Modern Flirting
Girls Find Old Ways Did Have
Their Charms
By Laura Sessions Stepp
Washington Post Staff
Writer
Thursday, October 16, 2003; Page C01
It's Saturday night in front of the Regal Cinema, a hangout in Rockville, and
the high school girls are working it. A dark-haired beauty in tight low jeans stares at a guy, then walks over to
ask if he goes to her school. A reed-thin blonde strolls down the sidewalk in
high heels, hugging guys and checking over her shoulder to make sure her
boyfriend is tagging behind. A ninth-grader in a denim miniskirt exchanges
conversational barbs with a boy leaning against a post, then fakes a little
scream as the young man steps toward her and pulls up her skirt, putting her
panties on display. In the spirit of gender equality, many a young woman has discarded the slow,
subtle arts of flirtation and charm that females have used successfully on males
for millennia, and replaced them with quick, direct strikes: punching her number
into his cell phone memory, rubbing his shoulders, grinding with him on the
dance floor, hooking up in the spare bedroom at a party. The result has not been an especially happy one, some young women say, for
though they may snag the guy in question, it's only until he gets a better
offer. As the one being pursued, a woman used to be able to set the course and
pace of a relationship. As the pursuer, she relinquishes control, not to mention
the fun of being chased. "I see that aggressiveness all the time," says Helen Brown, a senior at
Stanford University. "Girls say I'm just as casual in this relationship as the
guy, but deep down they're hoping for something more real and longer
lasting." In another time, another world, Marisa Nightingale's grandmother had learned
to be a powerful woman, and to enchant men, under another set of rules. Nightingale, 35, remembers that Beatrice Liebowitz Nightingale Helpern, born
in 1907, saw no reason to change her mind, even in the loud and proud 1980s when
many women rejected graces and wiles as demeaning. Parents focused less on how
their daughters dated than on how education and careers would guarantee
independence. But Grandma Helpern used words like courtship, flirtation and charm. How
reactionary they must have sounded when Helpern was teaching them to Marisa and
her sister Elizabeth. Marisa, married and a media specialist in Washington, remembers her
grandmother's heresy in detail, even though she's a member of the generation
that worked hard to refute it. In fact, she looks at the social and sexual
behavior of some young girls today and wonders if they might have done well to
get the same advice she got. "It's important to be smart, accomplished and captivating," her grandmother
would say. "Are there any love interests in your life?" For Helpern, flirtation was simply one piece of a studied, and practiced,
presence. She bought her granddaughters dresses at Bloomingdale's. She read them
poetry and talked about current events. She introduced them to adults at parties
and then sent them off to work the room, practicing their conversational
skills. "She thought we should always be pursued," Nightingale remembers. " 'Don't
get too serious too soon,' she would say. 'The choice is yours.' " Looking back, Nightingale is aware of the criticism that these seductive arts
were rooted in powerlessness. Her grandmother, like so many women of that era,
depended on her cleverness, as well as her intelligence and looks, to secure a
husband and, through him, financial and emotional security. But Helpern, who graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the New Jersey College for
Women, now a part of Rutgers, never thought of herself as powerless,
Nightingale says. Everything she did, she did to enhance what she had, not make
up for something she was missing. And that was how she wanted her granddaughters
to think. "When you have someone who looks at you that way, you start looking at
yourself that way," Helpern's granddaughter says, summing up the result of her
politically improper lessons. A lot of girls nowadays wouldn't -- couldn't -- understand. To flirt is not to endorse old caricatures of eyelid-batting and feigned
helplessness. Instead, think of a woman signaling a man she wants to get to know using
gestures that are universal: the slightly upward side glance (remember Princess
Diana), the half-smile, the light touch of one finger on the forearm. And we're
talking lively, smart conversation on dozens of topics. "Any woman can flash
skin," says Southern author Ronda Rich, "but the most irresistible damsel is the
one who seduces and flirts with a sharp, knowledgeable mind." Think of stretching out disclosures over time while the man proves his
interest by praising her eyes, her smile, her mind. He does this so often that
he finds himself actually admiring these traits, even falling in love. Meanwhile
the woman decides whether to proceed. Young women risk more than their self-esteem by charging after a guy -- they
also risk losing the possibility of being cherished. Why should a man tell a
woman how gorgeous she looks in turquoise if she's already stroking his back?
Why should he even ask her out on a date? Four women in their early twenties, sipping mojitos at D.C.'s Cafe Atlantico,
share one response: He doesn't. "People don't date anymore," says Ligeia Donis. "Guys don't want to put out
the effort." "I have one friend, she's the only girl I know who dates different guys,"
says Carissa Illig. "Chivalry's dead," sighs Stephanie Nguyen. "I hope not. Please, no," Tracy Bortnick responds. These young women are second-year law students at Catholic University.
