The
Aggression
M. Evans and Company titles are distributed in
the United States by the J. B. Lippincott Company,
East Washington Square, Philadelphia, Pa. 19105;
and in Canada by McClelland & Stewart Ltd.,
25 Hollinger Road, Toronto M4B 3G2, Ontario
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Fast, Julius, 1918-
The body language of sex, power, and aggression
1. Nonverbal communication (Psychology) &. Sex
(Psychology) 3. Control (Psychology) 4. Aggressiveness
(Psychology) I. Title.
BF637.C45F37 152.3'84 76-47665
ISBN 0-87131-222-0
Copyright © 1977 by Julius Fast
All rights reserved under International and
Pan-American Copyright Conventions
Design by Joel Schick
Manufactured in the United States of America
987.6
To
a lawyer in Colorado, a politician in New York,
an actress in California, a student in Kansas,
a businessman in Louisiana, a farmer in Connecticut,
and all the others who asked
Contents
Foreword 9
The Body Language of Sex 17
The Body Language of Power 91
The Body Language of Aggression 143
Foreword
When I finished the last correction on the galleys of
Body Language, some six years ago, and it was safely off
to the printers, I thought I was done with it and I could
turn all my attention to another project. I was completely
wrong. In terms of the amount of time I've spent on the
subject since then, I was just begnning to become acquainted
with body language.
In the years since the book's publication, I have been
on dozens of television shows and have lectured to groups
all over the United States, groups ranging from teachers'
10 FOREWORD
organizations to trial lawyers and including industrial relations
outfits, colleges, medical societies, women's clubs
and business men.
I have been involved in encounter groups and sensitivity
sessions, have taught a class on the subject and have
been called in as a consultant to politicians and industrialists.
I have, in short, been completely overwhelmed by what
seemed to me, at the very beginning, a very obvious fact
—we communicate with our bodies as well as with our
words. When I taught body language I told my students,
"I'm not going to teach you something new or original.
I'm simply going to open your eyes to what you already
know, to a language all of you use fluently."
Body language is just that, a language we all use and
understand. But it is an unconscious language, and because
of that it is a very honest language. While you can
easily lie with words, it is a lot harder to lie with your
body. The classic proof of this occurred on television
some years back, and the entire nation saw it.
Former President Nixon held a press conference to reassure
the nation that our incursion into Cambodia was
temporary and would not escalate the war. His voice was
smooth, his body movement projected sincerity, and the
over-all impression was confidence. Then one newsman
began asking some pointed and probing questions about
how long we intended to stay in Cambodia.
Again the President reacted smoothly, but an alert TV
cameraman cut in for a tight shot of the President's fist,
FOREWORD 11
clasped so rigidly that the knuckles were white. He held
that shot for the entire answer, and that one, tense bodylanguage
gesture projected rigidity and broadcast a complete
contradiction to everything the President was
saying.
Knowing how important body language is to politicians
who wish to project an air of sincerity, I am not surprised
at the flood of questions I have had from them. Nor am
I surprised at the hundreds of questions I have had from
lawyers' associations over the years. They too have a need
to know how they can master this newly discovered, but
old, old language.
How old is body language? It probably arose long before
humans learned to speak. Certainly men have been
aware of it for thousands of years. On a television talk
show, Hugh Downs pointed out to me that during the
first century A.D. Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, a Roman
rhetorician, held that body language gestures could add
to the dramatic impact of orations.
What did surprise me, wherever I talked, were the
hundreds of people—students, parents, children, husbands,
wives—who pressed me for answers to very personal
questions—who saw, in body language, a means of
getting a little closer to each other, of gaining some meaningful
insights, of communicating on a deeper, more honest
level, of solving their own family problems.
There was the housewife in a TV audience in Cleveland
who, during a question period, fixed me with a
searching stare and asked, "Why does my husband tell
12 FOREWORD
me that I don't know how to look at people?" As she
talked, her eye contact was so intense and beseaching
that I could hardly bear it.
