Overview of (BEST OF) Everyone Has a Beige Flag – What's Yours?
This episode of We Can Do Hard Things is a joyful, funny deep dive into “beige flags”—those neutral, quirky habits that aren’t red flags or green flags, but weird little personality traits that make people pause and think, huh. Glennon Doyle, Abby, and Amanda share their own beige flags, then read a pile of listener submissions that turn the concept into a celebration of how strangely wonderful humans are.
What a “Beige Flag” Means
The hosts explain the trend’s original TikTok roots: beige flags started as a dating-profile term for bland, overly generic self-descriptions that tell you almost nothing about a person. Over time, the idea evolved into something more fun and affectionate:
- Red flags = warning signs
- Green flags = reasons to stay
- Beige flags = odd, harmless quirks that are neither good nor bad, just uniquely human
Their preferred definition is basically: something that makes you take a three-second pause and keep going.
The Hosts’ Beige Flags
A big part of the episode is the hosts lovingly roasting each other’s harmless oddities.
Glennon’s beige flags
- Changes clothes multiple times a day while chasing “comfortable”
- Keeps things far longer than most people would, including:
- washed-out Ziploc bags
- old clothes
- tiny remnants of products and food
- Doesn’t save phone numbers, which has led to hilarious confusion, including accidentally texting with the wrong “Stacy London”
Abby’s beige flags
- Speaks in unexpectedly old-fashioned or Victorian-sounding language
- Has an intense “relationship to stuff” that borders on hoarding, though they avoid calling it that
- Willfully leans into practical weirdness, like her commitment to saving objects
John’s beige flags
- Deep-cleans items before recycling them
- Dry-cleans and presses clothes before donating them
- Repeats conversations in near-transcript form instead of summarizing
- Has a very specific, thoughtful kind of environmental and practical obsessiveness
Listener Beige Flags That Stole the Show
The listener submissions are the funniest part of the episode and show how wide-ranging beige flags can be.
Quirky, sweet, or absurd habits
- A wife who is terrified of bugs but won’t let her partner kill them
- A husband who waits until the last second to turn on windshield wipers
- A girlfriend who pretends a banana is her phone and says “yellow”
- A partner who lays on the other person like a “boulder” for survival training
- Someone whose partner announces everything, from stomach growls to FaceTimes, like a live news update
- A person who laughs at her own jokes like she invented comedy
- A boyfriend who sets timers instead of alarms
- A wife who keeps tags on everything in case she returns it
- A girlfriend who always tries to feed her partner every bite of her food, even if it makes a mess
- A boyfriend who invents random fake facts just to fool people
- A partner who refuses to charge their phone until it hits 5%
- A cat who only calms down in the car if the national anthem is meowed
The line between beige and red
The hosts also debate whether some listener examples are truly beige flags or have crossed into red-flag territory, especially when they involve:
- controlling behavior
- lack of sleep
- persistent anxiety
- forcing one person’s preferences onto another
Their point is that beige flags should be harmless, not harmful.
Bigger Takeaways
1. Nobody is normal
The episode’s core message is that everyone has weird habits. Once you love people closely, you realize “normal” is mostly a myth.
2. Quirks can be delightful
Instead of treating every strange habit as a problem, the hosts encourage curiosity and humor. Beige flags can be a source of affection, not judgment.
3. Neutral weirdness is part of intimacy
The episode suggests that noticing these small, strange habits is part of actually knowing someone.
4. Humor helps us stay human
The whole conversation reinforces the idea that life gets lighter when we can laugh at the odd little things people do.
Final Note
The episode ends by inviting listeners to call in their own beige flags, continuing the show’s tradition of making ordinary human weirdness feel affectionate, communal, and very funny.