Your bag is empty.
If you’re in the position to make a move on Oscar winner Charlize Theron, there’s two words you should avoid.
While appearing on the opinion-based show SubwayTakes, hosted by comedian Kareem Rahma, the Apex actress expressed her absolute disgust with the term “make love” when talking about sex.
As per usual, Rahma opened the conversation with the question, “So, what’s your take?,” prompting Theron to launch into an anti-“make love” screed.
“Whenever a guy says, ‘I would like to make love to you …,” she said. After a slight comedic pause, Theron feigned gagging and vomiting.
Rahma asked her whether the phrase “make love” was an “ick” of hers, a popular online phrase denoting repulsion. Turns out that yes, “It’s such an ick.”
She then launches into an explanation of the feelings underlying her dry heaves of disgust.
“There’s a lot to unpack,” she says, “but actually, there isn’t. It’s very simple: just don’t fucking say it.”
She continued, “My vagina closes up,” which prompts a stranger off-camera — remember, we’re on the New York City subway here — to yell “WHAT???”
Hoping to counteract the bewilderment from the sidelines, Theron starts looking for support among other public transitgoers.
“All the ladies know what I’m talking about,” Theron says.
“I don’t want you to make anything with me. I want you to do something with me.”
“Yeah, let’s do it,” she says. “Well, don’t say that, either. That’s fucking lame. Just fuck me.”
When Theron finally asks another woman sitting nearby, “Do you want love to be made to you?” the woman agrees with Theron, shaking her head and saying, “No.”
Theron turns the question on Rahma and asks him whether he’s guilty of such an affront to human sexuality as using the words “make love.” He says that, rather than saying anything, he’s more apt to make a move, such as going in for a kiss.
“See, I would take that,” Theron says. “That’s what we came up with, don’t talk.”
Allusions to “making love” first sprouted up, much to Theron’s annoyance, in the 16th century, according to Grammarphobia, a blog dedicated to etymology. However, rather than just meaning the physical act of sex, the original meaning was much more akin to flirting, courting or wooing. The Oxford English Dictionary points to the first usage of the phrase, per Grammarphobia, as being from a 1567 translation that spoke of a flirtatious woman’s wardrobe as “the attire of a courteson, or woman makynge loue [making love].”
The phrase that we’re more familiar with, and the one Theron is railing — pun intended — against came into play in the 1920s, but the two co-mingled in vernacular for some time. As one Substack points out, W. Somerset Maugham used the phrase to mean flirting, and not sex, in 1958 when he wrote the sentence, “Her lover Diegno no longer came to the window at night to make love to her through the iron grille.” No, they weren’t going at it through a gate.
Theron seems not to be alone in her dislikes. There’s evidence from the video itself, but also plenty of Reddit threads dedicated to how unpopular the phrase seems to be, with one even calling it “creepy.”
So, while not everyone is on board with the term, Theron’s thesis is most definitely a lesson for us all. Don’t dress up sex in euphemisms: just be frank.
