My date said his icks were body hair and tattoos – I have both

On a dusky summer evening last August, I sat opposite the subject of my Hinge affections on the Common, an alarmingly warm bottle of rosé between us. 

As clichéd as a date in Clapham should be.

I hadn’t been especially nervous (thank you, Dutch courage) although the physical geometry involved in trying to sit on a small picnic rug opposite someone I’d never met before brought out my self-consciousness. 

How do you get comfy, and close – but not too close; look relaxed, but not too relaxed? Like most things in life, I overthought it.

Maybe it was first date nerves, or maybe it was a sign of my related compulsion to hypothesise about how I’m perceived, and whether I look OK – before I reflect on whether I actually like the person I’m apparently trying to impress.

In this case, I was pleasantly surprised by my date. He appreciated a niche Harry Potter reference (Devil’s Snare, anyone?), and had a sausage dog. Tick, tick. 

Post sunset, the bleached, vape-littered grass was starting to lose its allure. With our bottle of wine very much empty, we made our way to the glowing lights of the Common’s periphery.

He had what my mum would describe as ‘kind eyes’, and struck just the right balance of being curious and inquisitive about my life, and open and thoughtful about his own. 

Admittedly, this is a bleakly low bar, but I have a reliable penchant for borderline arrogance, so finding someone confident, without the trappings of egomania was something of a success in my books.

After shuffling into the corner of a wine bar, we got onto the topic of ‘icks’. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, an ick is a random quirk that can turn you off someone. 

For me, this has previously captured the brief run for the Tube as the doors are closing (just wait two minutes for another one), and the giveaway orange residue that lines the lips of the un-self-conscious after a portion of pasta arrabiata (mean, I know).

The common denominator is that icks are benign, and completely ridiculous. After giving some more examples to my date, I asked him to tell me his. And he did.

‘I guess…body hair, and tattoos,’ he said, seriously.

‘They’re not icks,’ I said, looking at him quizzically. At this, he shrugged. ‘I don’t have any icks then.’ 

Finding his solemn response bizarre, I was determined to go on an ick hunt, and suggested an array of trivial behaviours. He was nonplussed. When he revealed he was totally fine with ‘live laugh love’ posters, I was stumped. There was nothing.

But in my quest for an actual ick, I completely glossed over his answer. A dislike of two blatantly (permanent) aesthetic characteristics. And I possessed both of them.

The offenders were an overpriced miniature butterfly tattoo that I got from a pop-up shop, and a small finger sized flower on my ribs. Most of the time I forget I have them, but, now reminded, I hiked up my top to show him. ‘No I didn’t mean ones like that, they’re nice,’ he said (naturally), appeasing my drunken brain.

My body hair on the other hand didn’t need announcing, I’m comfortable both with and without, and during the date the blonde hairs all over my legs were very much visible. 

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a webbrowser thatsupports HTML5video

Disliking hair on women is not an irrational banality, it’s a perpetration of age-old beauty standards. In other words, my date’s reaction was a bit of a red flag. Apparently my leg hair was ok, but what if it had been black? Would fully grown armpit hair have been too ‘icky’?

Heterosexual men are socialised to find hairlessness attractive in women – a racialised, patriarchal and youth-centric standard of beauty.

Yes, everyone is entitled to their dating preferences, but preferences can be political, even when they are disguised as being innocuous and benign. 

While my date understood ‘the ick’ as an umbrella term for unattractiveness; in reality the ick refers to trivial things that are inexplicably cringeworthy. When body hair becomes so embedded into aesthetic norms that it can unflinchingly be regarded as ‘cringe’ and repulsive, questions should be asked. 

I say this all with hindsight. At the time, I didn’t give too much weight to his comments thanks to a combination of wine consumption; the fact I wasn’t looking for a serious relationship; and because I hadn’t actually taken in what he’d said.

Although we ended up going on a couple more dates, after a few more off-kilter comments (and time to absorb previous ones), I called it off.

Caught up in wanting my date to like me, I had failed to examine whether I really liked him.

Experts say that getting the ick can reflect your own discomfort in getting close to someone – or an unconscious doubt about the person’s suitability. I know in my case that when I really like people, I’m not put off by the Pepsi max bottle sticking out their coat pocket, or the way they stir their porridge. 

In other words, when I do get the ick, it’s probably my subconscious saying this person just isn’t doing it for me – for whatever reason. 

So, next time you feel the telltale flickers of repulsion, it might be worth digging a little deeper, unless your ‘ick’ is body hair, which is another kettle of fish entirely…

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing [email protected]. 

Share your views in the comments below.

Source: Read Full Article