The Squishy Theory of Love

In an era where adults will shove past children in the line around the curb of Hobby Town for NeeDohs, where 45 million people will watch a mother scoff at a child for unboxing the glitter dumpling she bought because, “she knows the deal”, and where teenagers will pay upwards of 200 US dollars, exclusive of shipping, on crunchy soaps and edge-control-filled baubles, I think it’s safe to say that we’re living in a squishy reality.

It could be argued that I’m a biased courier. That my bountiful exposure to squishy-related content has cultivated my belief in its cultural omnipotence – simply a byproduct of an iterative algorithm, if you will. I like a reel where five yellow butter squishies are coated in almond wax, dried off-camera, and cracked in quick, satisfying succession. In the next week, the algorithm learns that if almond wax is fresh out, candle wax will do; that cheese cubes offer novelty when yellow butter gets old; and that I’ll even drop a save on a squishy dumpling unboxing, provided there’s no dragging preamble about getting side-eyed over a back-stock enquiry. The algorithm is annoyingly prescient and incredibly good at its job. But, like anything animate or inanimate on this planet, it does not exist in a vacuum. So, I always knew in my heart that the squishy fad was not simply a machination of the relationship between the impressionable For You Page and my patterns of engagement. Instinct alone is never quite enough until tangible proof is acquired.

On a late Wednesday night, having wined and dined in the alfresco seating of a Surry Hills wine bar, I spent the first half of the journey home wandering the down-sloped footpaths of Town Hall. It was during this stroll when ‘tangible proof’ arrived rather serendipitously at my metaphorical doorstep. There’s a hole-in-the-wall shop sequestered around the bend of one of the station’s exits, right near the city’s only UFC gym and adjacent to a BreadTop. I always considered this hole-in-the-wall space to be the modern equivalent of the oracle in Ancient Greece: whatever store appeared next seemed to foretell what the city was about to become excited about. In the early 2000s, it was an EasyWay, what used to be the only bubble tea shop in the entire city  - years before bubble tea would overrun genuinely every nook and cranny within a fifty-kilometre radius of Pitt Street Mall. Very recently, the short bend of the station’s exit became something of a bread strip, with the old tea store transforming into yet another gourmet bread supplier – one of those stores where the bread is too soft to be real and too glazed to be healthy. It had a good run before conceding that one could not glaze one’s way out of BreadTop’s shadow. Before long, the sugared buns bit the dust, their signage came down, and I began to wonder what would take its place next. If you guessed the neon signage of “OMG STATION”, you would be spot on: a squishy store, and tangible confirmation of my long-held suspicions.

Naturally, I was curious. It’s one thing to be a fan of the squishy fad through a phone, and another to actually hold and squish down on butter-yellow foam. So, I went in, eager to finally meet the objects I had seen all over the web. I was an admirer, it felt like a first date, and I was a little tipsy – which, if anything, added to the first-date vibe. I was hit immediately by the saccharine smell of artificial strawberry and a hint of coconut. It was a pleasant smell, one that made me feel a little light-headed – not from nausea, but from excitement. My heart was skipping a little too fast and I could feel my pupils dilate as I neared the counter, lined with rows and rows of rainbow butter sticks and cubes of baby-pink cheese. They were each as malleable as the next, pressing down and springing right back up as soon as you squished them, and I was having the time of my life up until the moment I sensed something incredibly wrong: I was the only single person in the store. The counter was not big enough for all the customers to squish the tester squishies for as long as they wanted, so I was fighting elbows until I noticed a sinister pattern. Every time I went in for another squish of the foam, there were always two pairs of elbows fighting back. Apart from me, everybody had come with their partners.

I stepped back for a moment, startled by this discovery, moving towards the less interesting keyrings for some thinking space. It seemed OMG STATION was the new prime date spot. As I peered over at the various couples, a thought came to mind. It arrived with remarkable clarity, though I couldn’t immediately place its origin. If they aren’t willing to buy you a rainbow butter squishy, they’re probably not the one. But what was it about the rainbow butter squishy that made me think it worthy of, in plainer terms, a relationship test? Maybe because a rainbow butter squishy costs 15 dollars. Now, from my countless rewatches of Confessions of a Shopaholic, I know Hugh Dancy makes a big deal about how “cost and worth are very different things.” The squishy costs 15 dollars, but what was the squishy worth? More importantly, would your partner think you worthy of 15 dollars spent on a squishy – a hefty sum of money that could otherwise be rationed and stretched over an entire day?

The real kicker of a rainbow butter squishy – or these funny squishies in general – is that they are fundamentally “fluffy”. Not fluffy in texture, but fluffy in the sense that they’re not really that serious. They are a step below the old-gen stress relievers: those solid, professional metal or hard-plastic trinkets, sturdy in the face of stress. These ‘new-gen’ relievers, by comparison, are what Miranda Priestly would call, “a pile of stuff.” They are irrationally themed, because who really has ever thought about butter to the extent of wanting to change the colour of its skin – no less, rainbow? And I can’t name a single person who’s confessed to liking that classic, hole-ridden, yellow cheese cube. Apart from animated rodents, nobody is out here writing encomiums for that rubbery cheese chunk. It’s the type of cheese non-Americans would call “American cheese” – a term that plainly implies derogation. So, really, the fundamental constitution of these cartoonishly frivolous squishies decrees their unequivocal inconsequence. And yet, now you stand before your partner, persuading them to pull out their Apple Pay to finance this inconsequential piece of foam. Will they do it? Look, if they do, I’m convinced you’re lucky in love. 

But in recalling the profundity of Keanu Reeves, who once lounged on the low-cushioned settee of The Drew Barrymore Show to ponder, “If you don't fight for your love, what kind of love do you have?”, one must consider what a love with nothing but a rainbow butter squishy on the frontlines looks like. Well, let’s see. Once a soft ping signals the squishy’s departure from consumer good to prized possession, flimsy foam becomes a lone-but-mighty doorstop wedged firmly in the doorway between just some fun and serious about this relationship. The moment that this trivial little trinket becomes a condition of something as serious as the relationship itself, it can no longer remain trivial. The squishy is now an object central to this connection, something of genuine import – a permanent receipt of your partner’s devotion. Does that mean that so long as the rainbow butter squishy endures, your partner is granted absolute impunity? How much evidence to the contrary can you accumulate before a 15-dollar piece of foam stops being proof that someone ‘loves’ you? 

Through the dangling chains of resin keyrings, I watched variations of the same dance unfold along the counter: a pose of lingering reluctance, the dragging of feet and prolonged pinching of the tester squishies. The-tried-and-true, “you need to feel it, it’s sooo soft,” and the partners who either remain unmoved, offering little more than a, “yes, I guess it’s soft, let’s go, I’m tired,” or the finally relented, pulling out their wallets to cash in on this new mouldable trinket. In that moment I vowed to myself that if I were to ever find that special someone, OMG STATION would make a critical stop in the first-date itinerary. And if they didn’t respond to my performance of dragging feet and prolonged pinching by chivalrously shifting the shrink-wrapped squishy from the second-floor shelf to the cashier counter, they could kiss this opportunity goodbye.