Blog A Go-Go

In which I feel sorry for men

Recently, Yahoo featured an article on body language and attraction, and if this is the advice that unattached men are getting, I pity them. Specifically, the article was written to give a man guidelines on how to tell if the woman he's on a date with is attracted to him. (Here's a thought: if she's on a date with you, she's probably attracted. Seriously. How many women agree to a date just for the free Chinese chicken salad?) Here is the part that made me roll my eyes so hard I could read the label on my jeans:

When you are out on a date, sit across from her at a table, or if you are about to sit in a booth, let her sit down first and see where she invites you to sit. Some women will invite you to sit right down next to them in the booth and some will not. If she invites you to sit down next to her, she is telling you that she has an initial attraction to you.

Let's presume for just a minute that I'm single. Let's further presume that you ask me out and I accept. And let's be really crazy and assume I accepted because I'm attracted to you. There is no way on God's little green earth I am going to invite you to sit on the same side of the booth. EVER. There are about forty good reasons why, and these are just a few: I am ever-so-slightly far-sighted. My comfortable focal point is further away than the average person's. Across a table is the perfect distance for me to appreciate your smile, your eye contact, the overall impression you're making. Any closer and you blur.

Another reason I would want you across the table is that I am also ever-so-slightly claustrophobic. If you're a guy, particularly if you're a big guy (relatively speaking, pretty likely considering the fact that I'm not even five foot five), I am going to be uncomfortable with you in my personal space until we get to know each other. Men occupy space in a completely different way from women. Culturally, we are conditioned to keep things tucked in. You splay, knees out, elbows akimbo, taking up space and staking your territorial claim. That's fine, in fact, when it's employed in a protective way, it's downright sexy. But if it's applied too soon, it's intrusive. There was a horrifying reality series on TLC a few years ago that followed couples on blind dates. I still have nightmares about the guy who tried to re-enact the pottery scene from Ghost with a girl he had met TWENTY MINUTES BEFORE. The poor fool was completely clueless as to why she didn't want to see him again, and any woman could have told him: that girl shut down the SECOND he entered her personal space without an invitation.

Invitations can be verbal or unspoken, but they ought to be unmistakable before you go further. For example, it's gentlemanly to put your hand on the small of her back to guide her through a crowd. It is also totally unnecessary. We know it, and you know it. What it really does is give you a chance to gauge our reaction to your touch. We know this too. If we like you, we lean back. If we don't, we arch like cats to get away from you. (And as a side note, some women will object to being "guided" through a crowded room because they are empowered and capable and can walk unaided. These women will never appreciate your attempts at chivalrous behavior and you should avoid them at all costs. Spend your gallantry on those of us who appreciate it.)

I digress. We were talking about why I will not sit next to you. Reason number three: eye contact. I want it, and so do you. Eye contact is one way we determine interest and how engaged we are with one another. The author of the Yahoo article acknowledged that very point, and yet, I am forced to wonder, how are either of us going to engage in meaningful eye contact if we are twisted like pretzels just to see each other? A date should not necessitate a trip to the chiropractor. (At least not a first date.) And then there is into the whole lefty-righty debate. Because I was an extremely stubborn child who could not be taught to change her fork to the other hand, I cut my meat with my left hand and wield a fork in my right, which makes me a hazard to lefties AND righties.

We haven't even touched on the fact that if you're sitting next to me, my purse and coat have to go across the table. (You should never separate a woman from her bag. It's like asking Batman to give up the Batmobile. Our LIVES are in there.) We haven't talked about the fact that I can't "accidentally" brush my leg against yours while I'm crossing. I can't easily slip out to go to the ladies' room and check my lipstick. (We don't need to check our lipstick. We are giving you a chance to watch us walk away.) These are all lovely, enticing things that edge the date further along. If you sit next to us, you will miss out. Just a thought.

In which I talk body language

I am fascinated by the study of body language, particularly as it relates to sexual attraction. I love the fact that, in spite of our lofty belief that we are so terribly evolved, our biology can still betray us. It's an intriguing subject, and for a writer, a useful one. When I write a scene, I am always picturing it in my head, as if I'm running the reels of a mini-movie in my mind and simply taking dictation of what I see and hear. (My characters, however, are NOT in charge. Don't get me started on writers who claim to do whatever their characters tell them.) What is utterly astonishing to me is that during the scenes, I have subconsciously laid in all the clues of attraction by the characters' body language without even knowing I'm doing it. That is how ingrained the attraction behaviors are, and yet I never realized it until I began to research the subject.

