Coffee, “Star Wars,” turtlenecks, grief: These four seemingly unrelated things are “horny” — or induce horniness — at least according to many young women online, who are openly asserting their desires with a term long thought of as crass and juvenile. Take the last few months, when people called chicken parm, Ariana Grande’s “Christmas and Chill” EP and the obsessions of right-wing conspiracy theorists “horny.” While promoting “Hustlers,” Jennifer Lopez told GQ, “A lot of things make me horny.” It would seem as though people are horny for the word itself. Phonetically speaking, “horny” is ugly. “Horny” is the aural equivalent of those Chinese Crested dogs that are so ugly that it’s actually funny — endearing, even. (According to Know Your Meme, a website that investigates and documents online phenomena, the first appearance of “horny on main” was in June 2016.)

Source: New York Times December 13, 2019 18:45 UTC