I know that body language is different in different
cultures, but it seems to me that there must be some
signals that cut across every land. When I was in France
recently I was able to pick up people my own age by
using the same flirting technique I had learned in the
States, a sideways glance and a smile. If things are so
different in different lands, why did this work so well?
First of all, while some signals are different, many are
the same from culture to culture. We borrow body language
from other cultures just as we borrow words. The
movies are the greatest source of cross-cultural body
language borrowing.
Second, your flirting signal worked in France because
it is a part of French body language. The gesture you
used is one compounded of eye and eyebrow movements
combined with a smile. In doing it, the eyebrows are
jerked upward for about one-sixth of a second—so small
a time that its impact is subliminal—and the glance is
given from the corner of the eye. It's a simple greeting,
a look that in essence says "hello!," then slides away before
it can be answered.
The accompanying smile, of course, does a great deal.
It says you're interested and receptive, and it invites the
man to take the initiative.
In tests in primitive tribes in various parts of the world,
the smile was found to be the only universal body language
signal, and the ability to smile is undoubtedly inTHE
BODY LANGUAGE OF SEX 33
herited. We never have to learn how to do it. We're
born with the knowledge.
The greeting with the eyes, the flirting glance, is
another matter. Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, a German behavioral
scientist, used cameras and mirrorlike attachments
that permitted him to film people all over the
world without their knowledge. With each picture, he
wrote down the social context in which the filmed incident
occurred.
Comparing his films, he found that among the most
different people in the world, Balinese, Papuans, French,
and Waika Indians, a rapid raising and lowering of the
eyebrows accompanied by a smile and often a nod was
used as a friendly flirting gesture—the same sort of gesture
you describe. It worked for you in the States and in
France, too. Eibl-Eibesfeldt found that it works all over
the world.
He likens this flirting glance to one of the gestures
passed down from "an ancient evolutionary inheritance."
Other inherited gestures, according to this German behaviorist,
are rotating our arms inward and raising our
shoulders when we're threatened, pulling the corners of
our mouths down when we're angry, exposing upper
canine teeth which are no longer large enough to be
dangerous when we're annoyed, and, in women, lowering
the eyelids and head as they look away. This, he feels is
a evolutionary remnant of the animal's flight reaction.
These findings of hereditary signals in our body language
lexicon contradict the idea that only the smile is
34 THE BODY LANGUAGE OF SEX
inherited, but, as with any new science, the final word is
still not in. Now genetics has the edge. Further research
may give it back to environment.
I spent an entire evening last week sitting in the living
room with my boyfriend and kissing—just that, kissing!
We both enjoyed it so much that afterward I began to
wonder why do people enjoy kissing so? Is it the body
language in the act? And what does it say? How did it
start?
Kissing is body language, of course, and it says a variety
of things. There is the very perfunctory kiss where the
lips hardly connect and the message is just as vague. It
may be "I like you," and it may be "I'm not even fully
aware of you." It's a ritualized gesture. At the other end
of the scale is the deep, erotic kissing you and your boyfriend
enjoyed. To some people, this type of kissing is
almost as satisfying as sexual intercourse and carries the
same message of delight and love and pleasuring.
In between are all the ranges of kissing—from the
mother who kisses her child, to the friends who kiss when
they meet, the good-bye kiss and the hello kiss, the greeting
kiss in France and other foreign countries, and the
Mafia kiss of death as well as the often perfunctory husband-
wife kiss in the morning.
Where did kissing start and why? That's a question
that still isn't completely answered, though we have some
THE BODY LANGUAGE OF SEX 35
good ideas about it. In the animal world, birds seem to
do a good deal of kissing, but their kissing is an offshoot
of a feeding procedure. Mother birds chew up and
partially digest the food, then regurgitate it to pass it on
to the babies. Gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans practice
mouth-to-mouth feeding. This has been observed in
zoos as well as in the wild, and not only between mother
and baby, but also between adults. In fact, adult chimps
in the wild, according to animal behaviorist Jane Goodall,
greet each other by touching lips when they meet,
without passing food.
