What the Fleek!

 

What the fleek?!  At least that is how I thought this word would be used.  Again, being faced with my blaring un-coolness is so humbling – not really.   If you are like me and didn’t know, “on fleek” is the proper way to use it and means stylish, gorgeous, or extremely attractive.  Like when my daughter’s friends declared her perfectly waxed arched brows, “on fleek.”  My husband, a regular purveyor of any current streaming show, “What, you are just hearing that word, it’s been around for like 5 years?!”  I want a divorce!  Sorry, Mr. Professor, that I read an ACTUAL BOOK while you Peaky Blinder, Atlanta, or Master of None-it most nights.  No judgement, but jeez – not fleek!  Okay, I am using it wrong again.

I researched it on google (there is more than one academic in this house, thank you very much!) and fleek has NOT been around “for like 5 years,” it was coined by Kayla Newman on Vine in June 2014.    I, myself, invented a new word in 1999 after squeezing my first of three ungrateful children out of my loins – tutti (rhymes with fruity) – which is the word I used to refer to that place from whence those children came.  I don’t know why I couldn’t just say vagina, I hope I am the last of a generation to have the inability to express that perfectly fit word to a baby or toddler.  I blame my mother (sorry, mom, I am being blamed now too, but at least there’s fucking karma), she called “it” (see, still can’t say it – vagina, vagina, vagina) a tinkle box.  Yes, you read right – tinkle box!  As if that is any MORE fit for a child’s ears than vagina!  I mean, referring to “it” as a type of box is a bit, well, less respectful than saying vagina.  Maybe the tinkle as an adjective was a way of keeping me from knowing that the box had other purposes?

Years later, thankfully, we had to drop tutti, as my new Israeli niece’s nickname was Tutti, an understandable derivative of her name, Reut.  Also tut is strawberry in Hebrew, so maybe I wasn’t that original when I coined it.  Now back on fleek – what was I saying again?….