Enough with the WHIMSY!
I’m a little hesitant to share this, but I trust that you all appreciate we all have different things that trigger us and that’s ok….so here goes. I hate hate HATE the word “WHIMSY, WHIMSICAL, WHIMSICALLY,” and its derivatives. There. I said it.
I think what bothers me is that “whimsical” has become shorthand for almost anything imaginative, odd, playful, surreal, slightly absurd, or outside the ordinary, and somehow it makes all of those things sound diminished and saccharine.
A flamingo wearing a crown? Whimsical. A Victorian cabinet full of mysterious objects? Whimsical. A tiny abandoned magic shop? Whimsical. A goose wearing a bonnet? Whimsical. A shell with little shoes? Whimsical. A cat with little boots? Whimsical. A mushroom with sad eyes and a wistful little face? Whimsical. A treehouse full of pixies who are friends to all animals? Whimsical. A coloring book with quirky cats? Whimsical. A fairy door in the garden that leads to a tiny cafe with tiny coffees and tiny pastries? Whimsical. A fairy ring in a forest clearing where the fairies gather to dance their G-rated dance in the dew under the moonlight? Whimsical.
Apparently anything that wanders too far from the ordinary gets sentenced to whimsy.
It also feels weirdly diminishing to me. Something can be funny and strange and beautiful and even ridiculous without being cute. It can have darkness, tension, history, melancholy, menace, or just plain weirdness behind it. Calling it “whimsical” seems to flatten all of that into manufactured charm.
I realize this is an entirely irrational amount of hostility toward an innocent adjective. I accept that. The adjective and I will simply have to live separate lives. I feel better now. Thank you fine folks of Reddit for hearing me out.