Confessions of a Swoonaholic

I love being a woman. I love lingerie and lipgloss. I bake scones, curl my lashes and drink soy coffees. I think it’s fabulous to be female but I wish that boys would treat me like one more often.


I’m not merely referring to the volume of correspondence I receive that is addressed to “Mr” (or “Sir/Madam??”), due to my gender-ambiguous name. I yearn for more swoon-worthy moments when men hold doors open for me, offer me their seat on the bus or insist that I go first in the queue.

I haven’t always felt like this. In my student activist days, I guzzled beer, read “The Female Eunuch”, shook my fist during protest rallies and looked down my (pierced) nose at acts of chivalry. However, I gradually realised I missed those perks that make it lovely to be a lady, in particular, the delight of being driven places. It is fine to be concerned about your carbon footprint but expecting a girl to manoeuvre your bicycle into her hatchback at the end of a date while the rain hammers down should justifiably extinguish all your hopes of a goodnight kiss.

I was eventually struck with an epiphany that I had completely misinterpreted acts of chivalry through my angry, stop-oppressing-women-you-rotten-bastards glasses.

I realised that, when my friend placed a deferential hand upon my elbow to guide me across a manic Indian road, he was not suggesting that I was incapable of crossing the road myself. Rather, he was showing that he thought I was too precious to end up under the tyres of a motorbike carrying twenty chickens and a paper mache guitar.

I realised that a man who beckons the waiter over when you’re ready to place your order is not implying that you’re too stupid to do that yourself. Instead, that action says, “I would like to take care of you”. It oozes initiative, confidence and self-assuredness. It seems to suggest that, if you broke your ankle on the Swiss alps, he would be capable of constructing snow shoes from saplings and creating a parachute from pine needles so that you could both glide triumphantly to the safety of the log cabin. (Oh Bear Grylls, you may be a fraudster but nobody looks better in polar fleece.)

And if a man took his coat off to lay it over a puddle on the footpath for me to traverse over, I may just kick my Jimmy Choos off in delight and marry him. (No, I don’t own Jimmy Choos but I’m allowed to have fun in my hypotheticals.)

So, boys – stop narrowing your eyes at Colin Firth posters and start opening doors, tipping your hat and relinquishing your coat. You will have the ladies swooning like never before, I promise.