The Perks Of Being A Wallflower? Why Staying In Is The New Going Out

August 11, 2012
By: Victoria Finan

It is 3am in Kos Town and for the past hour and a half several sixteen year old Scandinavian boys have been grinding against me more times than my teeth before an exam. I watch as one of my best friends gyrates on a huge pole with every male eye in the establishment widening like saucers, whilst the other passionately kisses a beautiful Italian man she met all of half an hour ago. My overriding feeling is one of boredom as the questionable shots I downed earlier work their way out of my system, and saying a hasty goodbye to my friends, I jump into a taxi, relieved to be heading back to my hotel- and proud of myself for lasting that long.

I am that seemingly rare breed amongst early twentysomethings- a ‘wallflower’. A girl who, given the choice, would pick a Downton Abbey boxset with a box of chow mein over a night on the tiles any day of the week. The annoying one who drags you home at half past twelve because ‘I’m tired, and I don’t know why I even bothered to buy these shoes, they feel like some Nazi torture device’. (This was even worse in the notorious summer of clogs, 2010, but we won’t even go there). My friends bemoan me and on occasions they’ve stopped asking me to come out, and in some ways I don’t blame them. I’ve been off the singles market for two years now, I don’t know HOW to do that weird sexy dance that everyone else seems to have mastered, and frankly the amount of eyeliner I’m expected to wear simply stings.

But I figure I can’t be alone. There must be some other girls out there like me who secretly despise nightclubs and who dread getting in at 5 AM even when they don’t have a lecture the next morning. Girls who spend half their time worrying that in ten years time, when our lives are bogged down by picking out the best schools for our children, we will look back and wonder why we didn’t stay out just a few hours longer, and why we were so angry to be in a club that played dubstep all night.

To those girls, I offer my little list of reasons why it’s okay to be the one to say ‘no!’ to that expensive club your mates are dying to try out…

1) No walk of shame. Ever. By making a dignified exit early doors, you’re likely to avoid that perverted male who, a few drinks later, may have persuaded you into his lair. By not going to a club at all, the only male you’ll end up cuddling up next to is your dog. And this no bad thing.

2) No terrible music. I don’t understand club music- what’s the fun of banging your head loudly whilst doing dodgy arm gestures to music you can’t sing along to? What happened to discos, where Abba and The BeeGees would play all night, and the dancing would only end with the Macarena? I’m not sure what Drum and Bass or Dubstep really are, and by not frequenting nightclubs, I don’t have to find out.

3) Fresh skin, decent hair, and not smelling like an alcoholic’s toilet the day after. This one speaks for itself.

4) Not spending an inordinate amount of your overdraft. Vodka and Coke costs up to a fiver in some of my local establishments. Five of those could buy you a new Topshop dress, or four new books, or five bottles of cheap wine that you can drink alone whilst listening to Tom Jones over and over again on Spotify.

5) Not having to pretend to be something you’re not. The preening, pouting, hip waggling and flirting with the DJ so he plays your favourite remix simply doesn’t come naturally to a lot of us. Far better to sit at the pub with half a cider and black and a big bag of Kettle Chips if you ask me.

The thing is, we wallflowers know how to have a good time- we like to stay up all night sometimes, we often enjoy a drink and we’re often far cooler than that girl who stays in the club until the light comes on just in case the hot promoter wants to take her home. To use that old cliché: ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’… but sometimes, to be honest, we’d just rather go to bed.

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