Zayn Malik, Desi Thirst Trap

[DocumentaLy]

 

Can brown boys be sexy? Throughout my childhood in the late '90s and early '00s, it was easy to turn to music, or television, or cinema, or any arena of popular culture and believe that the answer was a resounding "no." The few times desi (South Asian) men were lucky enough to be granted mere representation, we were imagined in the flattest of terms. We were convenience store owners, taxi drivers, IT dorks, or aspiring terrorists. These roles helped reinforce the prevailing image of South Asian men as sexless: our dicks are small, our sexuality, by consequence, limp.

 

Enter, into this fray, Zayn Malik. He's become a bona fide desi sex symbol, the rare South Asian object of lust. He possesses a power seldom afforded to brown men. Zayn can send anyone’s libido—female, male, young, old—into overdrive.

 

Few desi male artists have penetrated the global consciousness as Zayn has, let alone flirted with sex symbol status. Decades ago, Freddie Mercury rose to fame as a particularly kinetic stage presence. He was flamboyant and openly queer, his body itself a site of subversion. Yet his heritage—he was born Farrokh Bulsara, to Parsi parents from India—was a buried lede. Today, it remains a factoid rather than a central part of his identity. There was No Doubt’s Tony Kanal, too, yet he always played second fiddle to Gwen Stefani. He hovered in the band’s background, the agitator for Stefani’s mournful lyrics. Young the Giant’s Sameer Gadhia, Heems, Ashok Kondabolu, Jai Paul, Yeasayer’s Anand Wilder—these men, though famous, all exist on the fringe of the public eye.

 

Zayn is different. He carries the outsized, populist appeal of a man like Mercury while making no efforts to downplay his heritage. He is openly Muslim, born to a Pakistani father and white mother. He hasn’t adopted some white-sounding stage name. He is desi, he is hot, and he is a star.

 

After auditioning for "The X Factor" in 2010 at the age of 17, he began his climb into stardom. He spent half a decade under the umbrella of One Direction, the boy band who filled the void that *NSYNC left in its wake. He was the band’s only member of color. Over time, Zayn was dubbed "the mysterious one"—the band’s dark, brooding, emotionally opaque heart.

 

Boy band stardom is a contract, and brings certain mandates on the people it falls upon. What One Direction demanded of Zayn was a careful, suggestive performance of sexual desire. Over time, Zayn became the primary target of the public’s lust. He also became the primary target of its ire. People demanded answers of this brown dreamboat. He was met with predictable torrents of Islamophobia. This exposed a general anxiety around a brown body displayed in the public arena. Was this boy band jihad, as one blogger put it? And what was he doing to our young, gullible girls of the world, too wide-eyed to see past their attraction to him? His very presence in the band was enough to incite fear. That body—desi, Muslim—was a threat.

 

In March 2015, he announced that he’d be leaving One Direction for good. Then, a succession of splashy magazine covers—FADER, Billboard—announced him in his new avatar: He knew he was hot, and he harnessed his hotness and turned it into capital. Blonde hair, neon orange Tang dripping from his mouth, abs chiseled but not superhumanly so: For about an hour in November, after the FADER cover came out, it seemed the Internet was collectively agog at him.

 

"Everybody has sex," he told the Sunday Times, in the run-up to the debut of "PILLOWTALK," his first single. "And it’s something people wanna hear about." "PILLOWTALK," released at the end of last month, is not a departure from his One Direction days so much as it is a realization of what’s been folded into the subtext of his public persona all along. It’s a more fine-tuned grammar of sexual sophistication, soaked with R&B influences. "Climb on board," he suggests, as the song opens. "We’ll go slow, then high tempo." He sings it like an invitation, not a command. For all the video’s bold visual chaos—flowers sprouting from vaginas, women with pins in their faces—Zayn just stands in the center, preening for the camera and posing in various states of intimacy with his girlfriend, Gigi Hadid.

 

 

 

When was the last time a desi man's beauty was his cultural currency? Like Zayn, I am both brown and white, my blood a mix of South Asian and British. For a time, I resented this. I grew up with the nagging feeling that life would’ve been easier if I were just plain old white. Every beautiful man I saw around me, whether on television or the ones people my age had crushes on, had Aryan-style blonde hair and blue eyes. I was just a few generations removed from this standard of beauty. Had my South Asian ancestry been less pronounced, I thought, I could’ve so easily fit in. If desi guys ever hoped to grow into sexual desirability, popular culture had convinced us of its impossibility. Desi guys could dream, but those dreams wouldn’t materialize.

