Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian

A guide to female flirting

3 min read

There has been some useful stuff in the newspapers about women, recently. More specifically, what exactly it means when they do strange, hitherto inexplicable things, as you’re talking to them.

At last we men now know that when a woman tilts her head to an angle of ”about 30°C” during a conversation about, say, European Union convergence criteria, or the unilateral imposition of tariffs on steel exports to the United States, she is actually requesting — subconsciously or otherwise — a bloody good seeing to.

You know, I had often wondered. I had guessed as much, but I didn’t know for sure. It seems the head-tilting business is a submissively flirtatious gesture, exposing a vulnerable erogenous zone to the rapacious gaze of a man.

Lordy. I never even knew the neck was an erogenous zone. I shall have to apply myself to women’s necks with much more vim and vigour in future. This all comes from the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford in the United Kingdom. And things get better.

If some unidentified woman holds my gaze for ”more than one second” it means that she, too, is virtually gagging for it — even, presumably, if her expression while doing the gaze-holding may appear to be one of agitation, or dismay, or contempt, or appalled shock.

There are a few other similar indications: touching; smiling; tenderly playing with their hair (unless they have alopecia, in which case, seductively picking off flakes of skin from the scalp); putting their fingers in their mouths and making extravagant slurping noises; commenting ambivalently about the weather, and so on.

All of which is terrific news. Now all I need from the social issues research people is a bit of guidance on the following behaviour patterns I have recently encountered in women whom I have expectantly, and without invitation, engaged in conversation:

  • A frantic scratching of the skin on the lower arm, accompanied by shortness of breath, eyes desperately scouring the room in search of some mysterious object or person, sweat beginning to form on the brow and under the arms.

  • Prolonged open-mouthed yawning. Weeping. Mild hysteria. The obsessive grinding or gnashing of teeth.

  • Semi-surreptitious cellphone call or text-messaging made during the conversation, to friends, relatives, complete strangers, Cabinet ministers, the police, the Salvation Army.

  • Eyes closed; sotto voce recitations of verses from the Bible or sura from the Qu’ran.

  • Unsolicited keening or wailing.

  • High temperature, nausea, some vomiting; sore throat; small bluish-white spots on the inside of the cheek and the back of the mouth; presentation of raised scarlet rash across trunk during prodromal period; twitching; partial or complete paralysis of central nervous system; coma.

    • In the past I have been minded to treat these various indications with the strictest neutrality. But now, unless I hear otherwise from the people in Oxford, I shall see them as yet another glorious green light for the pursuit of romance. — Â