As a young girl, I loved to play dress up; I was desperate to grow up faster than the years would allow me. I would trudge around our house in my mum’s high heels and snoop through her makeup, looking for the secret to adulting in every palette and compact. I clung to the advice of the wiser, more established, and ever-so-glamorous women in my life like they were my personal agony aunts. Their input, whilst often abstract and inconsequential in the long run, formulated the early pieces of the puzzle I needed to understand womanhood.
Amongst those seemingly innocent glimpses into the life of a woman, there it lay, warped and antiquated: the damning subjugation that the fate of my future relationship status was placed entirely in the hands of men, because, of course, “Women should never make the first move!”
I believed, like many impressionable girls, that I was confined to a life of waiting for the phone to ring; casting flirty looks across a bar; or tiptoeing around hoping the partner of my dreams would somehow magically form in front of me. Whilst I can’t bring myself to knock the traditional 90s and early noughties rom-coms too much, it goes without saying the likes of Pretty Woman and Clueless didn’t help to deconstruct much of this.
But, as I entered my twenties, I fell in love with a new type of woman. Women like bestselling author and Sunday Times columnist, Dolly Alderton; best friends and show hosts of ‘Girls Gotta Eat’ podcast, Rayna Greenberg and Ashley Hesseltine; and the beloved Carrie Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex in the City, to name only a few. Their unapologetic self-confidence and openness to discuss the intricacies of love, mistakes, sexuality, sex, and relationships was enthralling.
As I began to look around me, I realised there is a generation of women learning to step into and harness their own power within the realms of dating. It seemed that Carrie Bradshaw and Co walked so the modern woman could run. In a desperate bid to jump on board and ride this new – but slightly intimidating – wave, my friend and I decided to set a challenge for the next few weeks… ask someone out on a date.
Whilst she opted for a bold, up-front approach, successfully asking out a stranger in a corner shop on a post-night-out pot noodle run (we were both in our dressing gowns), I took a slightly more modern tactic hiding behind the comfort of Instagram. It was a casual message to a fairly new friend simply asking him for coffee. I’ll spare you the details and confess he said no. But, even in the rejection, I still somehow felt bolstered by my fresh confidence. After all – as someone reminded me soon afterwards – ‘shy kids don’t get sweets’.
We’re taught that relationships happen when we least expect it, but, whilst this may be true for some, I don’t think it’s a blanket rule. Why are we allowed to want for everything else in life other than spontaneous, shameless and upfront love? I think we should focus on being most authentically ourselves in concert with dating. Laughing too loudly in public, talking excitedly about something we love with friends, wearing our favourite jumper too many days in a row—because it is in these moments of personal joy that the right person will find you most attractive.
The realities of dating in this modern age might not be quite as picturesque as our grandparents, or even our parents, but we must acknowledge and lean into what those before have afforded us. The freedom to flirt and have fun with dating without shame or restriction. So go on, redownload Hinge or ask for that person’s number.
Life is far too short to worry about kissing a few frogs along the way.