What is Sickly Skinny White Men?

It is a pop culture cliché and Twitter catchphrase about pale, skinny, somewhat frail-looking white guys who attract glamorous women perceived to be out of their league.

Where did Sickly Skinny White Men come from?

The phrasing first appeared on Twitter on December 23, 2017, in a post by @rihannasgayson about model Hugh Laughton-Scott.

What does Sickly Skinny White Men mean?

It describes a male beauty archetype combining thinness, pale skin, and a somewhat unhealthy or disheveled look, often paired with implied traits like chain-smoking and Big Dick Energy.

How do you use Sickly Skinny White Men?

Users typically caption celebrity couple photos with the phrase and ask, in mock bafflement, why women date this type, as @mattxiv did with Pete Davidson and Machine Gun Kelly in October 2021.

Is Sickly Skinny White Men still popular?

The cliché peaked in late 2021 around Davidson, Kim Kardashian, Machine Gun Kelly, and Megan Fox, and the term still gets Twitter use as an archetype label for figures like Timothée Chalamet.

Sickly Skinny White Men

2017catchphrasesemi-active

Published October 18, 2026

Sickly Skinny White Men is a pop culture label for pale, thin, somewhat frail-looking white guys who end up dating glamorous women well out of their perceived league. The phrasing first appeared on Twitter in December 2017 when @rihannasgayson posted photos of model Hugh Laughton-Scott with the caption 'Sickly skinny white boys kinda won with this one.' By late 2021, Twitter users were applying it everywhere, from Pete Davidson holding hands with Kim Kardashian to Machine Gun Kelly engaged to Megan Fox.

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Overview

Posts in this format typically caption photos of celebrity couples where a visibly thin, pale, chain-smoking looking guy stands next to a conventionally gorgeous woman, with the writer feigning bafflement about why the pairing works. Jokes often invoke adjacent traits like heavy cigarette use, visible collarbones, and Big Dick Energy as the implied explanation4.

Figures most often tagged with the archetype include Pete Davidson, Machine Gun Kelly, Timothée Chalamet, and the late rapper Lil Peep4. The look's older touchstones trace back to musicians like Mick Jagger and Kurt Cobain, with 2000s and 2010s on-screen heartthrobs such as Robert Pattinson's Edward Cullen in Twilight and Evan Peters' Tate Langdon in American Horror Story giving the type ongoing staying power with zoomer audiences4.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Twitter

Creator

@rihannasgayson

Date

2017

The first known social-media use of the phrase was posted on December 23, 2017, by Twitter user @rihannasgayson, who shared photos of male model Hugh Laughton-Scott with the caption 'Sickly skinny white boys kinda won with this one'1. That tweet collected roughly 7,700 likes over the following years1. Three days later, on December 26, 2017, @nopoweradeinusa riffed on the same type with a tweet referring to a 'sickly little computer boy', gathering about 1,200 likes2.

How It Spread

Pete Davidson's 2018 engagement to Ariana Grande turned him into the face of the archetype on Twitter. On June 26, 2018, @heavenbrat tweeted that Davidson looked like 'a corpse that could literally demolish my heart,' earning around 2,000 likes3. By 2019, Reddit's r/WhitePeopleTwitter had cross-posted a related riff titled 'As a sick looking skinny white boy I feel attacked'5.

The cliché peaked in late October 2021 when Davidson was photographed holding hands with Kim Kardashian on a roller coaster, right as Machine Gun Kelly was deep into his relationship with Megan Fox. On October 31, 2021, @mattxiv tweeted side-by-side photos of both couples asking 'can someone explain to me what it is about this type of man,' which earned about 11,800 likes within ten days6. The next day, @jonmeIo posted a rebuttal defending the type, collecting roughly 2,300 likes over nine days7.

Timeline

2017-12-23

@rihannasgayson tweets photos of model Hugh Laughton-Scott with the caption 'Sickly skinny white boys kinda won with this one'[1].

2017-12-26

@nopoweradeinusa riffs on the type with a 'sickly little computer boy' tweet[2].

2018-05

Pete Davidson begins dating Ariana Grande, drawing the archetype toward him on Twitter[4].

2018-06-26

@heavenbrat calls Davidson 'a corpse that could literally demolish my heart'[3].

2019-10

A r/WhitePeopleTwitter cross-post titled 'As a sick looking skinny white boy I feel attacked' spreads the joke on Reddit[5].

2021-10-31

@mattxiv posts side-by-side photos of Davidson with Kardashian and MGK with Fox, asking 'can someone explain to me what it is about this type of man'[6].

2021-11-01

@jonmeIo posts a rebuttal defending the archetype[7].

How to Use This Meme

A typical post attaches one or more paparazzi or red-carpet photos of a mismatched-looking celebrity couple and adds a baffled caption asking why women like this type. Common conventions include calling the guy a corpse, a cigarette with legs, or a sickly little computer boy, and often tagging the woman as being out of his league.