Want to watch women in bikinis taking hot tubs? There's a Twitch stream for that.
This actually raises some interesting questions.
Image via Twitch streamer Spoopy Kitt
Over at Kotaku, Nathan Grayson has a very long, in-depth piece up about the new “hot tub meta” on Twitch—a website ostensibly devoted to streaming video games. Grayson’s piece includes interviews with some of the female streamers behind this new trend, as well as feedback from critics. If this topic interests you, you should read the whole thing.
Basically, this new “hot tub meta” has created some dividing lines in the gaming and Twitch community. Some believe that this sort of content has no place on Twitch. Many critics lament even the very existence of the “Just Chatting” category where these streams take place. They see as a departure from Twitch’s core purpose—to stream video games.
The Kotaku piece is largely framed as a debate over what women should wear. My very brief take? If this is the kind of content that Amazon and Twitch want on a video game streaming website, then by all means do your thing. Nobody should tell women what to wear or what not to wear (except those in charge of the platform who set down rules and guidelines).
On the other hand, it’s fair to question Twitch’s decision to allow this kind of content to begin with if Twitch is, in fact, a video game streaming website. It’s one thing to be a hot chick playing video games and quite another to be a hot chick in a bikini in an inflatable pool. There’s nothing wrong with either one, of course, but the former feels more on brand than the latter. It’s not wrong to question the direction Twitch has taken.
Streamer Spoopy Kitt (pictured above) explained why she’s started doing hot tub streams, telling Kotaku that “I think people like looking at pretty women in bikinis, and I love being in a hot tub and meme-ing around, so it’s a win-win.”
You can watch one of Spoopy Kitt’s archived streams here. It’s over four hours long and a quick perusal reveals: multiple bathing suit and outfit changes and a trip to the kitchen for a very busty baking session. The camera sometimes focuses on her bosom, but it doesn’t really need to. She wears bunny ears at one point and bites her lip. It’s a sexually charged performance designed for exactly the audience she describes above: People who like looking at pretty women in bikinis. And that’s totally fine. It’s also quite a large demographic that I imagine includes mostly men and boys but also some women.
Though, again, this is Twitch. A website designed for gamers—for horny teenage boys and horny young men and, well, I think the word “horny” is pretty redundant here. You get the drift. You fill a website up with gamers and then throw in bikini-bathing-streams with busty young women and it’s no wonder there’s going to be some debate about whether or not this kind of content belongs, even if it clearly has an audience. Twitch, meanwhile, has confusing, often inscrutable standards that streamers find hard to understand and follow.
“Twitch needs to set clear guidelines and to help get rid of harassers, hot tub streamers need to follow whatever guidelines Twitch sets up (which they currently are so there is no real issue), and the viewers need to learn that just because one streamer does something does not mean another will,” streamer QTCinderella tells Kotaku.
One point I find somewhat curious about all of this is the suggestion that the men watching these streams are sexist, while the women streaming are empowering themselves or owning their own sexuality.
Here’s Grayson:
For the most part, hot tub streams unfold like other streams featured in Twitch’s Just Chatting category, with streamers engaging their chats on a variety of topics. Difference is, many of these conversations come back to the fact that the streamer is kicking back in a simmering chlorine stew while wearing revealing attire. Some in chat ask standard questions about how streamers are doing or what they’ve been up to, or they crack jokes. Others do little to disguise their leering, remarking on how hot streamers are or imploring them to remove clothing.
Now, I’m not the sort who approves of “leering” or making lewd comments, but I have to wonder at the dynamic being presented here. Let me see if I get this right:
Pretty women in bikinis go onto Twitch and live-stream themselves in hot tubs, or dancing around on poles, or baking or doing other mundane things in clearly sexualized attired. Or “sexy” attire, if “sexualized” isn’t quite the right word.
This is done in order to attract viewers who want to watch hot chicks and have the opportunity to chat with them and tip them and so forth.
The women doing this are “owning their sexuality” but the men who tell them they’re “sexy” or implore them to take off even more of their clothing are sexist and misogynistic.
