The iconography of a dirtbag has cycled through multiple decades, a sort of cultural touchstone among shifting trends and ideals. It’s a potent blanket descriptor for a sleazy kinda guy — a high school dropout, a hoser, a metalhead, a stoner. Once derided, it feels that now we’re nearing an era where it’s socially acceptable to publicly express our longing for a dirtbag boyfriend.
Standout examples of the current dirtbag renaissance are multitudinous. We see the dirtbag shine in Sebastian Stan’s giddy impersonation of a young Tommy Lee in Pam and Tommy; in Eddie Munson, the metalhead drug dealer with a heart-of-gold in the latest season of Stranger Things; in the antics of the now silver-haired and silly sadomasochist Johnny Knoxville and his motley crew in Jackass Forever.
There are dozens of cultural examples that fit this bill: the drug-dealing, doe-eyed, Frenchie of The Boys; chain smoking smart ass Lip Gallagher of Shameless; the Canadian hosers of Letterkenny, Trailer Park Boys and Shoresy; Mac and Charlie of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. As this list grows, my fellow dirtbag connoisseurs continually fill in the gaps. My phone pings with suggestion after suggestion from friends: Did you mention Carmy in The Bear? Did you mention Pete Davidson? We are happy to be in the summer of dirtbags.
The recent trend of aesthetics being labeled, performed and occasionally politicised has come for the dirtbag as they are invited into the aesthetic discourse alongside bimbos and himbos. The dirtbag is now “in”; ready to be celebrated and explored aesthetically for what he was once mocked for.
The dirtbag has a bit more flexibility in aesthetic choices than his bimbo or himbo counterparts, defined more by his energy than tapping into a definitive look. The quintessential dirtbag is probably a little sleazy, seen as a deadbeat by those functioning within the status quo, he probably showers less than the average person, and is likely beer-swilling and pot-smoking.
“The dirtbag tends to be excitable, silly and skilled in something that is not deemed conventionally useful, like playing in a loud and chaotic band or selling drugs.”
In The Atlantic’s “The Dirtbag is Back”, writer Adrienne Matei posits that this rise in dirtbag representation can be read as a response to a general lack of confidence in our current social institutions. The “vaguely […] anti-establishment” energy of the dirtbag offers a “seductive promise that we can slip away from the declining world order like disillusioned teens from so many stifling suburbs”. Adrienne concisely summarises the dirtbag’s modus operandi: “For the dirtbag, hygiene is optional, dumbassery is frequent, and a gritty kind of enlightenment might just be tenable.”
The dirtbag tends to be excitable, silly and skilled in something that is not deemed conventionally useful, like playing in a loud and chaotic band, making sandwiches, selling drugs, or recording himself getting run over by a bull with his buddies. In special cases, these skills make him famous, a fuck you to all who scoffed at him while he stomped around your local suburb.
To say that the dirtbag is “finally” in, though, is not totally correct. The dirtbag has always been popular in some circles, evidenced by how many decades of dirtbagdom are referenced even in our most current pop culture fixations. Jake Johnson plays a charming but sleazy porn producer dirtbag in 1970s California in the series Minx, Eddie Munson lives in mid-1980s small-town Indiana, Tommy Lee in 1990s Los Angeles, The Bear’s Carmy in modern-day Chicago. That’s a span of five decades of dirtbag representation on our TVs right now.
But generally speaking, open desire for dirtbags has previously been relegated to a smaller subsection of people, or a more private yearning. This can partially be attributed to the fact that the dirtbag may like it that way — it suits his whole vibe to be your sneaky off-the-grid hookup or someone to piss off your parents instead of shiny, clean, husband material.
The dirtbags holding our attention right now tend to be of a modern iteration. These dirtbags are generally slim, sometimes bordering on gaunt, though there’s certainly no shame in a belly to go along with his beer drinking — dirtbags do not require a strict body type. Crappy, poorly placed tattoos are often scattered on their arms and torsos, T-shirts are slung haphazardly on their frames if they bother to wear a shirt at all. They spend their time wailing on drums or the guitar, scraping around on skateboards, or wasting time with buddies in parking lots.
