Women call it flirting. Men call it prolonged torture. As explosive as an outburst by the insanely popular and artistic fashion designer Boyet Fajardo (don’t you all know who he is!?) is the revelation that women — and not men — are initiators of the explosive “first move” in sexual matters. Psychologist Monica Moore of Webster University once spent 2,000 hours observing women’s flirting maneuvers at bars and parties and reported that women transmit visible body language signals two thirds of the time to get the opposite sex — the one with the protruding genitals — to flirt with them. (We have tried to contact Dr. Moore for the names of these flirting women, but she is still nursing a major hangover.)
Oftentimes, a man thinks he is making that perilous first move because he is the one who gets his pwet off the barstool, wobbles over to the woman, spews forth a highly flammable pickup line, then offers to buy her (depending on his level of kapal mukh-attitude) a drink, breakfast or jewelry. But, in reality, it was the woman who was subtly transmitting a series of subtle yet deceptive body and facial signals to gain the victim’s — este, the man’s — attention such as flicking her fair, rolling her hips or throwing her knife. During this time, nary a word need be exchanged between the flirter and the flirtee during the first move, except for maybe “That was just gas,” “Police!” or “Cash first.”
In fact, the highly academic tome Superflirt by Tracey Cox says that women send out flirting signals five times more often than men do. The problem is that whenever women send out these signals, most men are often out of the coverage area. For a man to be successful in the dating and mating game, according to body language expert Allan Pease, he has to be perceptive at picking up the courtship signals the woman bombards him with during the first few minutes of their encounter. And the operative word here is perceptive. Unfortunately, most men are as perceptive of these signals as Congress is receptive to public opinion about Charter change.
So if men desire to read women as easily as they can read a text message, men need to learn how to read female body language. And some men are willing to go to unnecessary lengths to decipher it. Take for example my now-penniless No Girlfriend Since Birth (NGSB) barkada, whose ability to pick up women was as hopeless as the Chief Executive’s popularity ratings. He had read about the legendary Blarney Stone in Ireland, a miraculous chunk of stone that has the ability to gift you with a new language if you plant a big wet kiss on it. My NGSB, who shall remain nameless for public health reasons, allegedly blew a year’s worth of salary to make his way to the Blarney Stone, promptly took off all his clothes, and rubbed the length of his body (pink parts included) vigorously against the poor, hapless rock, with the hope that this pricey tryst would bless him with the gift of body language. Much to his dismay, my barkada did not gain the gift of body language. He did, however, gain a new strain of gonorrhea.
What is more diabolical about female flirting signals is that women perform these moves as intentionally as term extension attempts. “I do these things incidentally but not accidentally,” one particularly adept female flirter confessed to social psychologist Dr. Timothy Perper. She wanted her movements and gestures to look spontaneous, even though she knew they were partly planned. Yes, that’s right: spontaneous. As spontaneous as combustion. “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.” A man might simply think that he saw a woman whom he was attracted to, struck up a conversation with her and, when she finds out that he is not her type, kicks him in the DNA-delivery equipment. However, a woman astonishingly remembers all the little steps in her flirtation tango. Women have so mastered the science of flirting that they can place men, domesticated animals and even whole congresses under their thrall.
Some women even relish the ways they can torture the mustached sex to sustain the flirtation process. According to Dr. Perper, “Some flirters appear to want to prolong the interaction because it’s pleasurable and erotic in its own right, regardless of where it might lead.” In fact, women have the infernal ability to escalate or de-escalate a flirtation’s progress. To slow down a flirtation, she might orient her body slightly away from the man’s, cross her arms across her chest or avoid meeting the man’s eyes. To stop her 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 there are some foolhardy men who risk approaching a woman after she unilaterally ends the flirtation, then she is allowed to club him repeatedly over the head with a blunt, heavy object until he gets the message. Then hit him again just for fun.
That is why, during the whole flirtation mambo, the woman is always on her guard. According to US body language expert Jan Hargrave, there are three lines of “distances” associated to flirtation levels. The first is the “screening line,” a comfortable distance from where a woman will first try to draw a man’s attention. This is usually from a distance of 20 feet from the woman. As far as a woman is concerned, this distance is far enough for comfort, but near enough to toss a hand grenade. If the man catches on to a woman’s flirtation overtures, then he will approach the “attraction line” which is five feet away from a woman. This is when the man is deciding whether or not he will urinate into his bikini briefs if he introduces himself to the woman. For a woman, this distance is still far enough to run away, but near enough to use pepper spray. Finally, when the man crosses the “finish line,” which is barely a foot from the woman’s face, then it means he will attempt contact whether or not the woman escalated or de-escalated the flirtation. For a woman, this distance is too near for her to escape, but near enough for a suicide bombing.
Face it: if flirting were a language, then men would be illiterate. It doesn’t matter how many MDs, PhDs and Double Ds you hang on your office wall. Look at John Nash, the brilliant but socially inept mathematician portrayed by Russell Crowe in the movie A Beautiful Mind. His classic pickup line has been used by many men who now suffer permanent groin injuries: “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?” Curiously, the reply that Nash received was something that I also experienced many times during my heathen bachelorhood, which involved an open palm, a closed fist or a stiletto heel.
But if Nash interpreted a woman’s series of non-verbal gestures as a flirting sequence, the movie based on his life might not only have picked up four Academy Awards, it might have also swept the Adult Movie Film Awards as well.
According to the magazine article “Biology of Attraction,” one female behavior observed from the remote jungles of the Amazon to the highlands of New Guinea to the dancers of Wowowee 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 share biological material with, the woman offers him a wide grin, 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, she is not having convulsions — she is flirting with the unwitting male. She also covers her face frequently with her hands, giggling nervously as she retreats behind her palms. The 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 move is now labeled “The Eibl-Eibesfeldt Flirting Sequence.”
Imagine how much more interesting A Beautiful Mind would have been if John Nash approached the ladies with the classic pickup line, “Nice Eibl-Eibesfeldt Flirting Sequence you’ve got. So can we now go straight to sex?”
So to all of the NGSBs out there, clip out this article, keep it in your wallet or staple it to your forehead. Because when you approach a woman in a bar, and the woman proceeds to smash her cocktail glass on your face and uses the broken shards embedded in her palm to keep you away from her, tell her that you merely misinterpreted her flirting signals. And then maybe she’ll just cut away at your extremities. Or she will get insanely popular and artistic fashion designer Boyet Fajardo to cut it away for her (Don’t you know he is by now!?).
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