Typical village scene on a Saturday late afternoon or early evening. Group of men on the cint of the parish church, gossiping about some football result, the dwindling value of their pension cheque and yesterday’s Xarabank. Group of women huddled on chairs outside a front door, moaning about their daughters gadding about in Paceville, yesterday’s dinner and tomorrow’s Sunday lunch and episode of Tista’ Tkun Int!
Fast forward, established couple in a restaurant, barely talking to each other, except perhaps to comment about others as they walk past. Looks of total boredom. Man dreaming about wearing his scruffiest shorts a la topless, wishing he was watching the Sports Channel, woman pining for more comfortable clothes and shoes, almost nostalgic for a good moan with her female friends ... Everywhere in Malta, and particularly after a certain age and the onset of marriage, and the arrival of kids, men and women congregate ... often separately, and more happily.
Is it just because we are so different? Is the now hackneyed men are from Mars, women are from Venus really responsible for it all? According to India Knight, my favourite columnist in the UK’s Sunday Times, research from Sheffield University explains why men never seem to be really listening to women, and why women who complain about this are branded as nags and really misunderstood.
According to this study (don’t some people have the best of jobs?!) “what you and I might mistake for selective hearing (i.e. the guy totally ignoring what the woman is saying), actually has a proper basis in science. Apparently, men need to use a particular part of their brain to decipher female voices – the same part they use to understand music – whereas (for us poor females!) understanding the male voice engages only a much simpler mechanism at the back of the brain.
So for women, listening to men is almost automatic and very simple. For men, listening to us is actually more difficult, requires more concentration and the kind of brain power needed to listen to music properly.
It gets worse … “the female voice is more difficult for men to understand, and also means that men tire of it more easily than they do of the male voice. They get fatigued. They are able to tune it out.” Hence the Maltese men who are so alive and chatty and conversational in the company of other men, but who have so little to say around female company, unless of course seduction is on their mind.
Then, of course, we get down to the kind of voice you have. High pitched and squeaky voices are, not surprisingly the ones men switch off most quickly. Margaret Thatcher apparently took elocution lessons to lower the pitch of her voice and so make it more attractive to the British Parliament, that, before the days of Blair’s Babes, was much like ours, a sea of men in grey suits sometimes talking to almost none but each other.
So girlies with croakier, deeper and huskier voices are more likely to be listened to by men. It seems strange that women with more masculine voices are more “hearable” so to speak, and perhaps it is something that our female and rare politicians or aspiring politicians should take note of. Women here do not tend to give much voter support to other women, so getting the votes of men is crucial, and the right kind of voice or pitch to your voice nothing less than pivotal.
But it is only the masculine voice that guys like. All other bits must be strictly feminine please. Research consistently shows that men prefer us to be dressed as girlies and do not particularly like trouser suits, which we love as we love our jeans.
So, in an ideal world you are a girlie dressed as a girlie (and this summers floaty fashions were just right) but with a deepish and definitely not girly squeaky voice.
It just got me thinking about the number of girly girl dressers I know with butch voices. Not many came to mind. The ones who dress very girly girly and floaty strappy toppy are usually more likely to have the girly voice to match.
Men, it seems, are destined to be disappointed …
And women not listened to ...