Sexy Is a Look, Safado Is a Game

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Hey MightyBrawnies,

It’s mid-December, the holidays are closing in, and I know this season lands differently for each of us. Some of you are surrounded by family and noise. Some of you are working straight through it. Some of you are spending it alone, even if nobody knows. Wherever you are on that spectrum, I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad we’re here. Alive, still building, still feeling.

I want to talk to you as B for a minute. Not as the guy posting digital hunks, not as the one building a universe, just as the person behind the screen who keeps noticing patterns and then can’t unsee them.

Lately, when I’m out in North America, I hear the same word over and over. Sexy. You’re sexy. So sexy.

It’s flattering, of course. I’m not pretending it isn’t. But it also hits a weird nerve in me, because almost twenty years ago, when I was working at Google (around 2006–2007), someone in HR told me I was ugly. Not once. A few times. That kind of comment doesn’t just hurt in the moment. It becomes a little program in your brain. It changes what you think you’re allowed to believe about yourself.

So when people say sexy now, I sometimes freeze internally. I hear it, but I don’t fully trust it. I look in the mirror and my mind still tries to argue. And that personal contradiction made me think more deeply about what sexy even means in our culture, especially gay male culture.

Because here’s the thing. In the North American context, sexy is often passive. It’s a visual status. It’s something you display and other people award you. You earn it through effort, gym, diet, styling, photos, angles, lighting, the whole thing. And if you fit the standard, you get rewarded. Attention. Options. Social currency. That part is real, whether we like it or not.

But if you don’t fit the standard, it can feel like you have no currency at all. And I don’t mean that dramatically. I mean it in the simple, daily way people live it. You stop going out because why bother. You don’t want to be the person who gets ignored. You’d rather stay home than feel invisible in public. So you isolate, and you replace contact with content. Porn. Scrolling. Fantasy that asks nothing of you except your time. You get a hit without the risk of being rejected.

And then the app era turns desire into something even colder. A marketplace. A quick calculation. Worth it, not worth it. Swipe. Deal. No deal. Efficient, yes. Human, not always. Sometimes you get what you wanted and still feel strangely alone afterwards, like your nervous system didn’t get the memo that your body had fun.

Now let me bring Brazil into the room.

Because when I’m here, people don’t just say sexy. The word I hear is safado.

Safado is a slippery word. Depending on context, it can be an insult. It can mean someone shameless in a bad way, someone who takes advantage, someone who’s not to be trusted. But in gay culture, safado often flips into something else entirely. It becomes a compliment with heat inside it. It means you’re a tease. You’re naughty. You’re trouble, in the delicious way. You’re not just attractive. You’re playing.

And that difference matters more than people think.

Sexy is often about being looked at. Safado is about what happens between us.

Safado is active. It’s invitation and timing. It’s the look that says, I know what I’m doing. It’s the little story that starts before anyone touches anyone. It’s flirtation that builds tension, then builds it again, and it keeps building until both people are laughing at how obvious it’s become. It’s a tango, not a billboard.

Looks still matter, obviously. I’m not romanticizing Brazil into some utopia where bodies don’t matter. But the main dish is different. Safado is a skill. It’s presence. It’s playfulness. It’s confidence and consent moving together. And that’s why you can meet someone who is objectively hot and still feel bored, while someone else can be average-looking on paper and completely wreck your brain because they have that safado energy.

That contrast points to something bigger than technique. It points to imagination.

And this is where it ties back to BrawnyAi.

From the beginning, the line was simple. BrawnyAi opens the door for your imagination, fantasy, and creativity. You have to walk through it.

Some people criticized the work early on, saying it reinforces unrealistic standards. I’ve never needed to fight that critique like I’m on trial, but I do take the point seriously. Because if BrawnyAi ever becomes only a factory of perfect bodies, it becomes boring, and it becomes another machine training us to desire like algorithms do. Fast. Visual. Disposable.

When I look back, what made my work feel different wasn’t only the bodies. It was the tease. The smile. The warmth. That approachable come closer energy. And now I understand it with a clearer word. It’s safado energy. My hunks aren’t meant to be statues. They’re meant to look like they’re in on the joke with you.

Now, there’s an uncomfortable subject sitting under all of this, and I’m going to touch it carefully, because I’m not trying to shock people for sport.

A lot of us are exhausted. A lot of us are lonely. A lot of us are anxious. A lot of us feel we have to perform. And when you mix all that with a culture that’s obsessed with sexy as an image, it’s not surprising that some people reach for shortcuts in party settings. Chemsex is part of that conversation, whether we like it or not.

This is not me lecturing, and it’s not me pretending I’m above anyone. I’m not writing this from purity. I’ve had my own curiosity, my own moments of wanting the easy door instead of the long staircase. I’m writing this from observation.

What worries me isn’t people are bad. What worries me is that we’re losing a muscle.

If you outsource arousal to shortcuts, and you do it repeatedly, you stop practicing the human skills that create desire without them. Imagination. Fantasy. Patience. The ability to build tension slowly. The ability to be present. The ability to create intimacy with nothing but attention.

Safado energy, in my mind, is one antidote. Not because it’s morally superior, but because it requires participation. It requires two people to meet each other in real time. It rewards creativity. It makes consent part of the play, not an obstacle to it.

I felt that difference recently in a small moment that stayed with me. I was kissing someone and I decided, consciously, to be fully there. Not perform. Not rush. Just commit to the moment like it mattered. Afterwards he told me, you kiss like a husband. I laughed, but it landed. Because what he was really saying was, you’re intentional. You’re present. You’re giving something real, not just consuming a body.

That’s a skill. That’s practice. That’s something we can get better at.

So here’s what I’m trying to do, both as a person and as a creator.

I want BrawnyAi to keep the fantasy alive. I want the hunks. I want the heat. I’m not turning into a monastery newsletter. But I do want us to grow into a community that can talk about desire with more depth than who’s hottest. That includes the 💪MightyPros too. If we’re going to build something that lasts, it can’t be only thirst. It has to be truth.

I want us to remember that being erotic isn’t only a body type. It’s an energy. It’s the art of the tease. It’s the ability to make someone feel invited instead of evaluated. It’s what makes life feel less transactional and more alive.

And this matters for Lumberlandia, and for Brawnópolis too. Those characters can’t live in a vacuum. If I want that universe to last, it has to reflect real things. Not just the sexy parts, but the complicated parts too. The loneliness. The pressure. The shortcuts. The longing. The way modern life pushes us toward speed and performance, and how rare it is to find real presence.

One more thing before I go.

I just released my EP, Seu Safado, Você Quer? Five songs. The closest English meaning is: You naughty boy… do you want it? and the order matters. It’s the classic two-in-one: you tease, and then you ask permission to escalate, without spelling out the whole script. That’s the beauty of safadeza. It tempts, but it still listens.

If your culture has its own word for this kind of desire, or if you’ve lived a different version of the sexy versus safado contrast, tell me in the comments. If you’ve got a personal story, share it. I read them. I respond. And I want this to feel like a real conversation, not a broadcast.

With love, B ❤️

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