An elegy for a term made unusable by the Internet.
If you’ve spent any amount of time on the Internet, you’ll know that one of its denizens’ favourite hobbies is posting repetitive hot takes about how Sigmund Freud is not, in fact, a profoundly influential psychologist and pioneer of the study of the unconscious, but instead a crackpot and a sicko to boot. The prevalence of this kind of take makes it all the funnier that one of internet users’ other favourite hobbies is constantly using the word ‘daddy’ to refer to men they find hot. Lack of intellectual consistency aside, I find the term to be bizarrely overused, inaccurately applied, and sickeningly cutesy. Let’s take a tour through the history, usage, and implications of the term, so that I can get across exactly why I hate it.
The idea that underpins the term ‘daddy’ is, of course, nothing new—the sexual archetype of the dominant father has been around at least as long as Abrahamic religions. They get away with it, though, because they have a better prose style: “I await the judgement of the Lord” has more of an air of dignity to it than “please punish me, daddy.” You see, it’s not the undeniably Electra-ish implications of the term that I take issue with. If that’s what you’re into, you do you. No, befitting my English major and general tedious pedantry, my grievances lie exclusively with the word’s deployment, which is often laughably erroneous.
When I first started seeing ‘daddy’ in use on the Internet, it was being employed accurately enough, usually referring to hot, grizzled older men. Idris Elba? Sure. George Clooney? Totally get it. However, the Internet’s tendency to water words down has wreaked havoc on ‘daddy.’ Nowadays, it seems like any man over the age of 25 and/or in possession of facial hair seems to qualify. Hell, I saw someone call Timothee Chalamet ‘daddy’ the other day. Timothee Chalamet! You think that guy is the ideal of grizzled, domineering masculinity? His next movie is about ping pong! I believe that, before someone uses the word ‘daddy,’ they should be legally required to subject the man in question to what I call the Offerman Test: 1) Is he at least 45 years old? 2) Does he have noticeable grey hair? 3) Has he been shown on camera chopping wood with an axe and/or fishing? If the answer to more than one of these questions is “no,” he’s nobody’s daddy.
One may wonder why I have just outlined a defensible use for ‘daddy’ if I claim to hate it so much. This is because my other main reason for hating the term stems from its utter universality. If it were being used accurately by a small community of noble and rigorous fetishists, it would be no problem, since it would not have nearly the cultural purchase it does now. As it is, its common usage has tinged the term’s other definitions with a notable sexual air, and made them essentially unusable. This is my main grievance with the term: it’s made any other use of ‘daddy’ unavoidably embarrassing. I want to live in a world where I can say “daddy longlegs” without sounding a little bit like I want to fuck a spider. I want to go to Daddy’s Chicken without worrying about what might be in the ranch dressing. I want, one day, to perhaps even be able to talk about the ska revival band The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies without throwing up in my mouth a little.
The sexual use of the term ‘daddy’ is not, in itself, insufferable, but its wildly inaccurate overuse has led to a ubiquity that ruins the term’s other usages. Take this article as an exhortation not to drop the term completely, but to use it wisely, and only in situations where a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool daddy is present. I believe that a world where ‘daddy’ is used properly is possible—though I can’t imagine this issue will be much of a help.
