Her Campus Logo Her Campus Logo
placeholder article
placeholder article

The Modern College Woman: Old School Analysis

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Bowdoin chapter.

How many times has the modern college woman laughed at herself for overanalyzing text conversations with a love interest? We probably all have draft boxes filled with the rejects we couldn’t send: two “y” heys, overly ambitious winks, and puns that we’re not sure if the receiver is smart enough to get…not to mention an inbox full of texts we’ve memorized.

Apparently, the drama surrounding an “oh” period is nothing new. Men and women have been leveling codes at one another since the first time corsets were popular. Except instead of punctuation, abbrevs, and unfortunate autocorrects it was flowers that were the chalice of hidden meaning.

According to an article on “The Art of Manliness” (a blog which I frequently frequent), “During the Victorian Era, a whole romantic language developed around the giving and receiving of flowers…each bouquet contained a secret message for a lady to eagerly interpret and endlessly dissect.”

Awsome. So here’s a chart I compiled of what you could expect if your texts were instead thoughtfully purchased bouquets:

So I’ll take a dozen white violets then, k thanks and bye…

Sources:

http://artofmanliness.com/2008/07/27/when-and-how-to-give-flowers/

http://www.800florals.com/care/meaning.asp

Marissa is a senior at Bowdoin College, majoring in Government and minoring in English. She's interned with NPR, The Christian Science Monitor and ELLE.com. In her spare time she enjoys writing poetry, baking cupcakes, tweeting, and admiring the big dipper. She hopes to live in a lighthouse someday, with 27 cats and a good set of watercolors.