Why I Hate Being Twirled (And Given Flowers!)

The hidden assumptions behind "romantic" gestures. #TransparentTuesday

Hi friend,

A few weeks ago, a man tried to twirl me, and I hated it.

No shade to anyone who enjoys being twirled here—I know plenty of people who do!

And maybe you’ll hear this story and be like “Jessi it’s just a twirl, it’s not that deep.” But as a person whose literal job it is to point out when things are deeper than they appear, I have thoughts, so buckle up!

Ok, so what happened was that this guy and I had only known each other a few minutes, but we were talking and joking around when he reached for my hand and started spinning me in a circle in the classic social gesture of “twirling a beautiful woman.”

I had an immediate and intense visceral reaction of irritability, but I sort of went with it for a second anyway, because physically resisting someone who’s trying to do something playful can create a level of awkwardness that feels way more dramatic and mood-killing than I felt the moment would have warranted.

To be fair, I only had a split second to weigh my own boundaries against the social repercussions, so I let myself be twirled for a second before stopping and giving myself permission to be a little prickly.

“What do you get out of this?” I asked him, still smiling but genuinely wanting an answer.

“Why do men do this?”

He laughed and responded “I don’t know, most women love it!”

Ah. Right. Women.

Now obviously this practical stranger wouldn’t have had any way to know that I’m non-binary, so I guess he gets a pass on that part. And for a moment I thought that maybe my irritation was only about being inadvertently misgendered.

But the truth is that while the twirl itself was just a small thing, my emotional reaction to it really wasn’t.

I was really annoyed, at both his presumption that he could just choose how and where to move my body without asking, and to the implication that I would enjoy being put “on display” for other people in a way that feels sort of objectifying.

But I did also feel a big wave of revulsion from the experience of being reduced to a gendered role in that way, and to the weird and impersonal assumption that this is what “people who look like me” enjoy.

It’s not like I don’t understand where he would have gotten this idea, obviously. Watch any romantic comedy or reality dating show, and it’s pretty much a guarantee that at some point, the conventionally masculine man will reach out for the conventionally feminine woman’s hand and twirl her around while she smiles and blushes, and he looks on adoringly.

As viewers, we’re always meant to understand these moments as romantic.

We’re meant to know that he was so blown away by her beauty that he simultaneously wanted to take her in from all angles, and wanted to give her a moment to “shine” and feel special as the center of attention for the whole room.

We’re meant to see it as a sign of his masculinity and dominance that he can confidently “takes control” of her body for a moment, and we’re meant to see it as a sign of her femininity, worthiness, and value as a woman that she is both small/delicate enough to be easily spun around, and attractive enough that a man is motivated to “choose her” and “show her off.”

The assumption we make when we smile at a twirl on TV is that the woman will feel affirmed and flattered (if not outright euphoric) to be given this level of attention and celebration, both by the man who is twirling her, and by anyone around who is seeing her be put on display in this way.

After all, women are only ever allowed to take up space in society when a man finds us attractive enough that they decide to put us on display, right?

Ugh.

I know there are plenty of women who would actually enjoy this kind of thing, but I definitely don’t.

Some of it for me is about the non-consensual experience of having another person decide where my body is going to go.

Yes it’s meant to be playful, but a “twirl” is basically just one person directing the other person’s body in a specific direction. And for some women I have no doubt that’s actually a big part of the appeal! But while this gentle show of authority or strength might be exciting and affirming for someone who is naturally submissive or looking for a partner to lead them… to me, it just feels fucking weird.

I’m not looking to be guided, led, swept away, “baby-girled,” spun around on the dance floor, given the “princess treatment,” or even momentarily relieved of responsibility for using my own brain and making my own decisions.

As such, the vast majority of culturally popular chivalrous or romantic gestures—which are generally designed to give men an opportunity to “treat a woman” to these kinds of submissive experiences under the assumption that she will find them pleasurable—just fall completely flat with me.

That’s actually what I think bothered me most about the twirl: that it’s a completely impersonal gesture based on an assumption of what I’ll enjoy, and rooted in gendered essentialist ideas that simply don’t apply to me.

I take issue with for two reasons:

1. It feels deeply isolating and annoying for everyone and their fricken mother to constantly make the same exact false assumptions about you, for your entire life, just because of what’s in your pants.

