Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Hooking Up?

It just occurred to me how vulgar that phrase is. And I don't even mean anything to do with the morality of casual sex. You can think whatever you want about that. I just mean the aesthetics of how the phrase sounds, and how it makes the act referred to sound.

A tryst
An affair
An amorous liaison

Those sound nice, like something exotic and mysterious. Even more recent ones sound kind of playful and fun at least -

making whoopie
gettin' jiggy wid it

But "hooking up"? Sounds like something I'd do with train cars, or with an ox-cart, something mechanical that I just need to get done as quickly and cheaply as possible. Yuck.

2 Comments:

Blogger Matthew Baugh said...

Yeah, it is an awfully impersonal way of talking about doing the nasty (another pretty euphamism).

Taking the personal out of such a personal act is aesthetically unappealing. I suspect it's the root of the moral objections too. When a lover is treated as no more than a unit for a mechanical coupling there's some injustice there IMO.

12:57 PM  
Blogger KPaffenroth said...

I'm sure moral objections come from all different places - but I always find it interesting when the aesthetic element (which I think people agree on more often than the moral interpretation) tends to reinforce the moral aspect.

1:22 PM  

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