I was out on a bike ride with my husband. He was way ahead of me, as per usual. I was huffing and puffing trying to catch up with him. Then a young couple on fast bikes passed me on my left. As they raced around me, the woman yelled to me "You are SO cute!!"
WTH? Apparently I'm going to have to learn to live with this cute/adorable thing. This better not mean I will have to stop dancing at weddings or drinking martinis at downtown bars. Will doing all sorts of normal adult things put me at risk of standing out as "cute" now? I will be completely honest with you. It is making me a little self conscious.
I find it interesting that no one yells things like that out to my husband. He wears a pork pie hat when he rides. He also has yellow and green streamers flowing out of each end of his bike's handle bars, as if he were 6 years old. I have repeatedly told him those streamers are ridiculous, but he doesn't care. He actually IS the cutest thing you've ever seen, but strangers don't seem to feel they can yell inappropriate personal comments out to him.
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I have streamers on my bike and love them. They are pink and white and shiny.
ReplyDeleteI’ve been called cute my whole life. I have also been called ugly. I will take cute. The intention of the giver is always kind when I’m called cute.
I love your positive take on this. I'm trying to surrender. In my mind, however, I've always thought of myself as a 6 foot tall amazonian warrior. Sigh.
DeleteYou can be both.
DeletePersonally I don't care what other folks think but then no one has called me cute lately (unless you count the husbeast). If you give up dancing and drinking, I'm going to lodge a complaint with The Management.
ReplyDeleteDon't worry, it will never happen. I'll dye my hair first. I promise.
DeleteOnly my pinochle opponent has called me cute, and I think it was to distract my bid.
ReplyDeleteHahahaha! Good one.
Delete"Cute" is very much an American locution. Brits use it but without conviction. I have never knowingly used it because of its ambiguity. Most of the time it carries the meaning obviously intended by that passing young couple: a combination of lively looks, sassiness, friendliness and whatever. Early Shirley Maclaine was cute.
ReplyDeleteBut there is a secondary meaning which your couple cannot have intended since it depends on greater familiarity: cleverness as a pejorative term, a tendency to scheme and/or manipulate: eg, "X is just a bit too cute for my liking." Since I was regularly and justifiably accused of secondary cuteness while working in the USA (notably after my lamentable failure at volley-ball) I avoided the term. It would have been just my bad luck to have been misinterpreted.
To make things crystal clear: yours is good cute not the other. Which, it occurs to me, would provide a legitimate response towards any Brits who were just passing through and who had come up with the observation that "Yanks seem to spell funny." Incidentally Brits are frequently seen as ungrateful in the USA - drinking your bourbon and then saying it isn't Scotch. It might even be said that it was Brits who caused Americans to invent "panhandler", a splendid word which seems to have fallen into disuse.
Certainly revel in being cute, on or off your bike. The next stage would be to overhear one of your neighbours saying: "There goes that cute kid.", proof that you've been judged as cute on more than one occasion. Super damn cute I take to mean being seen as cute among other cutes. Or would you brook no competition? Strange word that brook.
Actually, a person of my own age who I know quite well might affectionately call me a cute kid. Or a good kid, or something along those lines. I have a friend from Oklahoma who often uses that term when talking about our shared friends.
DeleteSuper damn cute means extremely cute. I would welcome the competition.
Well, you have a cute bike. It needs to be exercised by the looks of it.
ReplyDeleteThe stuff I get yelled at when I am cycling is considerably more rude. Cycling in city traffic is like going into a war zone.
I bet. I don't think I would have the courage to bike in a city.
DeleteI'm sure the "cute" is kindly meant, but I wouldn't like it, either.
ReplyDeleteStreamers on his bike and a pork pie hat? Now that IS cute! I love that your husband does those things with no shame. Good for him.
He's one in a million.
DeleteIt's starting to get irritating I imagine. Once is okay but now twice; it's verging on condescending. I get it now.
ReplyDeleteI'm still trying to have a good attitude about it, but it is making me feel self-conscious about doing things that society has deemed older people don't really do.
DeleteI think it is a little bit weird that people shout out to you. Even if they didn't say "CUTE"-- it's strange to shout anything at all. I do love the streamers on your husband's handlebars! Such a flashback to the days of my youth.
ReplyDeleteYes, the shouting out is odd. I actually had someone yell out at me yesterday, "Nice helmet." I was wearing a baseball cap. I took it as bike culture shaming for not wearing the proper equipment.
DeleteI guess you must be super-cute to have so many people say so. Maybe you should have a tee shirt made saying, "Yes, I'm cute."
ReplyDeleteOoooh, I just might do that! Ha.
DeleteI'de take it as a compliment for sure, they could be yelling out other things! *LOL*
ReplyDeleteI hear you!
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