Pinky Touches & Their Impact on Teenage Boys Experiencing Their First Love/Crush — an Essay No One Asked For
Ahead of the greatly anticipated pinky touch we'll be receiving in Episode 3 of Boys in Love (plz watch, it's already so phenomenal, and we've already received a surprising first kiss from the leads), I've made an overly-complicated, a no-one-asked-for-this-post about how much I love pinky touches, and how much of an impact and role it serves for teen boys experience physical touch for the first time (usually) with their first crush/love.
Let's Dive In !!
I've never spoke about it on Tumblr before, mostly bc I'm still pretty new to this, and very off/on this app, but let me just throw this out there: my favorite trope/genre of BL is high school romances/first loves.
Now, it doesn’t always have to be high school specifically — sometimes it’s middle school, or that messy transition period between being a kid and an adult — but most often, that early first love story unfolds in a school setting. The key difference between these stories and those set in college or the workplace is that these teenage boys have no prior blueprint. They don’t already know what a crush is supposed to feel like. Meanwhile, college students and adults usually have some frame of reference, even if it’s messy. Teenagers? They're fumbling in the dark.
Why Do You Love the High School First-Love Trope So Much, Kay?
I'm so glad you asked! Maybe this is me being a little remorseful about my own time spent in middle/high school, which was mostly hiding away from my crushes out of fear that I was too ugly/fat for them to like me back, on top of the fact that I was just down-right not allowed to date until I turned 18, so I unfortunately missed out on the whole high school sweetheart shin-dings, and whathaveyous. Which is probably why I love it so much.
Being a teenager is weird. It's like you're not a kid, but you also should have a job to make money, and probably a car so you can get yourself around too. As a kid, you're use to playing with toys, going to school, hanging with friends, making fart jokes and throwing out unhinged phrase and words cause it was "cool". Then, you enter middle/high school, and things take a swift change. Bam, you look at someone — and your heart pounds so hard it feels like your ribs might crack. You start noticing all the ways you don’t look like everyone else. You pick yourself apart. It's overwhelming and scary and new.
ANYWAYS back to what point I was trying to make. First loves usually happen in adolescent years, and mostly in middle/high school. So it's no surprise that I see it, and I immediately get goosebumps. First love is a feeling that has to be navigate so tediously and with fragility. That's why high school first loves get me — because nobody knows what they’re doing, and everything feels so delicate and real. So we see it in longing stares, goofy smiles, redden cheeks, but it somehow ignites the minute there is physical touch involved. That physical touch is: pinky touches.
Why Pinky Touches, Kay?
Again, great question! Pinky touches have been around for ages, and it's not anything new within LGBTQ+ content. The pinky touch is such a simple, ordinary type of physical touch when it comes to the playing field of other kinds of physical touches. So why do I love it so much when there's hugs and kisses and groping and sex? Because the very being of a pinky touch exemplifies the need of someone to feel someone else, mostly through a means of secrecy or out of curiosity. It is not as outwardly intimate as kissing and other things, it isn't as "romantic" as actual hand holding, but there is something so remarkable about a simple touch as two pinkies that makes my heart flutter. It’s not loud. It’s not performative. It’s two people saying I want to touch you without the world noticing. It’s subtle intimacy — It’s when the spark of attraction ignites into a wildfire. It is the exact time of contact that I crave for in any BL.
Which brings me to my next point: Why is Pinky-Touching so impactful for me when it's coming from teenagers?
Mixed with my love for first loves and my obsession with subtle intimacy, it’s pretty simple: For teenagers, a pinky touch is often the very first moment of real, physical confirmation that their feelings are mutual. Up until that touch, it’s all wondering and overthinking and maybe. Then, one tiny brush of pinkies, and boom.
Suddenly, it’s real.
So when this pinky touch happens between two teenagers that are already questioning their sexuality, questioning why they like someone of the same-sex so much, questioning whether it's really real or not, that type of contact takes it to a completely different level. And while, yes, it's as frivolous of a contact as it sounds, it is so SO important.
So, Kay, what examples can you give?
OH I LOVE THIS QUESTION !!!
Let's start with the first bit of queer content that did it for me, even as a young lad; Jude and Connor from The Fosters. Mind you, I was probably in middle school (maybe? Maybe freshman year??) when this came out.
In this scene, if I'm remembering correctly, they were at the movie theaters. I don't think it was explicitly a date, but in the scene it goes from each of their facial expressions down to their hands that eventually gets to this!! Cinematic masterpiece. 13/14 year old me was memorized. I remember watching this scene religiously, I remember giggling like a fucking maniac. My eyes got watery, and this was the start of my craze for first-loves, specifically with teen in middle/high school. (If you haven't seen The Fosters, you are actually insane).
Moving on, I feel like I couldn't give this example without potentially being scrutinized, so of course, we have Nick and Charlie from Heartstopper.
Okay, I’m half-sure their first physical moment involved pinky touching (I’ll fact-check this later), but regardless, their early touches carry the exact vibe I’m talking about.
Which brings me to another beloved example from Thailand, My School President with Tinn and Gun.
I feel like, whilst writing this I have come up with another conclusion that I won't bother adding in at the top, so I'll just say it here; I was wrong, Pinky-touching can but does not have to be the first type of physical touch. The point of a pinky touch is to emphasize how much two people want one another, but through subtly like touching someone's pinky. Mostly because they're not out yet, and/or bc they're usually in public. yes, that's is also my new conclusion since two things can be right at once.
There are a plethora of pinky touches that I could get into, but I'll just mention some other pretty good ones for timing purposes, because we are SO far away from done:
Joke and Zo from Hidden Agenda
Kang and Sailom from Dangerous Romance
Simon and Willhelm from Young Royals
NOW! Moving onto another segment that is just as important as pinky touch, except it's not pinkies at all.
Another kinds of simple physical touch between teenagers:
I can't make this entire post about teenager experiencing first love/crushes and not mention TJ and Cyrus from Andi Mack. I was and Avid Andi Mack watcher back in 2017/2018 while it aired. I have a whole dedicated Tumblr page, which is a different story for another time, but this was a category 5 on the "flutter-me-heart" scale. This was very monumental, for Disney and for queer media in general, but again, not the important part Kay!
Anyways, they don't pink touch, instead TJ slowly slides his hand closer to Cyrus'. In the next scene after this, Cyrus noticed his hand moving, looks down at it, and smiles. This is also while they're having a not-so-subtle-yet-subtle conversation about their feelings towards one another. This is Disney Channel, so they can't explicitly state what is happening, but real fans understand, especially once they go to hold hands.
Seriously, you have to watch this, like, omg, yesterday.
Moving on, my last but not least important example is Bobby and Liam from Diary of a Future President.
This show, in its entirety, is already so underrated, but no one talks enough about the queer representation from these two. In this scene, Bobby and Liam accidentally get stuck in a storage closet. They are just talking and yapping, and then their knees accidentally touch. Of course you can see this gay panic that arises in Bobby. Another one of those simple contacts that don't seem to mean much, but actually mean alot.
Okay, I think I'm done yapping!
This was all to say that if you've read all of this, then you need to experience the next monumental (probably not) pinky-touch which will take place next Sunday on the third episode of Boys in Love between Mon and Kim.
Drop in some other examples if you can, I love this game 🥹
