Twinks vs. Dolls V
"The fight of the century."
PHOTOGRAPHY BY CYLE SUESZ
This Pride, Singers brought Twinks vs. Dolls V out of Brooklyn and into the Broadway glare of Palladium Times Square, turning its beloved, deranged queer Olympics into a full-scale Times Square spectacle. What began as a viral bar-world fever dream has become one of New York Pride’s most talked-about events: a trans-centered, gay-adjacent, deeply unserious competition where twinks and dolls face off in rounds of physical comedy, public humiliation, athletic delusion, and genuine community theater.
The 2026 edition came with a particularly stacked bench. Chelsea Manning, Bowen Yang, and Chi Ossé served as judges, while Spike Einbinder and Honey Pluton hosted and refereed the chaos.
Across ten rounds, contestants battled through the kind of contests that sound illegal to explain to a straight person: bologna suck-and-blow, a cigarette race beamed in from Times Square, and slime wrestling with the emotional stakes of a title fight. The move to Palladium was not without discourse, with some longtime fans mourning the loss of the event’s scrappy Brooklyn intimacy, but that tension only added to the strange electricity of the day.
Twinks vs. Dolls has become a Pride institution precisely because it’s rough, raw, big, stupid, funny, messy, trans-led, and alive.
Below are images from the event:
