(BEST OF) Everyone Has a Beige Flag – What's Yours?
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What are beige flags and why do they matter in relationships?
Hello PodSquad! Today we're bringing back one of my favorite kinds of episodes, the ones that remind us how weird and wonderful people are. It's a good time to remember that. All right, y'all, you remember beige flags? A few years ago, the internet couldn't stop talking about this idea. We all knew about red flags, the things that make you run. We knew about green flags, the things that make you stay. But beige flags? Beige flags are the quirky little habits in other people that make you pause, tilt your head, and think, huh, that's interesting. Not good, not bad, just delightfully or disconcertingly baffling. The thing about loving people is that eventually you realize nobody is normal. There is no normal.
Every single one of us is out here doing something deeply strange and acting like it's completely reasonable. These. our beige flags. In this episode, Abby, Amanda, and I confess our own beige flags. You'll learn why I change clothes approximately 17 times a day in pursuit of the mythical state known as comfortable that other people seem to be in and I never am. We also talk about why Amanda has never met a Ziploc bag she couldn't rewash, re-rewash, re-rewash, and save for later, and why Abby, occasionally sounds like she arrived here directly from the 1800s. And then, my favorite part, we read your beige flags, which remain some of the funniest things we have ever heard, including one that reminds me of Abby's own secret talent, turning random objects into phones.
like bananas. This conversation is bananas. It's ridiculous, joyful, and exactly the kind of reminder I need right now that beneath all the seriousness of being human, we are also just wonderfully weird little creatures trying our best. So let's celebrate the quirks today, the oddities, the beige flags. Please enjoy.
Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. I'm already giggling today. We are going to discuss today with you, our beloved pod squad, the phenomenon, the trend of beige flags in relationships. Now, the idea of beige flags is something that has gained momentum on the TikTok. Probably nine months ago since we have now heard of it. It is now a past tense trend. Right, right. It was a trend. The idea of a beige flag is you're in a relationship, whether it's a friendship. I think we're mostly discussing romantic relationships today. And you're watching the other person. You're monitoring, you're observing, you're getting to know this other person. Sometimes there are red flags. Okay, so a red flag might be if like your partner is shady McShaderton, like taking phone calls in the other room, doing, you know, problematic things, red flags.
Green flags are things you're noticing your person is doing that are lovely and signal like this person might be great in a relationship. Thoughtful things, green flags, go, go, go. And then there are beige flags. My idea of a beige flag And then I can see Sister's face. And what I think she's bursting at the seams to do, my guess would be that she's about to ruin beige flags for us by giving us the historical context of beige flags, which would be Sissy's beige flag. She knows everything. For the feelers out there, in the New York Times article, they described it as a beige flag is simply something that would cause someone to take a three-second pause, And then continue the relationship. It's just a weird thing, a unique thing.
Sissy, where did this idea of beige flags come from?
Well, so I first heard it when we were talking to Logan Urie in episode 219, where she was talking about it specifically in the context of online dating profiles. And apparently that is in 2022, this woman, Caitlin McPhail, On TikTok, she invented this term beige flags. The original definition was when people lean into specifically online dating profiles, these generic things that are like, I like petting puppies. I like working out. It's this kind of thing that it doesn't offer any special information about the person. It's boring. It's boring, but it's, I feel like boring. Plenty of people are authentically boring and I feel like that's great.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What are beige flags and why do they matter in relationships?
0:00–10:44
2
Where did the term 'beige flag' originate and how did it evolve?
10:44–28:29
3
What quirky Victorian‑style speech does Abby have and how do friends react?
28:29–38:24
4
Why does Glennon change clothes so often in pursuit of 'comfortable'?
38:24–47:41
5
How did Amanda’s obsession with saving Ziploc bags and other items start?
47:41–52:38
Speakers
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