One of the most fascinating books on the topic is Tracey Cox's Superflirt. She details the behaviors for men and women who are experiencing attraction--the cues for each gender vary widely, with a few exceptions. All humans, regardless of race, culture, or economic status, deliver an eyebrow flash upon seeing someone they view as attractive. (This holds true for all types of attraction, not just sexual.) The eyebrow flash is a quick lift of the brows, perhaps a fifth of a second. It connotes approval and approachability. If, however, the attraction is of the romantic variety, the eyebrows may stay lifted. At the same time, the nostrils will flare, the lips part, the eyes go bright, and the entire face becomes "open". It's an interesting set of behaviors, and taken altogether, it conveys extreme pleasure, whether the person intended to let you know that or not. Useful information, no?

Her book also discusses pupillometrics. Boiled down, it simply means that the pupils dilate when we view something we like. While I'm very good at spotting an eyebrow flash, I am hopeless at reading pupils, particularly if I'm talking to someone with dark eyes. (And what if they're on antihistamines or a little cocaine and not especially pleased to see you? How can you tell the difference?) The interesting aspect of pupillometrics is that it works both ways. Having enlarged pupils doesn't just mean you're attracted, it makes you more attractive. (There was a Harvard study on the subject. Honestly. They could have saved themselves the money and just asked the courtesans of Renaissance Italy who dosed themselves with belladonna.) To me, it ends up being a chicken-and-egg proposition. Did your pupils dilate because someone attractive appeared or did your wide pupils attract someone comely?

Another fascinating element of attraction is the principle of mirroring. Behaviorists will tell you that people who are attracted will copy each other's body language subconsciously. BUT, you can stimulate attraction by deliberately copying the body language of someone you fancy. (My question is, don't they notice? And if not, WHY? I think I would pick up on it if every time I ran my fingers through my hair, the person I was talking to did the same thing. In fact, I'm sure I would. I play with my hair a LOT.)

And that brings me to the most interesting part of her book, how to make someone fall in love with you. It sounds absurd, but in a nutshell it goes like this: non-romantic conversations involve no more than 60% eye contact, and that is an absolute maximum. Couples in love, however, engage in eye contact for something closer to 75% of the conversation. When in love, your body releases a feel-good chemical called phenylethylamine or PEA. So, the premise is, if you hold eye contact with someone for 75% of the conversation, you force his body to release PEA, thereby tricking him into believing he is in love with you. I have to say, I'm wildly skeptical. I mean, let's not even get into the ethical issues at hand. (Cox is quick to underscore the fact that this is manipulation of another's emotions to an extreme degree.) It  just seems astonishingly simplistic. It's one thing to demonstrate in a lab that vanilla-based perfumes score highest on attraction-rating because humans have a scent-memory association with mother's milk. It's something entirely different to claim that simply staring into another person's eyes for three-quarters of a conversation is enough to arouse their affections. In all fairness, I should point out that Cox is not the first to make these claims. In fact, I watched a program on body language and attraction just last week, and they made the same argument, quoting the same statistics almost verbatim. Clearly, it ought to work, if only in a laboratory.

But we're not mice, are we? And for my money, it's the pheromone that packs the hardest punch. I have met people who were perfectly nice, but for some reason seemed "off" to me, like milk that had gone sour, even though there was nothing remotely objectionable about them. Others, no better looking or kinder or funnier, I would have happily snuggled up next to for an entire evening. (I'm not talking solely about males here. I have one friend in particular who seems to evoke an impression of warm baking for no good reason. She isn't particularly domestic, but I always think about cookies when I'm with her, and I will take any excuse to hug her.) To me, scent is the ultimate key to chemistry, whether it's perceptible or not.

In any event, many of these behaviors, so reminiscent of the primates we are, always wind up in my fiction in one guise or another. Without meaning to, I incorporate mirroring gestures and loads of preening and peacocking. I describe eyebrow flashes without realizing it, and I often mention wide, dark eyes, perhaps a subconscious reference to pupillometrics. And perhaps most subtly of all, there is often a current of something electric between a pair of characters that likely has its root in the rich exchange of pheromones, facilitated by me unintentionally when I describe the positions of their bodies. (A certain openness at the groin and armpits causes the pheromones to waft away from the body.)

If you're interested in the subject, here's a link to an excerpt of Tracey Cox's book. It describes the most significant male gestures of attraction, and I am quite sure I've used every one of them in my books. 18 Signs of Attraction

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