 

Zayn is that possibility made flesh. He’s a free agent now, having broken his association from the melange of whiteness that was One Direction. Now, as a solo artist, the way he’s positioned himself reads like something of a reconciliation between those divergent parts of his identity, brown and white. He’s a desi guy who can command someone’s horny gaze, and he’s distilled it through his art. Zayn inspires, in a word, thirst.

 

Zayn’s post-breakup interviews suggested turmoil—a rather palpable sense of artistic frustration, but also a more general craving for normalcy. The notion of normalcy is vaguely comical when applied to Zayn’s life, or of the life of anyone who was a member of one of the biggest pop bands in the world. There is nothing normal about Zayn’s career, but in his new image, you can feel one definition of normalcy fighting its way through. Zayn is a desi artist who seeks to be defined by his sex appeal. He holds immense sway over the public imagination. This shouldn’t be revolutionary, but it feels so. For a desi man to refuse the humiliating charade of emasculation that’s often been thrust upon us, and, instead, predicate his very aesthetic on sexual desire? That’s a first. Zayn is just a brown man, and, like anyone, he has sex. What could be more normal than that?

 

 

Source

[ImInCloud13]

I read this yesterday.

 

Some people were saying it is because he's white passing and that he is fantasized for being 'exotic'. I don't agree with that he's always been proud of his roots and never hide his ecnicity, also you can clearly see he isn't white as his features show.

 

I don't think it's a sex symbol yet. Maybe in the future, if she works on his stage presence and career he will become one. We will see.

 

He's predicted to debut at #1 on Billboard, I hope he does it

[____shawnee]

If he were a few shades lighter he'd look like a white boy

[ImInCloud13]

If he were a few shades lighter he'd look like a white boy

No he wouldn't.

 

Just comparing him with his 1D members and you could perfectly tell he is different to them.

[versace]

desi people have such good features tho..

[____shawnee]

 

No he wouldn't.

 

Just comparing him with his 1D members and you could perfectly tell he is different to them.

 

i didnt ask you

[ImInCloud13]

i didnt ask you

And should I care because...?

[Dr. Kim (PhD)]

He doesn't even look that asian tbh

[RainStormRaider]

LOL @ people who think he doesn't look desi, clearly you have never been around many desis then.

 

He's of Pakistani origin, and since Aryan and Dravidian descent is mostly linked to the Indo-Pak subcontinent, Pakistanis obviously come in a lot of skin colours. Educate yourself before you show your ignorant ass in here.

 

Love this: "melange of whiteness". I'm stealing that term.

[palechibi]

lmao honestly his ethics feature are pretty strong idk why so many are saying he's white passing 

[DocumentaLy]

lmao honestly his ethic feature are pretty strong idk why so many are saying he's white passing 

 

Those ethnic features are what make attractive and set him apart from the rest of One Direction.

[palechibi]

Those ethnic features are what make attractive and set him apart from the rest of One Direction.

 

? ok

[DocumentaLy]

? ok

 

Umm, I was agreeing with you...

[palechibi]

Umm, I was agreeing with you...

 

oh lmfao i was kinda confused 

[Konjo]

'Few desi male artists have penetrated the global consciousness as Zayn has'

 

If only Jay Sean wasn't a one hit wonder. He makes the best music.

[Witch Nose]

If he were a few shades lighter he'd look like a white boy

Lmao with that logic arab boys are just white boys with dark skin eh

 

The rest of 1d members perfectly represent white boys

 

I swear there are Zayn lookalikes in my neighbourhood

[____shawnee]

Lmao with that logic arab boys are just white boys with dark skin eh

The rest of 1d members perfectly represent white boys

I swear there are Zayn lookalikes in my neighbourhood

Well Zayn is half white right? That's probably why he looks like a tan white boy to me... Besides... Desi people are more closely related to white people than, for instance, East Asians

[Azucar]

Wow the comments in this thread are stupid

[rahe]

 

 

I swear there are Zayn lookalikes in my neighbourhood

WHERE'S YOUR NEIGHBOORHOOD?

[____shawnee]

Wow the comments in this thread are stupid

You don't have to put them down. They just prefer to see Zayn's looks as above white beauty, and that's understandable.

[Azucar]

You don't have to put them down. They just prefer to see Zayn's looks as above white beauty, and that's understandable.

 

I'm half Indian and the posts and this whole thread are just really dumb. Why should they be compared? OH's fascination with race and skin colour is really weird and majority of the people here are ignorant af. 

 

No one is saying he's above white beauty, why should it even matter? There are beautiful people from all sorts of races. Just because you don't see it where you're from doesn't mean they don't exist.

[victaorious]

He's the hottest and yes you can easily tell he's not fully white