My Beef With: The Ick
Is the ick a new act of rebellion against sexism, akin to a military coup? Is it actually an icktuitive feeling that is rooted in protection from someone being a bit sinister under the surface? In this episode of My Beef With, I delve into the complicated nuances of the ick in the dating world of today.
‘It was going so well until they tied their shoelaces, that’s why I didn’t text them back’. Did this person have an aversion to those who liked to avoid falling head first down public spaces? Were they allergic to the organised and calamity prone? why no, it was the ick of course! First it was the one who ordered soup of the day, then it was the one who said that they are a mummy’s boy, and now it was the one who made the innocent decision to avoid an embarrassing fall, or worse, a head injury, on their date. I was struggling to keep up with this imaginary and never-ending list of icks my friend seemed to keep a permanent and expanding list of in her mind, and it was time for a confrontation. It started like this.
“I don’t think you have the ick I think you have commitment issues”
“I know what I like and that isn’t someone who jumps up and down at concerts and wears boat shoes. Everyone is allowed to have a personal preference”
“There’s having a personal preference but then there’s also going off people for their normal bodily functions”
“Wearing boat shoes does not go under normal bodily function, don’t be delusional. That is not something people have to wear to survive, in fact, boat shoes would have died out a long time ago if shoe version of survival of the fittest was a thing”.
I could tell that we weren’t getting anywhere. I found my friend’s mundane aversions comical, thinking of all the potential ick-inducing scnenarios that would not guarantee a second date in my mind. Apart from imagining them sitting on the toilet, I couldn’t come up with anything else that would be conducive to the ick. I took my meagre findings to my friend.
‘You see, you have to experience the ick to get it like one time I was set to go on this date with this absolute gorgeous human but then they started to get really weird over message’
‘Let me guess, they started to send you sexually unwanted images. The famous groin snaps. We have all experienced them. It’s a classic’
‘Hell nah, even worse. He started using exclamation marks and randomly putting hehe at the end of the messages. I had to immediately cut things off. Major ick. It was like he had been harbouring an obsession with exaggerative vocabulary the whole time and was awaiting our final days before meeting to fully unleash it. I could not be putting up with that and those emojis too.
‘The Ick’ has been a major player within dating lexicon for a long time, but when gen z and social media stumbled across the word, it started to take on a whole new meaning, or meanings* should I say. Before you knew it, girls were producing ‘top forty icks to watch out for on a first date’, and ‘fifty icks that should not guarantee a second date’ videos, ranging from icks that included not being able to unhook their bra to being allergic to pollen (because how can you be allergic to pollen in 2024 when we literally live in the world of AI?). Marriages were ending after a woman’s ick list went viral online, uniting women in mutual agreement that ‘oh my god yes. So that is the feeling I get every single time he tries to start a conga line at every single event we go to!’ It seemed if you didn’t pull out your ick-list on a night out, were you even apart of the sisterhood?
Men were responding to coined ‘serial ickers’ with an umbrage not seen from them since women suggested a male contraceptive pill. Charles, 28, from Surrey had started blaming the ick on his inability to get lucky within relationships, after being left on the side of the road by a date after sending snapchat streaks in front of her. Harry, 24, from Leicester had supposedly given his girlfriend of two years the ick after a game of tennis that had resulted in him haphazardly running for the ball and showing her his buttcrack in the process, resulting in their breakup shortly after. It seemed far and wide, men were experiencing a pandemic of being ditched for this ick virus that they could be infected with due to being in possesion of a certain hobby or because of how they used their phone keyboard (hehe).
The casualness of the term ‘ick’ has certainly transformed the language of dating. Not only does it bypass phrases like ‘I just can’t put my finger on it’ or ‘turn-off’, it leaves us with an unspoken ‘gotcha’ moment that doesn’t require explanation, all rooted in a mutual feeling that you just know. Instead of having to figure out why you just couldn’t connect with someone after four dates, you can just call bluff with the ick, and put it on the fact he was wearing skinny jeans. Of course, men and women both have different fears going into a date. A man may worry that his date won’t be as tanned as her profile picture sets her out to be considering it was taken on the girls trip to Zante, whereas a woman may worry that her date might, well, kill her. On further analysis, perhaps women have taken up the ick as a method of protection. If a date elicits any sort of elsuive or obscure behaviour, instead of intution, her icktuiton steps in and can tell her that something isn’t quite right here. Someone who gets the ick from someone who wears skinny jeans may fear for themselves when under attack as what use is a man with skinny jeans against an attacker? what if them wearing skinny jeans makes them an easy victim as it is harder to run away from someone trying to rob you when you are wearing skinny jeans, hence the ick acting like an instinctive fight or flight?
I took it to my friend.
‘Do you think the reason why you got the ick from that person who used the exclamation points was because you were afraid he may end up having anger issues?’