This would indicate that the human kiss also derived
from passing food, and there are still some primitive people
who chew and predigest their food, then pass it by
mouth to their children.
A German anthropologist, Dr. L. Hormann, writing before
World War I, noted that young people in the Tyrol
used to chew resin as we chew gum. In courting, a boy
would offer some chewed resin to a girl. If she accepted,
she would have to press her mouth to his while she bit
the resin from between his teeth. The play involved a
lot of fun and enforced kissing.
A search through the courting habits of other European
countries will turn up a great many connections between
kissing and feeding. Some European swains bring their
fiancees food which must be eaten with kisses. Others
pass wine from mouth to mouth.
In kissing, the same movements occur as in food passing.
36 THE BODY LANGUAGE OF SEX
There are very few human cultures that do not kiss.
Darwin reported that kissing was not an innate act, and
that many people did not know about it, that New Zealanders,
Tahitians, and Australians do not kiss, but later
research has proved him wrong. There is always kissing
between mother and child, but in some cultures it becomes
taboo in adult life or changes to nose rubbing.
I'm twenty-four years old, and one of my problems is
getting along with people in a conversation. I'll meet a
guy or a gal and get to rapping with them, and then, for
some reason or other, I seem to lose them. I don't think
it's because I'm any more boring than the next guy, but
one girl told me I wasn't responding with the right
body signals. What are the signals?
What she was probably referring to, in your case, was a
lack of feedback. For example, in any conversation between
two people, there is a lot of head nodding back
and forth. The nodding serves a number of purposes.
The most obvious is agreement. Jim and Sarah are talking;
Sarah says something Jim agrees with, and he nods.
Assured that she is reaching Jim, Sarah continues in the
same vein. The nod on Jim's part has sent the message,
"You're right. Keep talking. I want to hear more."
If Jim stops nodding, he signals that he doesn't accept
what Sarah says, or that he's not really interested. Sarah,
THE BODY LANGUAGE OF SEX 37
failing to get the feedback of the nod, changes the conversation—
or just turns off to Jim.
Not everyone nods to the same degree, but when you
speak to someone who doesn't nod or react at all, no
matter what you say, then you're put off stride and
eventually, if there's no body feedback of any kind, you
know you're just not reaching him. In that case most
people give up and lose interest in the conversation.
If this is your problem—and you can decide if it is by
some careful observation of yourself and a few heart-toheart
talks with friends—then you can try to solve it by
making yourself nod, from time to time, if you agree with
the person who's talking. Watch how others do this to
get the right rhythm and intensity. The feedback generated
by your nods will encourage your partner to go
on talking.
The nodding needn't be overdone to the point of making
you seem like a "yes" man, but it should be done just
enough to give a sense of security to the other person.
This same feedback operates in public speaking. When
you address an audience, you watch for the nods of
agreement; they signal that you're on the right track and
you can proceed with what you're saying. Nothing is
more devastating than addressing a dead audience with
no feedback. To avoid this, if you feel too little feedback,
too little response, search out one person who
agrees with you and nods to tell you so, and make eye
contact with him. The reassurance you get will help you
in your delivery.
THE BODY LANGUAGE OF SEX
It's the acute awareness of feedback and the ability to
zero in on the subject that causes it that makes a good
public speaker.
I'm gay, and I live in a small town in the Midwest. I can
usually meet other gay men when I go to one of the big
cities. Their body language is pretty obvious. But I
have a feeling there are a lot of men like me in my own
hometown. Are there body language signals that gay men
send out to each other that I could learn to recognize?
There are many obvious signals and many subtle ones.
In a small town such as yours, very few gay men are open
about their sexual life. They have had to mask their
homosexuality for survival, and usually the masks are
very effective.
Eye contact is a standard signal among gay men, even
as it is among heterosexual men and women. For every
social situation there is a moral looking time—the length
of time it is proper to catch and hold someone else's
eye. When you pass someone on the street, the moral
looking time is only a second or two. If one man holds
another's eye longer than that, he may be signaling a
number of things. "Do I know you?" "I'm friendly and
cultures, but it seems to me that there must be some
signals that cut across every land. When I was in France
recently I was able to pick up people my own age by
using the same flirting technique I had learned in the
States, a sideways glance and a smile. If things are so
different in different lands, why did this work so well?
