We’d rather definitely be polite than potentially get some action

Thursday, 21 March 2024

OPINION: I can’t imagine what it’d be like if you were single and trying to pick up in real life. What would you do? Where does all of that endless, restless, longing go?

Verity Johnson is an Auckland-based writer and business owner.

OPINION: A few years ago, I wrote a column pointing out that Kiwis don’t flirt like Australians.

Well, actually, we just don’t flirt. At all. It’s like taking the train to work; a completely normal part of daily life for other countries and totally unheard of here.

The closest we get to flirtation culture is our drinking culture. The standard courtship dance of the Kiwi bird in mating season is to down seven CCs and Drys, then wander off with the nearest equally smashed feathered friend. That’s it.

Now, occasionally as a columnist you’ll write something that really gets in people’s heads. It’s never the big, important stuff that you’re convinced is going to change the world. It’s always the flippant, fun columns like that one. And it did. For years, I’ve had people come up to me and ask me about it. From the Kmart Christmas decorations section, to the Wellington airport bar yesterday, someone will randomly lean over and say,

“Yeah, I agree with that thing you wrote. We absolutely don’t flirt. Why is that?”

Turns out lots of us want to know how we ended up like this. How come Aussies are charm personified, and we have all the seduction skills of a letter from the local council?

Now, when I first wrote that column I didn’t actually know why we don’t flirt. I had a few theories; such as the fact that we don’t like discussing eroticism in public anyway. And the fact that, well, we’re a taciturn bunch. It’s hard to be flirty if you’re naturally as warm as the Franz Josef Glacier.

But I’ve since spent the past few years running a burlesque club, where I’ve effectively got backstage access to the Kiwi heart every weekend. And so I’ve had a lot of time to think about this. And I think it comes down to this - we’re obsessed with being polite.

Politeness and friendliness is our daily code of conduct. It’s so strongly ingrained in us that it trumps all other emotions, from publicly expressing dissatisfaction to being honest about money, politeness squashes all. Especially flirtatiousness.

The first time I realised this was at work, where a bunch of 20 and 30 something guys were saying if an attractive woman walks past them they’ll pointed-ly look away. The logic being that she probably gets a lot of negative attention from blokes normally. And they just don’t want to add to her general feeling of being harassed constantly.

It struck me how staggeringly polite that is. American or Australian men would routinely check women out or tell them they’re hot on the street. But here it’s un-Kiwi to be so inconsiderate.

I’ve heard a similar-ish thing from men when they say that they don’t approach women in bars because they’re worried they’re going to offend them. Part of that is a cultural hesitation about what men’s role now is in flirtation (is it still ok to make the first move?) But there’s still an underlying note of politeness there that you don’t want to be ‘That Guy’. That impolite asshole who ruins it for everyone else.

And underneath all this is our Jane Austen era, net-curtain-twitching, tea-cup-rattling side to us that is permanently worried what the neighbours think. It’s why we don’t dress up, why we worry about being tall poppies, and why we’re never, ever prepared to send cold coffee back at a cafe. We’d always rather err on the side of being too little not too much.

And that also means that, from a female perspective, women aren’t going to step in and make the first move either. If you’re always worried about what the neighbours think, you don’t want to be that scarlett hussy who is forever entrapping local eligible bachelors.

So we end up with a very polite, very proper public culture. We seem to have collectively decided at some point that it’s better not to offend anyone than potentially get a date.

And look, I’m not complaining. There’s huge upsides to this. It means you can enjoy the deep freedom of sitting and writing in a bar all night and never once being approached. That’s a level of delicious invisibility in that which is unheard of over the ditch. It’s lovely.

It also can be boring as hell. I can’t imagine what it’d be like if you were single and trying to pick up in real life (not online). What would you do? Where does all of that endless, restless, longing go? The gym? Road rage? Ritual satanism?

Or do we just keep getting frustrated with the joyless, colorless, sex-less sterility of it all, get smashed and hook up with strangers in the disabled loos?