2. This is exactly this kind of “romantic shortcutting” that allows men to get away with doing the absolute least, because they can rely on cultural stereotypes of romance to make women feel special instead of actually putting in the emotional labor to get to know her.

That last one is a big one, actually. Think about how many men buy their wives roses or heart-shaped jewelry, not because their wives like those things, but because they’re considered “the right thing to buy women.”

He doesn’t have to take the time to really know her, because he can always impress her with a gesture like this, and he knows she’ll perform the heteronormative mental gymnastics that all women under patriarchy are conditioned to do, in which she forgives him for getting something that’s not her taste, because “boys will be boys,” and “it’s the thought that counts,” and “other women would kill for this kind of effort.”

He doesn’t have to know that his wife hates roses but loves sunflowers, or that she would prefer to receive a living succulent than a dead bouquet, or that she’d rather he just take the trash out and do his half of the childcare instead of buying her meaningless gestures. He doesn’t have to know that she wears yellow gold instead of silver, or that dainty jewelry doesn’t go with her style at all.

He doesn’t have to realize any of that because as long as he occasionally engages in the non-specific gestures of “romancing a woman,” he’’ll get credit for being romantic, thoughtful, and sweet.

After all, he may not be always getting it right but at least he’s trying… and she knows it would be seen as “ungrateful” if she complains.

This is why I always tell men I don’t like flowers—and the truth is that I actually do like flowers themselves, I just really hate getting flowers! After all, the flowers don’t arrive alone; they come with expectations.

This is actually probably true for all the little gendered gestures I dislike, because whether or not the doer-of-the-gesture is consciously aware of it, they do have a certain expectation for how their gesture will be received.

• The man who twirls a woman is expecting that she will feel flattered and beautiful and enjoy the attention.

• The giver of the flowers (or chocolate or heart-shaped jewelry or whatever) expects the receiver to feel delighted, special, and grateful.

• The guy opening the door (or pulling out the chair or paying for dinner) expects that his chivalrous behavior means she “owes” him her time, attention, or gratitude.

These expectations aren’t always conscious, and they’re certainly not always nefarious (like in that last example), although they certainly can be.

It’s just that they’re always there, and that it would be considered incredibly rude for the receiver to not respond with a certain amount of the expected delight or gratitude—even if she doesn’t really like the gesture, or didn’t really want it. Because the gesture is shorthand, and we’re supposed to respond only to what they symbolize.

To me, being twirled or handed flowers feels like being unexpectedly signed up to manage a little social scene.

If I was being completely honest, authentic, and unmasked, I might just hand the flowers back and say “I don’t want these.” Maybe “these are pretty, but I don’t want them,” or “I appreciate that you wanted to make me happy, but it would make me happier if I didn’t take them.”

But I think we can all agree that this would be a very weird reaction, yes? Honest, sure, but also hurtful in a way that is usually both unkind and unnecessary. These types of gestures may be misguided, but they’re generally intended as a little bid for connection, and rejecting them outright is like rejecting the person themselves.

So assuming I care about the gesture-giver, I’ll usually split the difference: not being especially performative in my appreciation or delight, but acknowledging that the person wanted to make me feel noticed and happy with a smile and a thank you.

And that’s fine; I’m fine, it’s fine!

But sometimes, like recently, I find myself falling down a whole rabbit-hole about how much I dislike these types of gendered “romantic” social scripts, and wishing I could opt out of them– without needing to shut people down, make things awkward, ruin the mood, or reject people.

Not because I’m afraid to set boundaries or advocate for myself, but just because the script is happening constantly, and it’s often playing out in super small moments with people who don’t know me at all, so it’s tends to take way more effort to express resistance than it would to just smile and move on.

Sometimes I even think about chopping my hair all off just to keep people from twirling me or like… pulling out chairs for me.

After all, I may be non-binary but I know that I visually read to most people as a “woman,” and that I could probably manipulate the assumptions people make about me to some degree—and therefore prevent a certain amount of these gendered gesture moments from happening—by changing the way I present myself.

But if I’m being honest, I absolutely love my love hair right now, and it would feel weird and inauthentic to chop it off just to avoid people’s assumptions. (After all, I wouldn’t recommend a client in a fat body try losing weight in order to avoid people making negative assumptions about their eating habits, would I? Of course not!)

So I guess for now, I’m just a non-binary femme who gets prickly when men try to do chivalry or romance at me. And that’s ok.

(See I told you it was actually that deep!)

Big hug,

Jessi