First of all, while some signals are different, many are
the same from culture to culture. We borrow body language
from other cultures just as we borrow words. The
movies are the greatest source of cross-cultural body
language borrowing.
Second, your flirting signal worked in France because
it is a part of French body language. The gesture you
used is one compounded of eye and eyebrow movements
combined with a smile. In doing it, the eyebrows are
jerked upward for about one-sixth of a second—so small
a time that its impact is subliminal—and the glance is
given from the corner of the eye. It's a simple greeting,
a look that in essence says "hello!," then slides away before
it can be answered.
The accompanying smile, of course, does a great deal.
It says you're interested and receptive, and it invites the
man to take the initiative.
In tests in primitive tribes in various parts of the world,
the smile was found to be the only universal body language
signal, and the ability to smile is undoubtedly inTHE
BODY LANGUAGE OF SEX 33
herited. We never have to learn how to do it. We're
born with the knowledge.
The greeting with the eyes, the flirting glance, is
another matter. Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, a German behavioral
scientist, used cameras and mirrorlike attachments
that permitted him to film people all over the
world without their knowledge. With each picture, he
wrote down the social context in which the filmed incident
occurred.
Comparing his films, he found that among the most
different people in the world, Balinese, Papuans, French,
and Waika Indians, a rapid raising and lowering of the
eyebrows accompanied by a smile and often a nod was
used as a friendly flirting gesture—the same sort of gesture
you describe. It worked for you in the States and in
France, too. Eibl-Eibesfeldt found that it works all over
the world.
He likens this flirting glance to one of the gestures
passed down from "an ancient evolutionary inheritance."
Other inherited gestures, according to this German behaviorist,
are rotating our arms inward and raising our
shoulders when we're threatened, pulling the corners of
our mouths down when we're angry, exposing upper
canine teeth which are no longer large enough to be
dangerous when we're annoyed, and, in women, lowering
the eyelids and head as they look away. This, he feels is
a evolutionary remnant of the animal's flight reaction.
These findings of hereditary signals in our body language
lexicon contradict the idea that only the smile is
34 THE BODY LANGUAGE OF SEX
inherited, but, as with any new science, the final word is
still not in. Now genetics has the edge. Further research
may give it back to environment.
I spent an entire evening last week sitting in the living
room with my boyfriend and kissing—just that, kissing!
We both enjoyed it so much that afterward I began to
wonder why do people enjoy kissing so? Is it the body
language in the act? And what does it say? How did it
start?
Kissing is body language, of course, and it says a variety
of things. There is the very perfunctory kiss where the
lips hardly connect and the message is just as vague. It
may be "I like you," and it may be "I'm not even fully
aware of you." It's a ritualized gesture. At the other end
of the scale is the deep, erotic kissing you and your boyfriend
enjoyed. To some people, this type of kissing is
almost as satisfying as sexual intercourse and carries the
same message of delight and love and pleasuring.
In between are all the ranges of kissing—from the
mother who kisses her child, to the friends who kiss when
they meet, the good-bye kiss and the hello kiss, the greeting
kiss in France and other foreign countries, and the
Mafia kiss of death as well as the often perfunctory husband-
wife kiss in the morning.
Where did kissing start and why? That's a question
that still isn't completely answered, though we have some
THE BODY LANGUAGE OF SEX 35
good ideas about it. In the animal world, birds seem to
do a good deal of kissing, but their kissing is an offshoot
of a feeding procedure. Mother birds chew up and
partially digest the food, then regurgitate it to pass it on
to the babies. Gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans practice
mouth-to-mouth feeding. This has been observed in
zoos as well as in the wild, and not only between mother
and baby, but also between adults. In fact, adult chimps
in the wild, according to animal behaviorist Jane Goodall,
greet each other by touching lips when they meet,
without passing food.
