Interestingly, depending on where you are, these terms aren't gender-specific.
In the UK midlands it's quite common for older women to use exactly the same terms on younger men.
As someone who's not from there but spent significant amounts of time there when I was a young man, this is proper weird.
(Just for clarification, I didn't call the people using these terms weird. I'm from a region where terms like that are reserved for romantic partners or maybe your children, so it was weird to me getting adressed with very intimate terms by strangers.)
Aren't they opposite gender used? I've only seen them older person to opposite gender younger person.
I have limited experience though...
Never got creepy vibe off them, but older female to younger male is what I have seen the most of. I can totally see a different vibe if genders were switched though.
Older men don’t use them for younger men, but pretty much everyone else uses them in everyone else. And even men to men have an equivalence, complimenting young men’s youth or bodies, but usually not in this type of stranger social situation. More at a restaurant or on the golf course where there is a bit more time. “God you’re young, what do you bench, 250? Do you wrestle?” Etc.
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u/Square-Singer Aug 28 '26 edited Aug 28 '26
Interestingly, depending on where you are, these terms aren't gender-specific.
In the UK midlands it's quite common for older women to use exactly the same terms on younger men.
As someone who's not from there but spent significant amounts of time there when I was a young man, this is proper weird.
(Just for clarification, I didn't call the people using these terms weird. I'm from a region where terms like that are reserved for romantic partners or maybe your children, so it was weird to me getting adressed with very intimate terms by strangers.)