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FEATURED ARTICLES           Thursday, September 09, 2010                                Email to a Friend

Too Much Romance?

Kateryna Topol

Sitting on the bus on my way home plugged into my iPod, I noticed a young man standing by the driver holding a flower in his hand, something that looked like and orchid. Suddenly, he seem to have an urge to get rid of it so he turned around and offered the flower to the first woman he saw sitting on the side seat. Her reaction attracted the attention of the entire bus. Not only she would not accept the flower but she shied away and, with terrified expression on her face, shrunk into the seat as if he was giving her poison ivy. As I was watching this whole incident from the side I thought to myself, what would I have done if a stranger offered me a flower, and my impulse reaction was to shy away. Before I had a chance to complete my thought it was the time to get off the bus. He got off on the same stop as I and as he walked away, he offered the flower to the first woman passing by. Just like before, she would not take the flower, but not like the lady on the bus who silently shied away, this one stopped, shockingly looked at him and said: “Why? Why would you want to give me a flower?” I could not tell exactly, but it sounded as if he told her to just take it for no particular reason to which she loudly responded: “Why would I want your flower!?”

I moved on with my trip but being witness to this unusual phenomenon made me marvel over the issue. Why are we so terrified by a stranger giving us flowers? It was a simple selfless act and it does not matter where he got the flower, he just did not want to throw it away and perhaps he thought that if he gave it to someone he just might make that someone’s day. Instead he was met with fear and coldness. He did not look like a terrorist nor did he look like a suspicious person, in fact how he looked had nothing to do with how these women reacted to his offer and I am sure it was not because their mom told them not to accept gifts from strangers.

We have moved passed the oppression and most of us have moved passed arranged marriages. We are relatively strong and relatively independent women who are not afraid to walk alone in the dark, but have we lost our sense of romanticism during this long and eventful journey? We are all taken back by the fearless love of Romeo and Juliet and when it comes to romance we turn to movie classics that make us squeeze our pillows and wonder when will we find our perfect man who will say all the right things, call us just to ask how our day is going or give us flowers for no reason. We claim we like to be adored and that we like men who are not afraid to express their feelings but when it come to reality is that really so? What do we really do when guys call us everyday; how do we really react when they write us poems or give us candles for no special occasion, especially early in the relationship – we shrivel and say that it is simply too much. From falling in love after hearing serenades we now become nauseous from only hearing of one coming.

It is not that a stranger giving you a flower is a romantic act, but us rejecting it is one that makes us heartless. In the age of email and facebook we no longer write romantic letters nor do we expect to be receiving them. We go to the restaurants in jeans and slow dance only at weddings. Men do not serenade us unless they are cool enough to be in a well known band because otherwise an action like that could be thought of as cheesy. We often complain that our relationships do not have enough romance but get all ghastly at the sight of it.

Recalling the earlier events I thought to myself that it is maybe us who are the reason for this coldness, perhaps it is this kind of rejection that makes men to not write us letters or sing serenades knowing that if we do not laugh in their face we will giggle about it with our girl-friends after.

We pay for our own drinks, open our own doors, work in offices dressed in grey power-suits and say that boyfriends calling us twice a day is ‘too much romance’, all while shopping for pink lingerie with fluffy bows and ruffles. But is there such thing as ‘too much romance’ or are we romantically challenged? Perhaps not all of us shy away from the stranger’s flower, some of us might gladly take it and move on with a smile but on the whole, perhaps we need rethink our standards of cheesiness when it comes to candles and hearts.

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