Monday, May 12, 2008
Europeans have such a flair for flirting that it must be transmitted via breast milk. Why don't Americans get it?
Feb 15, 2000 | I still think about a stranger whose gaze held mine as I leaned out of a train window at the Gare du Nord station in Paris. There was something about his smile that makes me wonder, to this day, who he was.
I remember a dark-haired woman from a Berlin garden party because of the way she steadied my hand with hers when I lit her cigarette during a playful verbal repartee.
And on dreary mornings, I recall my sunlit breakfast at a small trattoria in Viareggio, where a man lowered his newspaper just long enough to watch me walk over to my table. His gaze was neither demanding nor demeaning, but it awakened me to my presence. Tingling with this self-awareness, I sipped my cappuccino -- solo.
This is the art of flirting. What I love about it is that it has no consequences. It just stirs up the energy of an average day, for a shared moment of mutual recognition and attraction. Unlike friendship, its lifeblood is ambiguity and nuance. It thrives on glances, gestures and half-smiles. Flirting is not in pursuit of anything except itself.
I find it revealing that my fondest recollections of flirtation occurred while I was abroad. Sadly, in this country, the art of flirting is languishing. Weakened by the '60s, inhibited by the women's movement and the epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, displaced by tell-all talk shows, its proximity to sexual harassment may have dealt flirting a mortal blow.
Flirting is not a strategy, but an artful riff on attraction. It has nothing to do with the sexuality flaunted in low-cut dresses or seductive poses. Compare the out-there sexuality of Madonna or Mick Jagger with Audrey Hepburn's sweet glances or Marcello Mastroianni's encounters and you get the difference. You know you've crossed over into the terrain of seduction when you begin issuing invitations or feel pressured by the other person's expectations.
Unfortunately, in the United States flirting is commonly thought of as a strategy in the mating game. It invariably connotes seduction and is considered an essential ingredient for snaring a mate.
I learned this the hard way when I first came to the United States as a teenager from Berlin. Hormones stirring, I was eager to make contact with the opposite sex in a Midwestern high school. Quite innocently, I engaged in actions that would be deemed adolescent flirtations by behavioral researchers: jostling, sitting close, smiling, making eye contact, etc.
I didn't mind being called a flirt by my peers until I learned that the subtext of that word was "she's asking for it." Actually, I wasn't asking for a thing except for a playful exchange. It never occurred to me that boys and girls would interpret a lingering gaze as a promise. Flirtation could taint you regardless of whether or not you followed through -- you were either a tease or a slut. The girls voted "biggest flirt" in our high school yearbooks were called sluts behind their backs.
Of course, then I didn't understand that this relentless typecasting was a way of penalizing girls for playing too aggressively with attraction. But the unspoken message came through loud and clear: The terrain of desire is governed by a complex set of rules made by boys. Since every action had implications, playfulness was out of the question. Taking the initiative of flirting, for example, committed one to some sort of follow-up action.
It's possible that America's proverbial pragmatism left no room for the ambiguity of innuendo and nuance in matters of sexual attraction. Certainly, Puritanism suppressed expressions of sensuality and designated eroticism, no matter how subtle, as treacherous territory. My Webster's dictionary, which defines flirting as "behaving amorously without serious intent," captures the spirit of artful flirtation. But my thesaurus, which suggests synonyms with negative connotations, more accurately describes what the term has come to mean in America.
A flirt is a coquette, but also a tease, gold-digger, siren, vamp, vixen, swinger and philanderer. To flirt is to banter and dally, but also to make a pass, pick up, proposition, tease. Someone who is flirtatious is coy and enticing, but also libidinous, wolfish and a nymphomaniac. In other words, flirtation is not as a harmless hide and seek game with Eros, but a means to a specific end.
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