Amanda from your company’s accounting department. Now like gender roles have become more blurred, some heterosexual men aspire to come on board.

However, when it comes to posting sensual images, many feel ashamed for wanting to be openly objectified and validated. Men are generally praised by society for having lots of sex, but some forms of soliciting this type of attention are considered more acceptable than others. And unsurprisingly, some men take Close Friends’ content too far, sexually harassing women along the way.

Men want to be bad too

“I’m single. I’m flirty. I like to show off. So, I like attention,” says Michael*, a content marketer in Chicago. “I just do it for selfish reasons, to feel better.” He’s hoping for responses like “You look great” or “Come on!” He wants, among other things, to stroke his ego.

Michael’s Close Friends content consists primarily of bulge and nude photos, a stark contrast to the tame baseball game photos on his usual feed. His list has 10 “companions,” as he puts it – people he’s had sex with, sexted or kissed. “I don’t even consider them close friends,” he says.

While Michael pursues a general virtual validation, others have taken a more targeted approach. Jesse, a London-based writer, reserves his shirtless and sweaty photos for his close friends and once used the feature to show his ex what he was missing. “I wouldn’t even be ashamed to admit it,” he says, “(but) it worked like a charm.” They briefly got back together, but the relationship did not last.

Others simply copy what they see. “Women are the ones who created this thing,” says Luis, who works in the fashion industry. Inspired, he filled his list with people he has already dated and hopes to date. At first, he only posted “pleasant or cutesy stuff” like memes, music, and his Co-Star push notifications. He still does all of that — and also flaunts short shorts on leg day.

“I find it rather grating and embarrassing,” he says. Even though he feels like he’s looking for compliments, he wants to be admired. “(I) consider myself to be quite attractive and physically fit, so there is a compelling desire to see what kind of validation and chaos I can find,” he says.

Some women are ready to give birth. Katie, who works in Hollywood, has been added to a friend’s dodgy list of close friends. “It’s definitely meant to generate a ‘You’re hot’ response, and frankly, I obliged,” she says. “Like, OK, are you going to put me here? I know what my goal is. I’ll fill it out. They have been exchanging sexts for months.

The Ick Factor is Real

Elena, a journalist in New York, recently found herself in new territory: private, network-connected thirst traps. A man she connected with on Hinge a few years ago showed up in her DMs with a fire emoji. When she looked at his profile, she found bulge photos restricted to close friends only — a feature that didn’t exist when they matched. (Meta launched the grid option in 2023.) They had never met in real life and she didn’t even follow him.

“My brain immediately goes, ‘How many people are there here?’ “, she said. “It was an immediate stop.”

If she saw steamy – but less explicit – images posted for everyone to see, she would consider men confident. But behind the glow of the green circle? Scary. She says: “It seems like they’re ashamed, (like), ‘I shouldn’t do this but I want to do it (anyway).’ »

Alyssa, a writer and consultant in New York, found herself on the same list of art directors as me. They had never spoken, online or offline.

“It looked like sexual harassment,” she said, calling it “disgusting.” Had he thought that Alyssa and I wouldn’t want to see his erection? Did he have one?

“I didn’t look at it that way,” Jesse admits, noting that he thinks his shirtless photos aren’t “really offensive.”

Others, however, had questioned their content. Michael was once called out by a recipient and said he learned his lesson. “You have to be intelligent. You can’t send sexy photos to random women.

For Miles*, the owner of a marketing agency in Los Angeles, reading about “the amount of unsolicited crap women get from men” factored into his decision to quit.

While examples of the male gaze are everywhere (see: Maxim And Swimsuit illustrated by Sports blankets; romantic comedies like Couplingwhere an average man lands a model), the other side of the coin is hard to find. There is Peopleit’s annual The sexiest man in the world list and… what else? It’s no wonder some people tend to miss the mark..

Of course the art director thinks women want to see his near-nudes. But because the Instagram feature has no way to unsubscribe, its followers have not consented to receiving this content, leaving them only the option to mute, unfollow, or block.

Thirst for more

My bikini selfies sit alongside my photos. The Wall Street Journal bylines on my main feed. The comments? Heart eyes here, flame emojis there, exclamatory statements from my real-life best friends, my internet-only girls, and my mom. Girls support hot girls. It doesn’t matter if a man I’m interested in recognizes them. Anyway, I have my cheer squad.

But this is generally not the case for heterosexual men. Outside of Close Friends, Luis says he has nowhere to be openly proud of his appearance. For him, this seems unimaginable and enviable.

Others share this sentiment. An anonymous podcast host says he could never post an obvious thirst trap on Main because any innocent performance before the female gaze would be ridiculed by his many fashion fans.

Even healthy content carries risks, he says. “Hey, look, I cooked this meal,” he said. “I could never do that without being undermined by guys trying to one-up me or saying, ‘Oh, you didn’t cut that onion right.'” Broadcasting virtual shots, he says, is completely irrelevant. painting.

This fear is difficult to shake. Miles is in an open relationship and he was using Close Friends to gauge women’s interest in him. He wanted to feel wanted, unlike how he felt with his main partner.

Somehow he feels evolved. “I like to think that I don’t have this male shame that other generations had. I can share my emotions. I will cry in front of people,” he said. Yet he’s barely comfortable sharing a “fit photo” publicly.

Posting steamy selfies in private was different, Miles says. It seemed silly, but also safe from the judgment of her male friends. He stepped back and gave a long, hard look at toxic masculinity. “I realized… ‘Oh, this shit is ingrained in me.’”

*The name has been changed.