While definitions of dirtbag-ism can present the aesthetic and lifestyle as a slice of devil-may-care nihilism, what appeals about the modern representations of dirtbags is the revelation that their aesthetic is an active choice. Dirtbags curate, they focus on appearing the right amount of charming and disheveled. Johnny Knoxville becomes recognisable by his thick glasses and his dusty blue Dickies. Tommy Lee is his Mayhem tattoo and nipple piercings. While their interests may not relate to traditional social expectations for adult men, dirtbags often pursue their interests with a sexy, full-fledged passion regardless.
The dirtbag, in many senses, sits in an appealing masculine contrast to the modern bimbo aesthetic — a style that opts to embrace all things girly, pink, sparkly, and tacky. In the Rolling Stone piece “The Bimbo Is Back. Like, for Real!” EJ Dickinson suggests that the bimbo aesthetic promotes an ironic, tongue-in-cheek state of mind — a blissful ignorance in response to the overwhelming late-stage capitalist, soul-sucking political void we are currently in.
The dirtbag and bimbo sit in a sexy contrast in this sense. The bimbo goes to a conventionally feminine extreme — bordering on campy and ridiculous in their play with the impossible standards of performing womanhood. In contrast, the dirtbag rejects traditional ideals of conventional male adulthood by staying disheveled, unemployed (or at least not employed in traditionally “important” work), and a little goofy; clinging to silliness over staunch, boring maturity. His relationship with adulthood revolves mainly around the freedom of being able to party, drink, smoke, and pick up girls.
There is a chemistry here between bimbo and dirtbag, a certain flavour to the pairing in the complimentary ways they both play with the nonsensical “rules” they have been offered about performing masculinity and femininity. The appeal of this combination is evident in our pop cultural fascination with both aesthetics. Often the dirtbag and the hyperfeminine woman are paired; it simply looks right seeing the tattooed Tommy Lee with the bleach blonde Pamela Anderson, the goofy Pete Davidson with the glamorous Kim Kardashian, or the mulleted Eddie Munson with the peppy blonde school cheerleader.
“The dirtbag boyfriend holds the promise of defending your honour by swinging first in a bar fight, or saving his unconventionally earned pennies to buy you something tacky and pretty.”
The dirtbag can certainly have himboistic traits, as he maybe isn’t the smartest in the traditional sense, and is likely relatively happy-go-lucky in his brushing off of the status quo. Unlike the himbo, however, the dirtbag is more likely to be self-aware — he has opened his eyes to the failings of conventional society enough to know it’s not for him, and chooses a rough and tumble approach as he goofs off through life. Where your golden retriever himbo boyfriend is just there for a good time, to be lead around on your metaphorical leash and look pretty, the dirtbag boyfriend holds the promise of defending your honour by swinging first in a bar fight, or saving his unconventionally earned pennies to buy you something tacky and pretty.
Many of our modern representations of dirtbags are nice, scrubbed spiritually clean of their potential tempers, immaturity, chaos, or older negative connotations. Dirtbags have the tendency to be white men disillusioned with society around them, and thus occasionally a hazy romanticisation is employed to avoid looking at some potential worrisome trends. For example, the series Pam and Tommy forces a certain sheen upon a very real, complicated relationship, and tries its best to sidestep accusations of abuse and a toxic love affair for the sake of a tidy dirtbag love story. In “The Dirtbag is Back”, Adrienne mentions thinking that the the hosers of the Trailer Park Boys would likely, in reality, “fight a gas station clerk over a mask mandate” instead of partaking in an in-character vaccine campaign in Canada, as the actors did in 2021.
That said, there’s an exciting potential to reframe the aesthetics we are choosing to embrace in a new light. EJ points out that those involved in the bimbo lifestyle often claim leftist beliefs of anti-capitalism as well as “pro-sex work, pro-LGBTQ, pro-BLM, and anti-straight white male” tenets alongside their embracing of a certain ditziness. Can’t the newly re-embraced dirtbag cling to radical and healing political beliefs as well? Perhaps the tenets of the modern, sexy dirtbag as he embraces his renaissance will include values of compassion, kindness, ethical and respectful behaviour, alongside their shotgunning of beers, bad hair, and goofy fucking around with friends. That sounds like the makings of a dream man to me.
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