You’d be forgiven for assuming that these pictures have so many fans because seeing the former Shameless star lug around armfuls of peonies allows people (me) to imagine he’s buying them for us (me), and that he’s on his way over with takeout for two and something else normal, like an engagement ring, hidden inside a photo scrapbook of our relationship.
You would be wrong.
Back in 2016 (bear with me), there was frequent chatter online about a specific breed of straight man, one with a single stained pillow on his full-sized mattress (which, needless to say, didn’t have a bed frame). The kind of guy who never bothered to buy hand soap (just used shower gel), whose kitchen cupboards contained two plate-bowls, a mug, a fork, and three huge tubs of cookies and cream protein powder. A man who, if you brought any of this up, would make out like it made total sense for him to be incredibly particular about the brand of premium olive oil he used and which designer he got his white T-shirts from, but still use the fading bedsheets his mom got him for college, 15 years post-graduation. Well, my theory is regarding this archetype.
I’m going to assume, from the regularity and scale (vast and inconvenient) of Jeremy’s purchases, that he’s buying them for himself rather than as gifts. He’s browsing the flower stalls for his seasonal faves, picking up spiky ones, orange ones, leafy ones (ironically, I actually know so little about flowers that I am unable to identify his regulars), and heaving them all home to arrange in Hay vases while he makes soup or roasts a chicken and listens to, I don’t know, Throwing Fits, or whatever men who wear a lot of Lacoste like. This totally fictional impression of him—as a straight guy who buys flowers for himself and then indulges in arranging them—is the total opposite of “man with one pillow,” and that’s what makes it irresistible to me, a woman in my 30s.
A straight man regularly buying flowers for his home is basically a rejection of the long-inherited and often subconscious belief many lads hold that making a space look somewhat pretty isn’t something for them to worry about. (It’s the same logic that can lead women in heterosexual relationships to do more cleaning, because their partners claim they don’t actually mind watching TV amidst a forest of old coffee cups.)