Boys and girls each have a different
way of judging, from first impressions, whether a member of the
opposite sex is worth chasing. In fact they are not just different
ways, they are the complete opposite.
Imagine that everyone has an imaginary
score they give the opposite sex when they first meet them, and maybe
get to know them a bit. Let's say it starts from zero at the bottom
and goes to the highest and sexiest mark of 100. If you're in the
market, you want to find a high scorer.
So both the male and female species
have the same target so far. What's opposite about them? The way they
work out the marking...
Boys start from zero, and add points
for every positive feature of the girl they can spot. Good clothes,
laughs at my jokes, nice body, they all build the points further from
negative and closer to the higher end of the spectrum.
Girls start from full marks, and mark a
guy down for every negative feature they can spot. His hair sucks,
what on earth is he wearing, and why does he have to stand like that,
all knock points off and drop the score lower and lower.
So guys are quite positive, and
probably get more and more interested in a girl as they start talking
to her and finding more things that up the score. If the score feels
pretty high, the guy will realise it's a road worth going down. But
girls are after Mr. Right, and perhaps a small amount of leeway can
be there, but as soon as the score has dropped low, it's a no. This
fits the stereotypes, and personal experience, of guys not being too
fussy, and girls making their minds up to be defensive very quickly.
I've heard that this is similar to the
school marking systems used in England and France. English schools
start from 0 marks, and award a student for every question or essay
point they get right. But across the British channel, French schools
start from full marks, and penalise their students for each mistake.
What affect do the different systems have? Well apparently, the
British system produces people who will do enough to get by, whereas
although the French have far higher scoring students, they also have
a higher depression and suicide rate that is thought to be linked to
the pressure of achieving perfection.
Does this appear back in the gender
wars? Kind of. Except the wrong way around.
Guys don't get stressed from the high
pressure of the girls marking, but the girls are known to stress a
lot over parts of themselves which will be part of their first
impressions. Likewise, girls don't put much emphasis on things to add
to their sexiness CV so that boys will mark them up, but boys
themselves are more likely to try and impress the ladies by talking
about their skills, their strength, their cool.
For both sexes, it looks like each
expects to be marked in the same way that they mark the other. Girls
strive to do well by female standards, and guys want to do well by
guy standards, each perhaps thinking that their way is the universal
way for everyone.
But this whole model is likely to cause
unhelpful debate if presented to the wrong people. I know that some
girls are so determined to be right that they would protest at the
idea of being perfectionist, which would possibly be seen as a
negative trait. Boys on the other hand would be too lazy to care
about being called too lazy. Oh well.
Image source: http://www.fanpop.com/spots/battle-of-the-sexes/images/23753954/title/battle-sexes-photo
