David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
Why All The Women Are Laughing
By Regina Barreca, Ph.D., Psychology Today
January 27, 2009
Why do fabulous women believe we're half brilliant, half crazy?
Practically every woman I've met secretly believes she's half crazy.
She'll tell you so, too, within the first hour or so of real conversation. Maybe that means it's not such a secret, but you know what I'm saying. She's worried about it. She's concerned about appearing too loud or too needy, too grabby or too greedy. There you are, talking to the most soign?e, charming, unselfconscious person you've ever met, and when you least expect it, she'll smile slyly, pause briefly, and blurt out "Oh, God, I don't know what you'll think of me, but I have to tell you...." She'll then regale you with a story that is both uproariously funny and gut-bustlingly inappropriate. It won't be a joke. It will be an actual story about her life, one that's kept her up at night.
It's how women become friends. We begin relationships by revealing our deepest secrets to one another on contact.
Before we've even exchanged surnames, women know whether our female companions are self-employed, working outside the home, single, partnered, happy, caring for their parents, wrestling with their children's needs, feeling a little insecure, not sleeping enough, having orthopedic issues, coping with anxiety-associated disorders, and/or in therapy. After we've shared a meal, we know their food allergies, their drink preferences, and whether they are taking estrogen orally or through a patch. Only after years, do we move on to basic informational details such as what kind of vehicle they drive, or how they've invested the whole $14.87 they've managed to save after 24 years of teaching, or writing, or editing, or working for a not-for-profit. (Not that I'm bitter.)
Men, in contrast, cherish exactly two pieces of information about their closest friends: the guy's nickname and what kind of car he drives. If they're really close, he knows the mileage.
Actually, most men list their wife as their closest friends. Women, in contrast, do not list their husbands even within the list of their top five best friends.
Let's think about that for a minute, shall we?
Apparently most women don't even think of their spouses as their friends - whereas guys, when asked to list their friends, apart from their wives, can think only of somebody they roomed with at college, somebody they talk to at work, and somebody they play tennis/golf/cards with maybe once a month. They are left having to put their wife on the list because she's the only other adult to whom they speak about issues independent of the weather, the news, and sports. It's either that or list their dentist as another adult with whom they have "regular contact."
And women? After age thirty-five or so (once we get our acts together--more about this in a later post) women are talking to women about everything all day long. I have five best friends and I've had those five best friends since I was about seventeen years old. Outside that small coven, I have about seven other women I would count as very close friends, and outside that group, a bunch more. There's not a subject we don't discuss. And we usually discuss all subjects within the space of one phone call, moving effortless from Aretha's hat at the inauguration, to Hillary as Secretary of State, to Caroline Kennedy, to Teddy's new wife, to how long you have to be married to somebody to no longer be considered the "new" wife, to whether you can still call yourself a Catholic if you haven't been to confession since 1986, to the transition from absolution to reconciliation and why it doesn't work, to whether religious wars will ever be effected by a purely sectarian political process, to a possible cruise down the Nile, to money, what happens if we lose our jobs, to old age, and back to the wearing of hats.
Hey, I'm not bragging; I don't even get out all that much. Plus I don't have young children. Those friends of mine who are still wandering around with small children attached to their sleeves have squadrons of other women they consider friends, in very much the same way as soldiers consider other soldiers their friends as long as they are all facing the same enemy. (You can see now why I'm not posting in Psychology Today's "Parenting" section-although, for the sake of full disclosure, I do have two stepsons who are at an absolutely adorable age: they've both finished law school. They are just so CUTE when they get to that attorney-passed-the-bar stage, it even beats BabyGap. Trust me.)
Look, I'm not saying that women are better at life than men or anything like that-but we do have a different way of creating our careers, making communities, forming ties, and forging our lives. And heaven knows (along with the devil and the creators of ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS) that we have a different sense of humor from the one possessed by most straight men. (More about THIS later, too.)
What I am saying is that what counts as normative behavior in this country is clearly still "Guy" behavior.
(I won't even designate it as "male" or "masculine" because "Guy" is what I really mean --and my bet is that you understand the distinction; I'll also talk more about the definition of "Guy Life" in a later post.)
If Guy behavior weren't the standard against which all humanity was judged, then the smartest, hippest, wittiest women I know wouldn't spend part of every day deciding whether they're beside themselves-or just being themselves.
