“RJ is a newspaper columnist whose humor column, "Pogi from a Parallel Universe" comes out every Wednesday in the For Men section of the Philippine Star, the Editor-in-Chief of UNO Magazine, a seasoned television, events and weddings/debut host and actor."
Women call it flirting. Men call it prolonged torture.
Wallow in self-righteous zeal my fellow alpha males, I have finally confirmed the reason why yaya started giving me goo-goo eyes ever since I sprouted hair on my chest: Women have been chasing after men all along, and not the other way around (Keep your hands to yourself, yaya. I can wash that part by myself now, thank you).
Similar to the once widely-held belief that GMA won the presidency, men have labored under the assumption that we are responsible for the testicle-dropping ‘first move.’ However, Psychology Today reports that it is actually the non-testicled sex that signals men to make that ‘first move’. Psychologist Monica Moore, Ph.D. of Webster University spent more 2,000 hours observing women’s flirting maneuvers at bars and parties (that must have been a very lonely 2,000 hours) and reported that women transmit non-verbal cues that get men to flirt almost two thirds of the time. (We have tried to contact Dr. Moore for the names of these women but Dr. Moore is still waiting for men to flirt with her) Although the man may think that he is making the ‘first move’, since he is the one who gets off his derriere off the barstool to wobble over to the woman, the reality is that it is the woman who has actually summoned him to her side to engage in a potential sperm-donor interview. Aha! I knew it! I knew it! I knew that those Hooter’s girls were manipulating me from the very start! And it wasn’t just so that I would order more extra hot chicken wings.
But the more Hello Garci-type revelation about women is that they perform these flirtation moves consciously. “I do these things incidentally, but not accidentally.” one adept female flirter unapologetically confessed to social psychologist Dr. Timothy Perper, Ph.D. This blatant flirter even said that she wanted her movements and gestures to ‘look spontaneous’ enough even though she knew it was partly planned. In general, Dr. Perper says, women are more aware than men of what exactly they do, why they do it and what effect it has on the opposite sex. Men, being the simple-minded amoebas that we are, may simply think that we spied a woman whom we found attractive and decided to strike up a conversation with her. However, a woman remembers painstakingly all the steps in her little flirtation tango. Argh. I knew it, I knew it. At least men are just imbeciles because we don’t know any better, but women, women, WOMEN!!! They are just plain eviiiilllllll…
I think women even relish the fact that they can torture men with their ability to sustain the flirtation process. According to Dr. Perper, “Some flirters appear to want to prolong the interaction because it is pleasurable and erotic in its own right, regardless of where it might lead.” Women have the mutant ability to escalate or de-escalate a flirtation’s progression. To slow down a flirtation, she might orient her body away slightly, cross her arms across her chest or avoid meeting the man’s eyes. To stop flirtation in its tracks, she can yawn, frown, sneer, shake her head from side to side, avoid meeting the man’s gaze or resume flirting with other men. However, if the man is truly kapal mukha and has ambled up to the woman unaware that the flirtation has already ended, she is allowed to club him repeatedly over the head with a blunt, heavy object until he gets the message.
Clueless men (author included) often share the sentiments of John Nash, the brilliant but socially inept mathematician portrayed by Russell Crowe in the movie A Beautiful Mind. Instead of merely salivating into our beers while ogling at the women with 70% hip-to-waist ratios, we want to break social norms by approaching these softdrink-bottle figure beauties and boast in true John Nash fashion, “I don’t know exactly what I’m required to say in order for you to have intercourse with me, but can we assume I have said all that, and essentially we’re talking about fluid exchange, so we can go straight to sex”. The reply that Nash received is one that I have experienced many times as well, which involves an open palm, a closed fist or well-filed manicure. (And for the women who take time to express their indignation, a tube of lipstick jammed up an inappropriate orifice).
However, if John Nash was able to interpret the female flirter’s series of non-verbal gestures as a flirting sequence, the movie based on his life might not only have picked up four Oscars, but also swept the Adult Movie Film Awards.
According to the article Biology of Attraction, a universal female behavior that has been observed from the jungles of Amazonia to the salons of Paris to the highlands of New Guinea and to the KTVs in Quezon Avenue, is that women flirt with the same sequence of expressions. When women first enter a room, they start with an all-encompassing gaze to check out who might be worthy sperm donors. After zeroing on the subject that she might be willing to commingle DNA with, the woman proceeds to smile at him, then lifts her eyebrows in a swift, jerky motion as she opens her eyes wide to gaze at him. After that, she drops her eyelids, tilts her head down, then to the side, then looks away. No, no, no, my three female readers, she is not having a convulsion, she is actually flirting with the hapless victim. Frequently, she also covers her face with her hands, giggling nervously as she retreats behind her palms.
This sequential flirting gesture was so distinctive that German ethologist Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, who has been observing women hitting on men for the past 30 years (those must have been many lonely nights at bars for Irenaus), is convinced that it is an innate female courtship ploy that evolved eons ago to signal sexual interest. As a matter of fact, this is now labeled as the Eibl-Eibesfeldt flirting sequence.
Imagine how much more interesting A Beautiful Mind would have been if John Nash used the pick up line “Nice Eibl-Eibesfeldt flirting sequence, so we can go straight to sex?”
So men, clip out this article. Because when you approach a woman in a bar who proceeds to smash her cocktail glass and uses the broken shards to keep you away from her, tell her that you merely misinterpreted her flirting sequence. And maybe she’ll just cut away at your extremities.
Welcome to dating in the 21st century. If flirting was a language, then men would be illiterate.
(Originally published in Manila Times on August 7, 2005)