Can we talk about the mating dance for a moment? Here’s how it works 99% of the time: Men pursue women. Women wait to be pursued. Men make nearly all of the first moves, women make nearly all of the rejections. This is the culture. Maybe it’s the biology. Whatever the case, it’s the way the mating dance works most of the time.
This is also why you don’t see men streaming themselves in swimsuits in hot tubs on Twitch (and even if you did, it’s more likely that gay men would be watching than women). Men and women are different creatures. Even in a committed relationship, men are more often the ones pursuing sex. There are exceptions. Libidos vary. I am speaking in broad terms, of course.
When I hear that men “sexualize” women I want to point out that women also sexualize women, whether because they’re attracted to women or competing with women. If women were more like men and men were more like women, I imagine we’d see a reversal of roles. But let’s also be honest: Men are hyper-sexualized as well. In movies these days, even supporting actors have to have six-packs and bulging biceps. I’ve encountered plenty of instances of women drooling over Jason Momoa or some other ridiculously muscled, tanned, toned hunk. Women can be just as lewd when they talk about men. “Locker talk” is hardly only reserved for the male species. Women talk about height and size and all the rest in graphic detail.
And I don’t think that’s necessarily sexist. Nor is it necessarily sexist to go onto a stream where a woman is purposefully wearing almost nothing, filming herself in a pool and tell her that she’s “sexy AF.” If I streamed myself gaming (lord knows I can’t pull off the bikini hot tub stream) and someone told me I was good AF I wouldn’t be offended.
Of course there will be bad apples who say horrible things. But those same bad apples are in every stream. You can’t even stream yourself gaming without some stranger showing up (if anyone shows up at all) to tell you to “git gud” or talk about how horrible you are at the game (even when you’re playing just fine). That’s just how it is. Most of Twitch’s chat bar is filled with nonsense no matter what type of stream you’re watching. The good voices are often drowned out by the loud ones.
So what’s to be done—if anything—about all of this?
Live and let live, I suppose.
“As long as something isn’t hurting anyone, why do we get so upset by it?” one streamer, Firedancer, told Kotaku. “Why should anyone have a problem with what someone else is wearing? I am happy that Twitch is being lenient about attire while streaming because it gives more chances for expression and individuality.”
If this is the new Twitch, then don’t knock the hustle. These women are making their own choices. They’re making some money. It’s weird that this is where a video game streaming site has gone, and it certainly feels like Twitch is competing with PornHub (which, ironically, has upped its gaming content). But who are we to judge?
Don’t castigate the men and boys (and women and girls) who show up on these streams, either. Being attracted to women who are “owning their own sexuality” isn’t sexist. These are also the paying customers. Without the audience, these streams wouldn’t make a dime.
That’s not to say it can’t turn into harassment. There are plenty of creepy dudes out there, and they go after women who post much less provocative material. How to solve that problem, while still allowing the kind of content that seems likely to draw such men in droves, is not an easy puzzle to solve.
We could question the impact all of this has on our society and on the relationship between men and women, but this is—as many have pointed out—just one small piece of a culture that hyper-sexualizes almost everything. All our celebrities and movie stars are more beautiful than ever. The women are slim and perfect. The men are all impossibly toned. We are inundated with ceaseless images of physical perfection and we are disheartened by our inability to live up to such unrealistic expectations of beauty.
And despite all of this, or perhaps because of it, young people are having less sex than previous generations at truly startling numbers. Sure, there’s Tinder culture that takes sex and commodifies it into brief, soulless hookups, but even that hasn’t changed the fact that sex among teens and young adults has fallen off drastically in recent years, even as anxiety and stress among these same demographics has skyrocketed.
Maybe in a world with Twitch hot tub streams and endless, free porn at our fingertips, finding an IRL partner just isn’t as pressing. Maybe it’s the constant barrage of social media, or the ridiculous, confusing and often contradictory requirements young people are faced with when coupling—an ever-shifting list of do’s and do-not’s.
Or maybe we’re “horny only for annhialiation.”
But that, dearest droogies, will have to wait for another diabolical post. This one has gone on long enough.
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