Why Are all of us So Grumpy About Flirty Message on Starbucks Cup?

No marvel her mother was furious. name youngster safety services and products! Scramble Operation Yewtree!

The controversial coffee cup with a flirty message written on it.  photo: facebook/Alec Baine

apart from, cling on a minute, Laura is 19. yes, 19. sufficiently old to do just about anything else except for cling a heavy items car licence.

And sufficiently old to be flattered. certainly, she used to be so amused with the aid of the gesture that she texted a photograph of the trophy cup to her mother, Alex Blaine.

clearly now not one among lifestyles’s sunnier souls, Blaine promptly uploaded both the picture and her acerbic comments onto a miseryguts messageboard entitled “S**t London”, the place her boo-hissing was met with an alarming collection of endorsements.

Lordy. some distance be it from me to return between a parent and youngster, but as soon as Laura reaches 21 and does ultimately get hold of her HGV licence, she would possibly believe hauling her mom’s leaden experience of humour to the closest municipal dump and leaving it there.

How can it be that whereas our teenagers are cheerfully posting all manner of saucy photographs on social media, my era has became, purselipped (to cite the late nice Roald Dahl) as a canine’s bottom? I’m now not certain which is worse.

not see you later in the past I was once on the Tube journeying dwelling from the type of meeting that required heels and a frock. I sat down and fished my comfy flats out of my purse.

“No, please don’t try this!” begged the man opposite, a real plaintive note in his voice. “the other ones are a lot nicer.”

I looked over and laughed. “sure,” I agreed. “Don’t get me incorrect, your comments is important to me, however for medical causes…sorry.”

I slipped on my ballet pumps. He gave a theatrical sigh. I gave a theatrical shrug. end of. somewhat ego increase.

but once I informed some girlfriends, they have been sharply divided between the “Ahh, that’s sweet” and the “Eww, what a perv”.

One even asked me: “What did he look like?” as if that have been in any respect salient. He wasn’t George Clooney however nor used to be he Donald Trump; that wasn’t the point of the trade or of the story.

As my sister, who has lived in France for 30 years, would say: “unsightly males are like unsightly canine. They don’t know they’re unpleasant, they only want a pat on the pinnacle. so that you pat them and move on.”

ugly men are like unsightly canines.  photograph: JOSH EDELSON/AFP

but here in Britain, we’re no longer terribly excellent at languages and, unluckily, that extends to body language. A Parisian can bring a panoply of feelings with a moue or the toss of a head.

in the UK, the lexicon of modern love boils all the way down to emojis and winking faces constructed from a semicolon and half a bracket, which is lovely tragic – even though admittedly no longer reasonably as downright weird as the litigation-acutely aware US universities, who primly hand out “consensual sex contracts” to college students who now equate kind-filling with foreplay.

There’s a perilous, creeping development that as people an increasing number of go surfing to look for a relationship, commonplace – yes, commonplace – face-to-face banter between strangers is being acknowledged with, at best possible, suspicion and, at worst, hostility.

What happened to tolerance, teasing, gentle-hearted badinage? Frankly, I worry for the human race when a man giving compliments robotically leads to a woman taking offence.

yes, we should all be watchful and woe betide the actual creeps who hit on our underage – any age – daughters, for they’re going to unleash tiger mother fury.

however until then, wilfully determining to interpret every flirtatious interplay as harassment is a depressing, mean-spirited solution to live. As for me, an occasional come-hither cappuccino would make my day.