Polly Vernon
EVER FEEL LIKE YOU’VE got inadequate gush for the modern age? I do. While everyone around me is perpetually erupting into hyperbolic heart-eye-emoji-splattered cultural orgasm over everything from some cat, to that thing Chrissy Teigen said about John Legend… I’m barely capable of expressing mild enthusiasm when someone I know and like gives birth, or gets married, or cheats death.
I didn’t cry over the London Marathon the other weekend. I didn’t go to crazy lengths to get tix for Michelle Obama at the O2, the week before that (I didn’t go to any lengths at all). When Notre Dame burned, I felt a bit sad, but then? I forgot. I thought the BBC show Fleabag was really good – but did I think OMG COMEDY JUST GOT TOTALLY REINVENTED I THINK MY FUNNY JUST EXPLODED?
I did not.
I haven’t got around to watching the Netflix Beyoncé documentary yet, which, given how people counted down the hours and the minutes till its release in giddy, greedy, gleeful anticipation, represents a shocking dereliction of enthusiasm on my behalf. When Greta Thunberg addressed the Extinction Rebellion rally, and the rest of the world fell to its knees, cheeks wetted by tears, arms outstretched towards this small figure, this great hope, my main thought was: ‘Ooooh, it’s like when 16-year-old William Hague spoke at the Tory Party conference!’
Apparently, my gush-averse approach to life is now wholly unacceptable. Quite liking stuff doesn’t fly any more. Being briefly amused, fleetingly impressed (but rarely obsessed), L:BNOL (Laughing: But Not Out Loud)… Mild-mannered appreciation is not OK, not in this day and age. It’s damp squibbing; damning with fair-to-moderate praise. And if the thing I’m supposed to gush over (only can’t) is female in any way, shape or form? Then my inability to gush is not just rude – but also: a flagrant forsaking of the sisterhood, quite possibly informed by my jealousy.
For gushing is the only way! Gushing is good manners. A modern-day curtsy. A 21st-century genuflection. An ornate expression of humility – a performative knowing of your place. Gushing is communal. Good gushing comes in all-encompassing waves, picking gushers up as it goes, urging them onwards in appreciative torrents of ‘I CAN’T EVEN’ and ‘THIS. IS. EVERYTHING’. Gushing is competitive, as anyone who ever wound up in a gush-off with another fervent gusher – someone equally intent on expressing their borderline violent appreciation of whoever or whatever – will tell you.
Where does that leave those of us who are not natural born gushers? Spurious, silent and a little bit scared; or perhaps faking it, and praying for a time when it’s OK to say: ‘Yeah, I like that. It’s quite good,’ once again. That’s where.