Apparently, Having Fun Is Embarrassing Now

Santiago Molina
10 minutes ago
4 min read

I moved to New York City with the idea that I would feel like a rockstar trapped in a supermodel's body when I went out. Then I went out and saw nobody was dancing.

Moving to New York City used to come with the promise of a vibrant nightlife and a complicated dating life; but the chances of dating getting easier are low, I’m still single, so let’s stick with dancing

I always dreamed of being a true party girl, fur coats in the winter, messy hair every season. Almost everything I ever expected from NYC came from the background noise of my sisters watching Sex and the City when I was younger; never thinking that someday that person complaining about their dating life with their friends while writing about it would be me (plus many Visas and geographical inconsistencies). And well, history spoke for itself: Studio 54, Warhol’s Red Room. This wasn’t fictional. It was in famous people’s biographies, and all of a sudden, it was gone.

Older, and let’s say wiser, when I finally moved to the city for school, I rewatched SATC multiple times. The latest one, last year, as I was once again couch-surfing. The show gave me a sense of peace; I am still seasons ahead in my life. I still have time to find the one. But it also terrified me: the idea of what if I did not?

It was during one of those rewatches that I fell in love with Lexi Featherston, a character who had never caught my attention, but who all of a sudden became the most relatable to me.

“When did everybody stop smoking? When did everybody pair off? This used to be the most exciting city in the world…now it’s nothing but smoking near a fucking open window. New York is over. O.V.E.R. Over. No one’s fun anymore. What ever happened to fun? God. I’m so bored I could die.” And so she did, accidentally. Or perhaps the Gods knew her party was truly over.

Don’t get me wrong. You can still find a good party in New York City; the search has mostly led me to the underground Brooklyn scene, and some Manhattan clubs with the right people. But things have changed; fashion used to be enough to get into the club; now money can easily replace fashion, and, well, at the club nobody is truly dancing.

By dancing, I mean Hannah Horvath during that episode of Girls when she and Elijah went out partying, and she exchanged her shirt for a yellow mesh see-through top, while “I Love It” by Icona Pop ft. Charlie XCX played in the background.

The dancing has not totally ceased; what has changed is who we are dancing for.

We are no longer dancing for ourselves, which used to be the whole point, but we are now dancing for someone else, becoming an activity with a purpose: to find a lover for the night. We have become victims of a sort of Cinderella effect. If by midnight we do not find a lover, we are instantly reminded of how single we are by everyone around us kissing, even if being single was not something keeping you up at night. Nowadays, this is how we measure the “success” of our nights.

But when did things begin to change? And don’t blame it on the heels because I have been there, done that. Diva Featherston was onto something bigger, and it’s not necessarily cigarettes, because people are now smoking vapes, supposedly because of the flavors, yet the damage is the same. It’s what I will call the nonchalantism epidemic.

“The less we do, the hotter we look.”

I’ve never been nonchalant. I’m probably what some would call too intense. I love dancing on my own. I have always tried to be as independent as I can, but a certain something awoke in me in the past two years, a question that I began asking my close friends: why is no one talking to me at the club? As in hitting me up. Some said I give off taken energy (it might be, or they’re just trying to be nice), but I think it’s as simple as this: I am not what men are looking for; someone nonchalant.

This is the behavior being rewarded, at least in the short term, in everything we do. From dating apps to dancing in the club, the less you do, the better you will look. “Don’t double text; wait a few hours to text back,” is the type of advice I have heard in the past from friends to other friends. Basically, show them you don’t care. And the worst part is, it actually works.

Being chalant is an act of rebellion

It may seem like the days of dancing alone to the Robyn song are over. Or that the days of running through an entire airport for someone, or angry love confessions in the rain, are dead. We have left them behind and switched to dancing without sweating, and playing hard to get because that is what the dating world wants from us right now, but is that what we truly want our lives to look like? Are we really going to stop having fun to find a guy?

I’ll be real, being chalant hasn’t got me anywhere yet. It has got me ghosted, yes. But in a world where the “clean girl” aesthetic of the 2020s has taken over the messy girl era, I choose to be a Poppy. I choose to be funky, and weird, and very real, because I am not here to sell a personality in exchange for companionship. I am here to have fun and dance until the right one comes along. And so for now, I will continue to try and deprioritize romantic love in my life with self-therapy attempts, delete all my dating apps, and not take life too seriously, because it is not.

Lexi Featherston might be dead, but we are not.