Perfecting the subtext.

The older I get, the more I realise just how ridiculous girls can be.  Spending the weekend with my sisters, one who has just turned 14, the other almost 18, I was reminded of the high school politics that dominate our social lives for the better part of year seven through 12. Over the weekend, as I drove my youngest sister and her band of friends around, I was invited to step into the world of the “tween” and observe their truly bizarre social rituals. Listening to their banter about boyfriends, other girls in their year, the teachers they hate the most and what’s hot at Glassons this winter, I started to silently criticise before realising that on many levels, my own friends and I have not evolved very far beyond this dynamic.  The topics might have progressed beyond “Omfg you have a crush on him!” to “Well have you slept together?”, but the heart of our conversations are essentially the same. My realisation was only heightened later that night as I sat on the phone to my friend carefully brainstorming a polite let down response to a boy who had asked her out.  His text, which was painfully casual, was the result of a typical crush developed during group hangouts that had eventuated into the inevitable offer to buy her dinner. Despite this gentleman being an absolute catch (seriously he can ask ME out whenever he’s ready) he is just not my friends type and thus we were left to carefully craft a polite, subtle way to spell “no”.  

So, here I was, having a little giggle to myself at how simply ridiculous some of the conversations my sisters friends were having, while MY friend and I, two grown women are drafting and re drafting a message that realistically only had to say “thanks but no thanks x”.  It is interesting that in a world where the exchange of information has become so instantaneous through imessage, viber, snapchat, instagram, Facebook, Facebook messenger and whatever other social media tool you can dream up (dare I say it, Tindr) this message had to be crafted so not to offend the receiver whilst completely shutting down his request. Its not easy stuff people! Ironically, it is probably our human behaviours that get us into these sticky situations. It is natural to respond positively to a little extra attention, however, clearly the ego boost is rarely worth the consequences! People enjoy sending let down texts just as much as people enjoy receiving them. So true to our ridiculousness, which seems to have been at work since a young age, we managed to draft a script that effectively turned the offer down without so much as an utterance of the word no. Hopefully, this poor bugger can decipher female subtext or we’ll be right back where we started in one week’s time.

Happy Friday readers, have a wonderful weekend.

Xo