Q: My boyfriend has this irritating habit of making fun of my outfits or my spray tan. When I get upset, he says I’m being “sensitive.” I try to look cute for him, and I just don’t think it’s funny for your boyfriend to mock your appearance. Is this his issue or mine? If it’s his, how do I get him to stop?—Unhappy
A: It’s probably tempting to give him a taste of his own medicine: “Baby, I did not use the word ‘small’ in describing your penis. I called it ‘adorable.’”
The reality is, beyond men’s zipper zone, women are generally more sensitive to jabs about their looks. This makes sense if you look at sex differences in the qualities human beings evolved to prioritize in a mate. Of course, we all want a hottie if we can get one, just as we’d take the Malibu mansion with the stable over the basement apartment. But in mating, as in life, we tend to be on a budget. Evolutionary social psychologist Norman Li and his colleagues recognized that, and instead of asking research participants the open-ended, sky’s-the-limit question “So, what do you want in a mate?” they gave them a limited “mating budget.” This, in turn, forced participants to decide which traits and qualities were “necessities” and which were “luxuries.”
The Li team’s results echo a body of cross-cultural findings on mate preferences. Men in their study overwhelmingly deemed “physical attractiveness” a “necessity.” (Consider that the female features men find beautiful correlate with health and fertility in a woman.) Meanwhile, the women they surveyed, under these “budgetary” constraints, overwhelmingly went for “status/resources” over male hottie-hood. This reflects women’s evolved motivation to go for men with an ability to invest in any children who might pop out after sex.
Because women coevolved with men, they are, at the very least, subconsciously attuned to men’s prioritizing physical appearance in female partners. This, in turn, leads a woman’s emotions to sound the alarm in the form of fear and hurt feelings when her male partner seems to find her less than lookalicious.
Explain these differences to your boyfriend so he can understand why you feel bad about his taunts in a way he probably doesn’t from, say, putdown-fests with his dude-bros. Encourage him to tactfully tell you if something in your look isn’t doing it for him (and explain how to go about that). In time, assuming he’s an accidental meanie, he should start showing a little restraint, merely blurting out “You look good enough to eat!” and not (har, har) going on to part two: “. . . because that spray tan makes you a dead ringer for a giant Cheeto.”
Q: I’m a woman who’s very feminine and considered pretty. However, I have a deep voice to the point where I’m sometimes mistaken for a man on the phone. I’ve learned to laugh about it, but it sometimes makes me feel bad, especially when I hear a bunch of other women talking. How do people feel about women with deep voices?—Feeling Low
A: OK, so you sound like you’ve been smoking unfiltered cigarettes since you were three years old. In social situations, nobody’s mistaking you for Darth Vader in a dress. On the phone, however, they’re missing the visual information. Those who think they’re hearing a man are not making some sneering judgment about your femininity; they are simply reacting based on averages—how, on average, women tend to have higher, chirpier voices.
On a positive note, according to research by social-personality psychologist Joey T. Cheng, women with deep voices are, if not more likely to rule the world, more likely to be perceived as the dames to do it. In Cheng’s experiments, both women and men with low-pitched voices were viewed as more dominant and higher in social rank. That’s probably why former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, while running for office in the ’70s, worked with a speech coach to deepen the pitch of her voice.
Try to remember that you’re a package as a person. Your voice is just part of the entire “very feminine” you. Maybe re-label your voice “sultry,” like screen babes Scarlett Johansson and Lauren Bacall, for example. This might help you feel a little better when you have those dismaying “Excuse me, sir, who’s calling, please?” experiences.
Got a problem? Write Amy Alkon at 171 Pier Ave. #280, Santa Monica, CA 90405, or email [email protected]. @amyalkon on Twitter. Weekly radio show, blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon.
