Creativity Quote by Jarvis Cocker

Jarvis Cocker’s line lands like a pint thrown at the mirror: funny, a little mean, and aimed squarely at the culture that insists self-display is a virtue. Coming from the Pulp frontman - a chronicler of class anxiety, nightlife bravado, and the cheap theatre of desire - it reads less like puritanism than a refusal to play the assigned role. “Sexy,” in his mouth, isn’t simple attraction; it’s a marketed identity, a performance you’re meant to believe in so hard you stop noticing the stage lights.

The phrasing does two things at once. “Anyone who thinks they’re sexy” targets not sexiness itself but the certainty of it: the self-congratulating confidence that turns wanting into branding. Then “needs their head checked” punctures that certainty with blunt, working-class skepticism. It’s a diagnostic insult, suggesting the problem is cognitive: if you’re fully convinced you’re sexy, you’ve lost touch with the social dance that makes sexiness possible in the first place (projection, insecurity, other people’s gaze).

Context matters: Cocker emerged in a Britpop moment that sold “cool” as entitlement, with rock-star swagger repackaged for lads’ mags and MTV. His whole persona worked as an antidote - gawky, hyperverbal, self-aware - someone who understood that desire is messy, contingent, and often embarrassing. The line isn’t anti-sex; it’s anti-narcissism. It frames “sexy” as something granted, fleetingly, by others, not a certificate you print at home.