‘Ummm no. It’s actually because I have a fear of Michael Jackson so every time he would say hehe I would just think of this Michael Jackson compilation my sister would make me watch when I was younger which consisted of him staring at the camera saying ‘hehe’ for ten hours straight’
‘I think that video was actually edited, and it actually originally comes from the song ‘Thriller’.
‘Whatever. The guy just freaks me out and I didn’t want to be reminded of him everytime I texted my boyfriend ‘
Was I reaching with my analysis of the ick being an act of liberation for women in the 21st century? Was getting the ick the new wearing a skirt that grazed the ankles and cutting your hair into a bob in the 1920s after the First World War? Across centuries, women have taken up various acts of rebellion in the face of sexist strife, and the ick was this new liberating force. Instead of burning bras and jumping in front of horses to prove a point, women had to simply tell a man that they didn’t like the fact he took the powder form of paracetemol and call it a day. The verdict- The ick is the new act of rebellion against sexism, akin to a military coup—where women, once going to extreme lengths to dismantle oppressive norms, now quietly withdraw their affection as a subtle yet powerful overthrow of patriarchal expectations. To my friend, I went.
‘Do you think you like to use the ick as a power play with men?’
‘Huh”
‘Well y’know. When you have been the opressed gender for so long, it can feel pretty powerful to turn a man down on the basis they have a live, laugh, love sign in their bedroom. It’s like an act of resistance, and because now we can say no to men and date casually without the constraints of being told we can’t without also being promiscuos, we are like in an ick overdrive where we are just making up for that lost time’
‘I think you have been spending too much time reading the Female Eunuch, and not enough on thinking about how you should always listen to yourself when you get the ick. The ick is never wrong’.
Not only had I deduced the ick to a patriarchal act of rebellion, and as a method of protection, I now had to arrive at an analysis of the ick as an oracle figure, an all knowing, icktuitive feeling that doesn’t act as an act extension of female empowerment or safety.
My beef with the ick starts at it’s ambiguity. It seems deal breakers and turn offs have merged together in the murky dating pool of today, making love and producing the ick, a turn off that wields the same power as a deal breaker. Even the head of marketing at Hinge said in an interview that ‘icks are not deal-breakers, yet they are now being used and treated like such today’. Some cite their tendency to get the ick as the reason they struggle to find a relationship, showing how much weight will be put onto slight behaviours that have the power to erase any sort of romantic potential. Some icks are understandable (being rude to waiters, have different world views), whilst others border on the more extreme side (like the aforementioned). The ick, is of course, something that does exist. It is common to find something someone does cringe, against your own morals or simply embarrassing, yet the ick has become a broad buzz word for these feelings that evade any real consultation over what it actually is someone is feeling. It makes a mockery of pushing past the awkward stage, and reduces individuals to the way they pronounced a cocktail that happened to be named after a sex position. My beef with the ick stems from how it can be easily mistaken for when someone finds something a bit cringe. Go horse riding on a date and you have to watch your love interest gallop around in a hat? cringe, chasing after a rampant ping pong ball? a cringe watch but nothing serious enough to end a romantic connection with. Cringe is a human response to things that are, on the surface, just a bit silly when performed by someone we are pursuing something with. We may spend all our time imagining them in handsome scenarios, yet these scenarios will be dissolved when caught doing something a bit human, a bit comical. It’s an indescribable feeling that can be easily encapsulated with this three letter word that seems to be the buzz word for all dating troubles these days.
When dating today, we are always promised that something a little better, we live in a consumer society after all. If someone isn’t fulfilled within a relationship, dating apps act as temptresses, making this fulfillment accessible ten times over. Gone are the days where we stumbled across the loves of our lives on donkeys just to never cross paths again. The ick is a product of a society that is over-indulged romantically, like a spoilt child, we can dispose of partners for mundane reasons as we are told that they will always be in infinite capacity today with the rise of dating apps and social media. It also acts as a get out of jail free dating term that can be easily conjured when our feelings for someone dissolve or just don’t connect, on a disposable level. For the last time, I took these thoughts to my friend.
‘Do you think we get the ick today because we are constantly told we can do better romantically? We know that if someone has some sort of quirk we don’t find particularly attractive, we know that we will be inundated with like five hundred other guys on dating apps that might not be in possession of this certain quirk. We have such a disposable relationship with dating today due to online instant gratification. It’s like, back in the medieval times, when you came across the love of your life on a donkey, you wouldn’t have to find a reason to not be into them as you knew that this might be your only chance to meet the love of your life, so you weren't thinking about the next best thing as they were your next best thing’.
‘Well to start, my future husband wouldn’t be riding a donkey. That would give me the ick from a mile off’
Alas, back to the drawing board I went.