When did Shrek get sexy?
At some point in the past two decades we began to see Shrek as sexy. Here I try to find the exact date.
Why is Shrek considered sexy? That question popped into my brain after I saw a neon green Kia Soul with a vanity plate that read “SHR3K.” It’s kinda cool that someone already had a “Shrek” vanity plate in the state so the owner of this car had to come up with a variation…but back to the point: Shrek. Sexy? Yes. But since when?
The internet is littered with memes, Tweets, Tik Toks, etc. that sometimes allude, sometimes joke about and oftentimes outright preach the fact that Shrek is indeed sexy af.
A Google search of this question brought me to a Quora post asking “Why is shrek sexy.” but I know the why. Anyone with eyes knows the why. I want to know the when. Still, I read the post.
Gavin Puerrno, a self-described “former Shrekspert” answered:
“It is simply in his looks, and the way he acts. Whenever he opens his ogre mouth, filled with onions, everyone squeals in delight, just at the sight on (sic) Shrek. Shrek appeals to all genders, no matter what that persons orientation may be. I can tell you this, that if you ask someone, “Do you think Shrek is sexy/hot?” They will always answer with a yes. There is no question asking why Shrek is sexy, because everyone already knows why.”
Well put Gavin. Though it didn’t answer my question, it did give me a starting point. Gavin posted this on March 3, 2019, so that narrowed down the when, even if by just by one year and a few months.
Beauty is said to be in the eyes of the beholder. So the question of when did Shrek get sexy is really a question of when did we, as a society, begin to consider Shrek sexy. Ever since Shrek the movie was released on April 22, 2001, Shrek has been sexy. But we were impervious to that for some time. In this investigation, I wanted to find out when exactly we began to see Shrek in this more honest way.
Shrek was definitely not considered sexy by most people before the Great Recession. That much I felt certain of. But before Obama’s reelection? Maybe. Before the 2016 election? Possibly. I wasn’t certain.
So I kept digging and came across a Medium post by Vera Blossom titled “Is Shrek Sexy? A Reflection of Green Monster Men as Queer Sex Icons” from December 16, 2018. Suffice it to say that no one writes over 1,000 words just to come to the conclusion that Shrek isn’t sexy. Three more months we could rule out.
At this point, I thought that maybe Google Trends might have some clues. But it wasn’t too helpful. The term “sexy Shrek” has been increasing in popularity but, according to Google Trends, it technically peaked in 2004 and that didn’t feel right. Another dead end. One interesting piece of information that this brought to light though was a related query: “Shrek is love Shrek is life.”
Here the investigation took a sexual turn but not a sexy one. Honestly, it’s not even something I’m going to hyperlink because it’s fairly disturbing content so if you’re interested, the internet is there for you. As for me, I read what I had to for the sake of the investigation and tried not to think about it much.
This disturbing turn did add another piece to the timeline. “Shrek is love, Shrek is life” was first posted to 4chan on January, 14th, 2013 and according to Google Trends, the term peaked in June 2014 and was pretty much dead by the end of 2016. Not that helpful but worth keeping in mind that around these years Shrek was being sexualized, though in quite an upsetting way.
Maybe this investigation was futile. Maybe Shrek became sexy when — as Donkey said in Shrek 2 — he drank the magic potions that turned him human. But that didn’t feel right. Shrek, not human Shrek, is considered sexy. Human Shrek is what happens when an artist doesn’t understand that his painting is finished and keeps adding strokes of paint to a masterpiece.
So back to googling. Still, on the first page of results, I came across a number of articles about a little controversy concerning Shrek and possible sexiness in 2010. Apparently Dreamworks, the maker of Shrek, was not thrilled after it gave the men’s fashion magazine VMann the right to include Shrek characters in a spread of photographs alongside some edgy and under-dressed models. The tone of these articles though doesn’t even hint at the fact that Shrek himself was sexy, so we have to assume that Shrek became sexy after 2010. I could have guessed that but it was good to narrow it down with some evidence.
Next, I checked the Shrek subreddit. I sorted by Hot just so that all the sexy Shreks would float to the top and was not disappointed by the content. But I was disappointed that most of it was less than a year old. I considered looking at all the content chronologically but there are thousands of posts on this subreddit and this is a free newsletter I write during my free time.
However, I did come across this post from four years ago asking “Shrek is sexy??????????????????”
It’s a little weak but it’s something. Shrek was sexy, at least to this one person in 2016. The window kept shrinking. I narrowed the date range for my searches and came across this Deviant Art drawing from August 6, 2014.
Sexy? Up to you. But the artist had to enhance Shrek’s features to consider it sexy whereas in the present day Shrek is considered sexy when he’s unaltered. This made me assume that Shrek, unchanged and unfiltered, became sexy after 2014.
Some more googling led me to this post of a gif of someone swiping left on a number of men on Tinder but swiping right on an unaltered Shrek. It was dated August 12, 2016. So close. Down to two years.
I narrowed the date range for my search and found this video from April 24, 2015. Shrek dancing to “Sexy Back” by Justin Timberlake. But if you look closely you’ll see that Shrek has been digitally modified to possess a human body and a larger, rounder, somewhat elongated head.
Sexy? I don’t even know what the word means anymore. But that’s definitely not the 100% natural unadulterated ogre that oozes sex appeal to the yearning masses. We could once again narrow the search. April 24, 2015 to August 12, 2016. At some point in those days that were filled with wall-to-wall coverage of Trump and the 2016 election, Shrek came to be considered sexy, warts and all.
I narrowed the search again and found a lot of dancing and even posts calling Shrek sexy, but they all, in one way or another, altered his appearance. On May 15, 2016, an Urban Dictionary post was published explaining the term “shrekxual.” It defines the term as “To be shrekxual or sexy in a very ogre way. To be sexual in shrek or fiona's presence.” Not exactly what I was looking for but it led me to type “Shrek” into the Urban Dictionary search bar and see what came up.
I found a 2014 post for “Shrexy,” a 2018 definition for Shrek calling him “the ultimate daddy,” a 2019 post calling him “The HOTTEST thing to ever arrive on earth” and similar recent posts.
I kept searching for an answer to my question but the search began to return lacking results and I eventually had to accept that an exact date would not be found during this investigation. There was no “ladies and gentlemen, we got him” moment. No “Mission Accomplished” banner. It felt like a failure of an investigation.
All I can say is that sometime between 2015 and 2016, Shrek no longer had to be modified to look like a human to be considered sexy. He didn’t have to dance or have a six-pack or appeal to the male gaze. He instead single-handedly shifted beauty standards and showed us what it means to be sexy.
Shrek is sexy because he just is. The why was never the question. The ogre was always the way he was and once we let go of our preconceived ideas of what sexiness should be, we saw was sexiness is.
This was the conclusion I came to but, as I’ve mentioned, I don’t do this for a living, so I didn't explore the true depths of this question. If you know more or think I am wrong, please let me know. And if you want to build upon this research, by all means, do it. Just send me a link to what you find please.
Once we figure this question out, we can start on the next one that has been consuming my thoughts: What is Shrek’s last name?
Hits from the group chats:
You ever whip so hard you dislocate your shoulder?
I’m still unsure if this is real or satire but I hate it
Feels like the right kicker for this post