My duty as a citizen compels me to protect an endangered social signal from vanishing from our culture’s behavioral repertoire—from being demoted to a lambasted perversion or dyskinetic tic. In this short passage, I will present the significance and importance of the Wink and urge you, sensitive reader, to join me in protecting it by winking more often.
What is a wink? A wink is social signal where, during a mutual gaze, a person intentionally closes only one eyelid. It’s an extra bit appended to a message (wink or no wink), enticing the listener to delve deeper into the meaning of your message. It may not mean what it seems to mean, the wink implies. It is the italic, bold and underline, transposed upon the real world of social intercourse. Yet the Wink is silent, secret and only manifests within visual range. It is private and yet immediate, unlike any other gesticulative signal.
The rampant over-application of the Wink for sexual advances has defiled its reputation, leading the uninformed to believe that this is the wink’s only use. While flirtation is one of the Wink’s possible uses (perhaps because mutual eye contact is the winks only prerequisite), it is but one of the many expressive use in the Wink’s rich vocabulary. The pervert whose wink suggests: I know that you know that we both know that “I love you” may be operating without tact; but, it is he and the situation who shall be damned—not the Wink.
We must not let our pragmatic bit shift to the lowly rank of a “dirty bit.” Instead we should embrace the Wink, using it whenever appropriate, even at the risk of social misinterpretation.
Far too often seemingly unnecessary appendages of culture are rounded off to meet the intersection of society’s beliefs—leaving us all with the common denominator of routine, basic practices and robbing us of cherished expressive ammunition.
DAS 6/08. ;)