Girls and the armpits

Our trip in Italy has been characterized by gelato, creeper pictures, and the obsessive adoration of armpits.  Most people would be very confused and disgusted by the last item in that list, but not for the girls on this trip.  They’ve taken checking guys out to a whole new level, so much so that they’ve even come up with codenames to describe each guy they talk about.  The girls have a complex system of words, each one categorizing a guy into a group.  At first you would think it’s just a short game that would run its course and be done, but it’s continued.  Even near the end of the program, it has continued and the girls even gotten more descriptive.  If you just take a look at our Facebook group you'll find many excellent examples.  When some of the girls finish their work, all they want to do is find “armpits”, especially “sweaty ones” but not “deodorized or shaven”.

It is interesting to see this unfold because if a guy were to do this same game, he would probably be considered to be a “tool” or “douche”.  This comes down to the idea of a double standard.  Most of the time women believe they are on the wrong end of a double standard, while men seem to have it easy.   It’s interesting to try and find how this arose.  Is there actually a double standard in society or have women used their genetic differences to convince society that there is a one?  Even if there isn’t a double standard, have women just used their powers to implement one?  I mean it has gotten to the point where no matter what happens in a situation, most guys will still adhere to the time-withstanding saying that “The woman is always right.”  It’s intriguing to ponder where this saying came from. Did it stem from women always winning?

Let’s first take a step out and examine the situation as a whole.  Many women tend to believe or at least express that there are too many double standards present in society, most resulting with them on the losing side.  How many of these women can justify their claims?  That’s a completely different story.  Let’s just take a look at society real quick.  First, many women believe their bodies are objectified by men.  They believe this is a reason why women have to be more concerned with their body, placing some of the blame on the male gender.  Some extrapolate this to claim that this is why women are more self-conscious about their body.  Turns out, research shows that actually men are more concerned with their physical appearance than women and men would sacrifice more in their life for a perfect body (1).  Another example presents itself when women talk about how unfair it can be to be a woman, especially because they have to endure childbirth.  When a women is giving birth, she feels up to 57 del (which is a unit) pain, similar to fracturing 20 bones at once.  Compare this to when a man gets kicked in the nuts, he feels above 9000 del pain which is about the same as giving birth to 160 kids and breaking 3200 bones at once (2).  How in society have these examples been twisted?  Could it simply be due to women being dramatic?  Possibly, especially because girls are normally considered to be more cat-like and judgmental of each other, even though research shows men tend to leap towards judgment while women see more shades of grey (3).  Something in that situation has to make women’s judgments become more prevalent than men’s, even though in women’s natural thought process they jump to judgments less.  Women are also more likely to delete friends on social networking cites, a possible expression of their more-pronounced feelings (4).  There must be some factor must be present that pushes women’s feelings to a higher level.  This same factor might also explain why women tend to get their way more often.

We seem to be able to find a root of these factors in the genetic differences between men and women.  Male brains are naturally larger than female brains, so some might assume men to be smarter and get their way more often, but actually certain parts of the female brain work better (5).  The corpus callosum, which is nerve tissue that connects the right and left sides of the brain, is larger in females than in males (6).  When read a novel, males only seemed to listen from one hemisphere of their brain while females listened from both.  This activity across both hemispheres typically results in the stronger language skills demonstrated by females.  Women also have a larger ventral prefrontal cortex than men, around 10% larger in fact (5).  This area deals with social cognition and interpersonal judgment, which also contributes to how women are better at using social and speech skills than men.  Can the way women seem to get what they want a lot of the time and their dramatic ways stem from this literary difference?  It seems plausible, especially because both men and women are more effective at persuading someone if they use a feminine style (7).

Corpus Callosum

It already seems like women only need their naturally superior literary and convincing skills to get what they want and turn societal differences in their favor, but there’s even more support.  Even though men have a bigger brain and on average have a five-point higher IQ score, these benefits are no match when having a conversation/argument with a women (8).  New research shows that unlike women, when men talk to members of the opposite sex, they tend to automatically become cognitively impaired (9).  At this point it’s not even fair for a man!!!

In many arguments with a woman, it seems very hard to win.  Whether this is due to me having naturally lower listening and communication skills or because men seemingly become dumber when talking to a woman, it always seems so hard.  Even when the facts are present as listed above, women have somehow been able to twist these subject matters into their favor.  As much as I could try to reverse them, I as have many before me fall back to the same old saying: The woman is always right.

NOTICE:  This blog post may be over-exaggerated for entertainment purposes and does not accurately reflect all the views of Chris Weeden

References:

(1) http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/06/body-image-concerns-men-more-than-women

(2) http://mcrapu.com/woman-vs-man-in-pain/

(3) http://phys.org/news/2011-04-men-tend-judgement-women-grey.html

(4) http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/02/25/0111219/women-more-likely-to-unfriend-than-men

(5) http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=girl-brain-boy-brain

(6) http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/how-male-female-brains-differ

(7) http://wip.ncbar.org/media/2754960/effectsOfGenderOnCommunication.pdf

(8) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1274952/Men-ARE-brainy-women-says-scientist-Professor-Richard-Lynn.html

(9) http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-interacting-with-woman-leave-man-cognitively-impaired