I'm sure you've heard of the sassy man epidemic and I fear many of us have fallen victim to it. In general, it is harmless and what one would consider is banter between typically a female and a heterosexual man. My definition of a sassy man specifically refers to straight men who are, well, sassy to generally women and rarely to other men. This is different than "being gay" or "talking like a girl"(which can be signs of how it's rooted in homophobia but more on that later), the sassy man, to me, is calculated. From my own personal fieldwork around sassy men, it is rare that they act this way around other men and you may think because they feel more comfortable expressing inherent feminity in front of women and talking like them, but in reality they are merely depicting a caricature of a woman. A typical stereotype of women is that they are overdramatic, overly emotional, and have attitudes. Men adapting this trait inherently is continuing that perception and also posing it as performative and as fake feminism. The sassy man almost paralells the performative man in a way, but still have the same intended goal: to essentially pursue a woman. Both of these men are utilizing things most women partake in or enjoy to practically use it against them for their own benefit. I'm all here for men to being intuned with femininity, however the overdramatization and tik tok-ification of being a sassy man feels somewhat superficial. This hesistancy towards men acting feminine is not derived from sexism at all, but from men just consistently being ingenuine towards women, using this as a plot to sleep with them. I can also see this to bypass homophobia in some ways, of using the term sassy instead of calling them gay, finding a scapegoat. I want to touch on different approaches to this concept that are different and similar to my own to really hone in on my curiosity of the epidemic. In turn, when a man is acting sassy, like I refernced earlier, we associate this behavior with women and queer communities and this concept can be rooted in sexism in ways. The Loyola student paper touches on this topic of gendered media and gendering actions and speech. Rooting the term and epidemic in toxic masculinity and how gendered media is still very present today. Evidently, I turned to Reddit to hear the people's opinions on an older thread from about 2 years ago and they make my take sound like I'm sexist, antifeminist, addicted to tik tok and how this is irrelvant and I'm just judging men for being feminine (this was under the "ask a feminist" thread btw), however with some marinating, the term I beleive is well known. All the Op-Eds I turned to for reference and expand my knowledge on the current epidemic are university student based, so potentially the users of the thread on Reddit are slightly dated since I do believe there is relevance. At least around young people involved in the dating scene. I do think it is lighthearted, but that's how everything starts I suppose, then again this is my blog and I can overanalyze however I like. I would also like to bring up the Harvard Crimson student Op-Ed that has also talked about this from about 2 and a half years ago that explains this epidemic more professionally and critically, and is able to depict the "hardships" of men and toxic masculinity in a satiric way. I feel like the author of the Op-Ed explains it well and I recommend to read both the Loyola and Harvard Op-Eds after this, for both gives a different elaboration that I also believe is true. Although it being dramatized at times version, men being "sassy" and feeling free to express emotions and becoming "one of the girls" when gossiping is somewhat admirable. I will abstain from comparing this is a general friendship between two women but I digress. Is this just basic human nature of expressing emotion? Yes. Am I being highly critical of men? Always.