A sentimental gesture bogged down by gender roles

I gave someone flowers recently. These weren’t subtle flowers – these were big, pink,… I gave someone flowers recently. These weren’t subtle flowers – these were big, pink, multi-layered blooms on two-foot stems wide as bamboo poles. Before I could give them to him, I lugged them around much of Oakland and received much attention.

People called out to me, asked to see these flowers, to know what kind they were – jasmine – and who gave them to me.

I explained that I was not the recipient, but the giver, and these flowers were not going to an aging aunt or graduating friend, but to a boyfriend. This seemed to throw a few people off, but they appeared to accept it.

I wasn’t offended by any of the comments tossed out during my Oakland trek. When a housemate asked why I bought flowers, I responded, “I like flowers and don’t like gender roles.”

It surprised me when everyone assumed that I had gotten these flowers, though it makes sense. Flowers, even ones that look like Pepto-Bismol-colored tiki torches, are seen as a romantic gift. Behold the Valentine’s cliche – a man presenting a woman a dozen red roses, thorns removed.

Even though my flowers looked like jungle flora, people assumed the same circumstances for the transaction applied: Man gives woman flowers; woman knows that botanicals intrinsically mean love, and parades them around.

In essence, a woman with flowers is seen as a wanted woman. Or as one of the people I passed put it, “You must be somebody special, if someone gives you flowers like that.”

But, as I said, I don’t like gender roles. But I won’t harp on how this instance could be indicative of larger social ills or that people’s assumptions need to change, because it’s not and they don’t.

Rather than being offensive, these exchanges evoked a certain nostalgia, as if these comments had been sent through a time machine, beamed from the 1950s to my ears. Though the fight for equal wages and recognition is definitely not over, I’m not so hardcore that I take people to task over flowers.

Maybe this is the consciousness that everyone insists on raising, the knowledge that things aren’t anywhere near perfect, but that we can pick our battles.

Movements are rooted in small, meaningful exchanges. If people can’t change the way they view flowers, then perhaps they can’t change salary discrepancies or glass ceilings.

I’m wont to believe that the people who stopped me on the street meant the best. Maybe they were in on the time-travel transmission, too. Maybe they just saw flowers and gave little thought to the girl struggling to hold them.

Yet, something in me is hesitant to believe that the onlookers were in on my enjoyment of glittering nostalgia or that the flowers were holding themselves aloft. Does this situation call for over-analysis? Would assigning anything deeper to these chirped greetings sour their kindness?

A friend of mine said that if anyone showed up bearing flowers on a first date with her, the relationship would be over before it began. She said that flowers were for saps, for romantics, for people who barter emotion – all groups she didn’t want to be lumped in with.

I asked if it could be any flower, or was it just the traditional single long-stem rose. She replied that, unless it was a cactus, it counted. Cacti, she said, were fine.

I wouldn’t lump myself with any of the groups she named. Being the anti-romantic that I am, I do not see flowers as symbolizing anything. It’s simply something well grown, pretty and the product of much labor.

When I worked in a garden, I sported the broken fingernails and faded pants that come from any serious gardening. Plants were work, usually in the morning, usually in the sun, but definitely worth the sweat.

I hadn’t grown the flowers I gifted, but I could appreciate their beauty and complexity.

I could also appreciate the complexity of their connotations. To the people on the street, they meant that someone wanted me. To my friend, they represent aspects of people she didn’t want to deal with. I see them as gifts, something affectionate, the product of someone else’s sweat.

Whatever their meanings, if they had any, they were well-received, which might just be the important thing.

Sydney Bergman can be reached at sbergman@pittnews.com.