As if that wasn't enough.
By Regina Barreca, Ph.D., Psychology Today
January 27, 2009
Why do fabulous women believe we're half brilliant, half crazy?
Practically every woman I've met secretly believes she's half crazy.
She'll tell you so, too, within the first hour or so of real conversation. Maybe that means it's not such a secret, but you know what I'm saying. She's worried about it. She's concerned about appearing too loud or too needy, too grabby or too greedy. There you are, talking to the most soign?e, charming, unselfconscious person you've ever met, and when you least expect it, she'll smile slyly, pause briefly, and blurt out "Oh, God, I don't know what you'll think of me, but I have to tell you...." She'll then regale you with a story that is both uproariously funny and gut-bustlingly inappropriate. It won't be a joke. It will be an actual story about her life, one that's kept her up at night.
It's how women become friends. We begin relationships by revealing our deepest secrets to one another on contact.
Before we've even exchanged surnames, women know whether our female companions are self-employed, working outside the home, single, partnered, happy, caring for their parents, wrestling with their children's needs, feeling a little insecure, not sleeping enough, having orthopedic issues, coping with anxiety-associated disorders, and/or in therapy. After we've shared a meal, we know their food allergies, their drink preferences, and whether they are taking estrogen orally or through a patch. Only after years, do we move on to basic informational details such as what kind of vehicle they drive, or how they've invested the whole $14.87 they've managed to save after 24 years of teaching, or writing, or editing, or working for a not-for-profit. (Not that I'm bitter.)
Men, in contrast, cherish exactly two pieces of information about their closest friends: the guy's nickname and what kind of car he drives. If they're really close, he knows the mileage.
Actually, most men list their wife as their closest friends. Women, in contrast, do not list their husbands even within the list of their top five best friends.
Let's think about that for a minute, shall we?
Apparently most women don't even think of their spouses as their friends - whereas guys, when asked to list their friends, apart from their wives, can think only of somebody they roomed with at college, somebody they talk to at work, and somebody they play tennis/golf/cards with maybe once a month. They are left having to put their wife on the list because she's the only other adult to whom they speak about issues independent of the weather, the news, and sports. It's either that or list their dentist as another adult with whom they have "regular contact."
And women? After age thirty-five or so (once we get our acts together--more about this in a later post) women are talking to women about everything all day long. I have five best friends and I've had those five best friends since I was about seventeen years old. Outside that small coven, I have about seven other women I would count as very close friends, and outside that group, a bunch more. There's not a subject we don't discuss. And we usually discuss all subjects within the space of one phone call, moving effortless from Aretha's hat at the inauguration, to Hillary as Secretary of State, to Caroline Kennedy, to Teddy's new wife, to how long you have to be married to somebody to no longer be considered the "new" wife, to whether you can still call yourself a Catholic if you haven't been to confession since 1986, to the transition from absolution to reconciliation and why it doesn't work, to whether religious wars will ever be effected by a purely sectarian political process, to a possible cruise down the Nile, to money, what happens if we lose our jobs, to old age, and back to the wearing of hats.
Hey, I'm not bragging; I don't even get out all that much. Plus I don't have young children. Those friends of mine who are still wandering around with small children attached to their sleeves have squadrons of other women they consider friends, in very much the same way as soldiers consider other soldiers their friends as long as they are all facing the same enemy. (You can see now why I'm not posting in Psychology Today's "Parenting" section-although, for the sake of full disclosure, I do have two stepsons who are at an absolutely adorable age: they've both finished law school. They are just so CUTE when they get to that attorney-passed-the-bar stage, it even beats BabyGap. Trust me.)
Look, I'm not saying that women are better at life than men or anything like that-but we do have a different way of creating our careers, making communities, forming ties, and forging our lives. And heaven knows (along with the devil and the creators of ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS) that we have a different sense of humor from the one possessed by most straight men. (More about THIS later, too.)
What I am saying is that what counts as normative behavior in this country is clearly still "Guy" behavior.
(I won't even designate it as "male" or "masculine" because "Guy" is what I really mean --and my bet is that you understand the distinction; I'll also talk more about the definition of "Guy Life" in a later post.)
If Guy behavior weren't the standard against which all humanity was judged, then the smartest, hippest, wittiest women I know wouldn't spend part of every day deciding whether they're beside themselves-or just being themselves.
As if that wasn't enough.