This would indicate that the human kiss also derived
from passing food, and there are still some primitive people
who chew and predigest their food, then pass it by
mouth to their children.
A German anthropologist, Dr. L. Hormann, writing before
World War I, noted that young people in the Tyrol
used to chew resin as we chew gum. In courting, a boy
would offer some chewed resin to a girl. If she accepted,
she would have to press her mouth to his while she bit
the resin from between his teeth. The play involved a
lot of fun and enforced kissing.
A search through the courting habits of other European
countries will turn up a great many connections between
kissing and feeding. Some European swains bring their
fiancees food which must be eaten with kisses. Others
pass wine from mouth to mouth.
In kissing, the same movements occur as in food passing.
36 THE BODY LANGUAGE OF SEX
There are very few human cultures that do not kiss.
Darwin reported that kissing was not an innate act, and
that many people did not know about it, that New Zealanders,
Tahitians, and Australians do not kiss, but later
research has proved him wrong. There is always kissing
between mother and child, but in some cultures it becomes
taboo in adult life or changes to nose rubbing.
I'm twenty-four years old, and one of my problems is
getting along with people in a conversation. I'll meet a
guy or a gal and get to rapping with them, and then, for
some reason or other, I seem to lose them. I don't think
it's because I'm any more boring than the next guy, but
one girl told me I wasn't responding with the right
body signals. What are the signals?
What she was probably referring to, in your case, was a
lack of feedback. For example, in any conversation between
two people, there is a lot of head nodding back
and forth. The nodding serves a number of purposes.
The most obvious is agreement. Jim and Sarah are talking;
Sarah says something Jim agrees with, and he nods.
Assured that she is reaching Jim, Sarah continues in the
same vein. The nod on Jim's part has sent the message,
"You're right. Keep talking. I want to hear more."
If Jim stops nodding, he signals that he doesn't accept
what Sarah says, or that he's not really interested. Sarah,
THE BODY LANGUAGE OF SEX 37
failing to get the feedback of the nod, changes the conversation—
or just turns off to Jim.
Not everyone nods to the same degree, but when you
speak to someone who doesn't nod or react at all, no
matter what you say, then you're put off stride and
eventually, if there's no body feedback of any kind, you
know you're just not reaching him. In that case most
people give up and lose interest in the conversation.
If this is your problem—and you can decide if it is by
some careful observation of yourself and a few heart-toheart
talks with friends—then you can try to solve it by
making yourself nod, from time to time, if you agree with
the person who's talking. Watch how others do this to
get the right rhythm and intensity. The feedback generated
by your nods will encourage your partner to go
on talking.
The nodding needn't be overdone to the point of making
you seem like a "yes" man, but it should be done just
enough to give a sense of security to the other person.
This same feedback operates in public speaking. When
you address an audience, you watch for the nods of
agreement; they signal that you're on the right track and
you can proceed with what you're saying. Nothing is
more devastating than addressing a dead audience with
no feedback. To avoid this, if you feel too little feedback,
too little response, search out one person who
agrees with you and nods to tell you so, and make eye
contact with him. The reassurance you get will help you
in your delivery.
THE BODY LANGUAGE OF SEX
It's the acute awareness of feedback and the ability to
zero in on the subject that causes it that makes a good
public speaker.
I'm gay, and I live in a small town in the Midwest. I can
usually meet other gay men when I go to one of the big
cities. Their body language is pretty obvious. But I
have a feeling there are a lot of men like me in my own
hometown. Are there body language signals that gay men
send out to each other that I could learn to recognize?
There are many obvious signals and many subtle ones.
In a small town such as yours, very few gay men are open
about their sexual life. They have had to mask their
homosexuality for survival, and usually the masks are
very effective.
Eye contact is a standard signal among gay men, even
as it is among heterosexual men and women. For every
social situation there is a moral looking time—the length
of time it is proper to catch and hold someone else's
eye. When you pass someone on the street, the moral
looking time is only a second or two. If one man holds
another's eye longer than that, he may be signaling a
number of things. "Do I know you?" "I'm friendly and
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