And of course there were many who saw body language
as a "fun and games" thing, a way of broadening
their pleasure potential. One of my students, a handsome
young New Yorker, was quite frank about his reason
for taking the course. "I'm into the singles bar scene, and
I want to learn more about picking up girls."
At the end of the course, I asked him if he had gotten
what he was after. "It's wild," he told me. "I realize that
I used to come on wrong, turn the girls off with the
wrong signals. Now I've changed. I walk into a bar and
I know exactly who to talk to, who's going to respond,
how to let her know I dig her."
There was a young bearded lawyer in Colorado who
asked me, "Do you think my beard projects the wrong
image in court?"
I couldn't answer that except to say, "It depends on the
judge, on the image you want to project in court, on the
case you're involved in and on your age. Does the beard
say wisdom, or does it say hippy? Does it go with a suit
and tie and neat hair and say, Member of the establishment,
but not into a rigid pattern, or does it go with jeans
and an open shirt and beads and say, a bit of a rebel who
goes against convention?"
As with any body language gesture, a beard is only one
part of the total man.
Whatever the questioners' motives were, they all
FOREWORD 13
needed answers, and very soon I became involved in research
again, checking out those centers across the nation
where body language was being studied and analyzed
by psychologists, choreographers, dramatic coaches and
image makers. I was invited to join a public relations firm
setting up a non-verbal communication department for
the election year, a team of clinical psychologists who
wanted to open up a center for body language in therapy,
and on and on. I declined all for reasons of time, morality,
and lack of scientific training, but I picked brains mercilessly
and kept notes and files.
As my files grew, and as the letters poured in with new
questions, I began to realize that in spite of the many
repeats the pattern of questioning ran in only three directions.
People were curious about sex, power and aggression.
This book is the result of those letters and that research.
I've defined each of the three areas broadly and
inevitably there had to be some overlap, but I think that
almost every question on body language has been posed
and answered—but I thought that when Body Language
itself was first published.
—Julius Fast
The Body
Language
of
Sex
My husband and I are in our late fifties, and, while we've
always had a good sex life, recently my husband seems
less interested in sex—which I suppose is very natural
at our age. But at the same time he wants me to touch
him more, to stimulate him more. What does this mean?
I would think his desire to be stimulated by more touch
is a sign of his continuing interest in you. Your husband
still wants the sexual relations you've both enjoyed during
your marriage.
17
l8 THE BODY LANGUAGE OF SEX
Dr. Harold Lief, director of the Marriage Council of
Philadelphia, has written that with age a man is less easily
aroused sexually through the cortex, but he needs greater
stimulation locally. In other words, the body contact your
husband asks for now is the physical trigger that will
release his love for you.
My girlfriend says women are equal to men in every way,
but obviously their bodies are different. Is their body
language different, too?
It is very different. Over and above the differences that are
physical, there are the ones that are culturally acquired,
the ones we learn as children. Girl babies are handled
more gently and delicately by their parents, and, as they
grow, are told that certain movements (such as sitting
with their knees apart or taking large strides) are too
unladylike, too boisterous. Boys are encouraged to be
manly—to move with a sure, assertive purposefulness—
and any rough activity they engage in is shrugged off,
since "boys will be boys."
A woman friend of mine who enjoys jogging and other
athletic pursuits was striding down the street enjoying the
spring air, when a man passing by said, "Looks like one
of those typical libbers." This is a good example of a kind
of totally artificial distinction between men and women
made real by cultural conditioning.
Another example of a culturally conditioned sex differTHE
BODY LANGUAGE OF SEX 19
ence shows in the way most women throw a baseball.
Part of the reason most women can't throw as far as men
is that they've been conditioned to feel that moving the
arm from the elbow to the shoulder too far away from the
body is an unladylike gesture—so they tend to throw from
the wrist and lower arm. (And how often do you see
women sitting with their hands clasped behind their
head? That, too, involves moving the upper arm away
from the body, and so, to many women, feels "unfeminine.")
Still another example of a culturally determined body
language is the way in which homosexuals of either sex
tend to parody the body language of the other sex. But
one thing always missing from the impersonations is the
