I. Infatuation

The crush is still relegated to the realm of hysteria, 'silly' teen girls, and supposed feminised weakness. As adults, we are expected to admit our crushes with a degree of shame — of our emotions, of our sexualities, of our sense that we might be worthy of our own desires. While people of all genders can, and do, develop crushes, our culture still imagines only one scenario: a foolish girl infatuated with an unattainable other (usually a boy or a man).

II. Projection

There is distance between what we know of our crush and the intimacy of what we imagine ourselves knowing. Nonetheless, we register opportunity to bridge that distance when our desires suddenly have a focus point. Despite the popular narrative, we cannot do justice to what a crush is without pushing back against the foolish girl paradigm.

III. Reflection

"Look," I said, "I'll admit that eighty percent of this was fantasy, projection. But it had to start with something real." So says Chris Kraus in her infamous ode to the crush, I Love Dick (1997). Blending memoir and fiction, the book explores Kraus' all-consuming crush on elusive, charming Dick. The book gained cult status a decade ago when it found a new audience of young feminists who connected with Kraus' "lonely girl phenomenology" (Kraus' own description).

IV. Extension

Whether the crush ever catalyses the kind of intimacy we might desire with the other or not, it has a life beyond itself. It can be an intense emotional experience to develop feelings for someone else, revealing elements of our own minds previously left untended. It's not that the crush itself needs to be fetishised. Firstly, not all people experience romantic or sexual desire, and to treat the crush as if it were the height of human experience would be discriminatory and erroneous.