The hot-mom archetype in pop culture is nothing new. Sometimes the continuation of these characters is blatant—like Stifler’s mom in American Pie 1999 and Stacey's mom in Fountains of Wayne's 2003 hit. In other cases, the steamy parent characters are more subtle - gosh, didn't we all have those moments while watching The Parent Trap ? Coming of age and discovering that Dennis Quaid is kind of...okay?
Mainstream media has been obsessed with attractive images of parents for some time, but on TikTok, people are showing off their parents in new ways. Maybe it's hoping to go viral and gain a following, since popular parental content has always performed well on the app. Some users have entire pages featuring their parents, like @ellapottersays (248,000 followers), who posts outfit checks of her mom and even previously posted a full fancam of her mom. Every video they make together gets hundreds of thousands of views. Others, like @olliemuhl, have had one-off success with parents — like his video, in which his dad gracefully enters the frame, racking up 1.3 million likes.
Some trends work particularly well on video-based TikTok. Instead of posting the typical "Happy Birthday" posts on Instagram, TikTok users are bragging about how many potential suitors their parents turned down on the day of Madonna's "Material Girl" — like @mellieslc, whose March 1 video earned Dad’s nostalgic photo received 7.5 million likes. Rather than tagging their moms in Mother's Day tributes, some TikTok users have been playing low-key with their moms, or swapping outfits with their moms in hopes of catching Yung Gravy's attention. (Yes, that's the same Yung Gravy who brought Addison Rae's mom to the 2022 VMAs. He often comments or sings to videos of moms he finds attractive.) Popular parent content can be plentiful, from nostalgic photos of parents when they were younger So far in the photos they look good.
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Under such videos you can find comments asking for skin care to be shown or comments such as "Is he a model? Now we need mom to reveal" and "I don't know how to tell you but I love you daddy" or "Floyd , you win this round." In some cases, comments are turned off -- probably because they're a little too thirsty to handle.
TikTok user @lplanet joined the app in March and immediately jumped on the "material girl" bandwagon, sharing a recent clip of her mother juxtaposed with several photos of her when she was younger. "The song is so energetic and powerful, and I think it's so cool to be able to share these throwback photos with the world," she tells Bustle. "I knew how stunning my mom was when she was younger, and she was perfect for this trend. I also knew the before-and-after transformation was going to be amazing."
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The video now has 2.4 million likes and hundreds of comments ranging from "She could have rejected me and I would have said thank you" to "Ageing can be so cruel." While @lplanet didn't expect her first TikTok video to reach such a wide audience, she was well aware that online comments could be unforgiving.
"Some of the comments, while realistic, were a bit mean. I'm fine with that and so is my mom. My mom is 70 and has never had surgery, she ages naturally and that's okay," she said. @Lplanet believes that people are anxious about aging in general, so it may make them uncomfortable when they see it so clearly represented in a TikTok trend, while also giving them a place to flesh out those complicated feelings in the comments section.
"We should all embrace [aging]. It's crucial to appreciate the beauty in every stage of life," she said. "It's fun to see some young people react [to my videos] like, 'Wait, my parents were young, too?'" These trends can make parents — both our own Still a stranger on the internet – looking more human.
In several videos following the first one on March 8, @lplanet answered questions about her father, shared her parents' love story, and showed off other old photos of her grandmother and great-grandmother. For her, the TikTok trend is a fun way to share stories about her family history rather than chasing the clout of old photos of her parents, though she hopes to eventually start using the app to share content about her own life , and not just her family once she felt comfortable doing it.
However, for other users, these trends showing off young parents are certainly a way to attract attention. A viral TikTok sound coupled with a photo of your conventionally attractive parents — a throwback photo from decades ago or footage from days gone by — seems to be a surefire way to rack up hundreds of thousands of views. Brian Pendergast, a psychoanalyst and author of "The Curtain: The Story of Human Love and Personality ," explains that TikTok's short video sharing format is well-suited to this kind of attention-seeking approach, and Not so with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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"Video gives us more ways to see and be seen," he tells Bustle. “We want to be known, and posting videos (whether shared or overshared) gives us a certain sense of control and security over our visibility.”
If you haven't found your TikTok niche yet, creating content featuring parents might feel like an easy place to start — it allows users to share important parts of themselves without revealing anything too personal ( If they're not willing yet) (just ask @lplanet). Putting together a video of your parents' photos can make you feel nostalgic and create content that will ultimately appeal to FYP fans.
"Parents are an important part of our psyche. Regardless of our relationship with our caregivers, they influence us and we internalize them because we have a dependent relationship with them," Pendergast said. "The virality of these videos seems to suggest an element of sentimentality."
Obviously, these videos are fun to watch, which is why it seems like every few months there's a new trend that gives users the chance to show off their sexy parents—although on TikTok, you don't need a popular voice to Having your sexy parents goes viral. Despite what some comment section warriors may say, Pendergast doesn't believe there are any deep psychological factors behind these trends, even if some like to cite Freud in their reactions. (For example, one user wrote "Y'all say your mom is hot, there's no way he's not into #freud," in response to a trend centered on young parents.)
"Maybe these [Freud] commenters online are trying to say 'people are indeed attracted to their sexy, young parents in various ways, and Freud found something in his Oedipal theory, '" he said, noting that this is actually an old-school way of thinking.
Instead, the more widely accepted modern take on Freud's theory is that children simply like to get lots of attention from their parents, which is understandable. Maybe on TikTok, kids love the attention because of their parents, and who can blame them when the thousands of likes and micro-follows start pouring in?
So if you want to go viral on TikTok, you might be able to do it by showing off your hot parents. Please be prepared for some trolls (or Yung Gravy) to show up in your comments section. You have been warned.
source:
Brian Pendergast, psychoanalyst and author of Curtain: The Story of Human Love and Personality
TikTok user @lplanet
