A former girlfriend had gone grocery shopping on a weekend day. When she left she was dressed to my eye completely unexceptionally. Casual. It was hot, this was Miami, and she wore a just-above-knee skirt, short-sleeved blouse and short-heeled mules. When she returned she told me, delighted, that some firefighters, "My firefighters," she later termed them, had eye-raped her and one had given a hushed compliment, "You have nice legs" or something of the sort.
There are two Publix supermarkets near me, one, the older of the two, is on the outskirts of South Beach. It is known as the "Model's Publix." The "New Publix", further inland and closer to homes than apartments, might as well be called the "MILF's Publix." I have seen model-looking young women at the Models Publix, they are to my eye unexceptionally dressed but you cannot hide beauty of face or height and only vaguely build. I shop the MILF's Publix far more than the Model's Publix because it is in closer proximity to where I live. On two occasions at the MILF's Publix I have seen apparent marrieds dressed completely EXCEPTIONALLY. One, from accent and face, apparently Jewish. She was lithe of build and dressed in a thin, maybe slightly transparent one-piece jumper that stopped just below her butt. She wore open-toe high-heeled wedge sandals. He toenails were painted. The other, last year, I could not get a look at her face as she was wearing a blue surgical COVID mask. The rest of her I got a good look at. She was right in front of me in the check-out line. She was heavier than the first, curvier, and was dressed in "club wear", a cobalt blue, tight-fitting short dress with a front slit up to here and a top zippered down into her cleavage. She wore open-toed high heel pumps and her nails were painted.
I hereby posit the concept of the Shopping Flirt. Consider the advantages.
As the exhibitionist in this pas de deux the woman, especially if married, has completely innocent cover for her flirting. She is not parading in a "meat market" (hmm), lounge or bar, but in a grocery store, she is not there to flirt much less to "hook up". She is on a shopping errand, a necessity. She walks up and down the aisles, not to show off her figure but to buy necessities for herself, her husband, her family. (Children are a great prop for the MILF Shopping Flirt.)
She can't help the way her body moves. And her partner in the pas de deux, the voyeur man, can't help notice how her body moves in her unexceptional wear as he buys his beer. There is necessary--but completely unintentional of course--body display by the woman: she must stop,
she must frequently reach up for an item
or down for a gallon of milk or lean forward slightly,
and sometimes bend down. The shopping cart that she pushes makes her body more open, it is the mildest, unintentional, necessary in fact, bondage.
Exhibitionist and voyeur almost never make eye contact, the only eye contact you make grocery shopping is with the cashier, thus there are no flirting or leering eyes. Completely unlike in bars, clubs, and lounges. The woman can dress casually and unprovocatively, as with my former girlfriend, and still get a reaction. The more serious exhibitionist can dress with intent to be provocative as the two MILF's above and yet with the no-contact-not-even-eyes rule maintain convincingly that it is all just some mild flirting, far less intimate than dancing with a man at a party. Younger exhibitionists not uncommonly shop in short shorts—“I just came from the beach!—
—skin-tight workout bottoms (how those things are legal I do not know)--"I just came from the gym!"-or jeans.
Shop flirting is completely random and anonymous. It's a hook up without the hook. Evanescent as a dream, gone in a second, and the more titillating because of it.
Perhaps there are already reams of scholarly articles and tomes on this phenomenon in the field (Of what, public displays of sexuality?). If there are not, consider this my contribution. I really think this is an actual thing.