Perhaps the trends they identify are different among young adults not in
college? They're not, according to a Rutgers University report called "Sex Without
Strings, Relationships Without Rings." David Popenoe, former behavioral sciences
dean, and social historian Barbara Dafoe Whitehead conducted focus groups of
non-college men and women around the country and found that they "reject
traditional courtship as a way of finding out about a person's character. They
see dating as a 'game,' full of artifice and role-playing." They enjoy casual sex or they live together. Absent the threat of pregnancy
and disease, they are under little pressure to take it slow even -- and here's
the catch -- when the woman privately thinks they should. Many men have stopped
feeling responsible for relationships, the Rutgers study and others suggest. "This mating culture is oriented to men's appetites and interests," Popenoe
and Whitehead say. Wait a minute, says Mark Ippoliti, a 26-year-old publishing assistant. Not
all men want to move fast. Ippoliti, who works for Penguin Group (USA) in Manhattan, got a call a few
weeks ago from a young woman he knew vaguely in college. They went out for a
drink and "we got close quickly. I wanted to go casual, but she's very
aggressive and frank about what she wants, so I find myself adjusting on the
fly." They now see each other regularly and talk on the phone almost every day
-- her idea, not his. "I would like to go out on three or four dates before something happens," he
says. "The most fun part of a relationship is finding out about a person. I like
courting someone, trying to be romantic. It's harder to do that if you do it all
the first week." One reason flirtation has disappeared is that couples today often start out
as pals. By the time a young woman starts going out with, hanging with, or
seeing, a young man, she is already so familiar with him that flirting may seem
unnecessary. So what tools do she and her sweetheart use to negotiate the dance? The computer, for one thing, a machine devoid of tone of voice, gesture,
facial _expression_, pheromones and all the other mysterious messages that go back
and forth in person. "You don't talk to the person, you IM him," says high school senior Paige
Nichols, hanging out at her local Starbucks with three Arlington
girlfriends. Even in such impersonal discourse as instant messaging you choose your words
carefully, preparing for a possible rejection. "It sounds cheesy to say, 'Will you go out with me?' " says Julia Gick. "You
might say, 'What's up with us?' " If there is something "up with us," you may
not be boyfriend and girlfriend, Maura Cassidy continues. "Maybe you say, 'We
have a thing,' " says Cassidy. "Then when you break up you can say it wasn't
anything." Gick recently acquired an etiquette book from her parents and shared it with
her friends, chuckling over its clear conventions about dating: "Can you imagine
a guy coming up and saying, 'How's the weather? And would you like to go to the
spring dance?' " Three of these girls have what old fogies would call boyfriends. They go out,
usually in the company of friends, and pay their own way. Everything, including
clothing, is so casual that when a girl puts on a dress or skirt and makeup,
guys notice, these girls concede. But woe to the guy who starts paying serious
attention to that girl or any other, for his guy friends will rib him, according
to Gick. "They'll say, 'How's your wife?' " They'll be no kinder to his "wife." Should
she insist on regular rituals and commitment, these girls say, the guys will tag
her as "high maintenance." And when her boyfriend goes somewhere without her, she'll worry about the
advances of other girls. She may have gained equality but she's lost power. Animals are hard-wired to flirt in order to attract, then judge, a mate.
Experiments on rats have shown, for example, that when traditional courtship
rituals between the males and females are inhibited, reproduction falls off. Of
course human beings have made up other reasons to flirt -- we turn on the charm
to get a promotion, to raise our spirits or those of someone else -- but
flirting to seduce is organic, whether we're aware of it or not. "A woman doesn't drop her handkerchief anymore, but she may drop her Palm
Pilot," says anthropologist David Givens. "The end of it all is to have more of
our own species." Monica Moore, an evolutionary psychologist at Webster University in St.
Louis, has identified as many as 50 different signals a woman may give to entice
a man to come closer for her inspection. She wishes more women understood
flirting's protective power, bestowed by nature because females are the ones who
bear children and have more to lose by making a bad choice of mate. Young women of the middle and upper classes did set the course of
relationships prior to the 1920s, according to Beth Bailey, professor of
American studies at the University of New Mexico. A young man would arrive at
the home of a young woman and offer his card. She might see him or she might
not. If the courting progressed, the couple might advance to the front porch,
always under the eye of watchful parents. Then came the automobile and the invention of dating. Bailey writes in her
book "From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America,"
that when men took women out in a car and spent money on them, they expected
something in return: a woman's full attention, submissiveness, even sex. Men,
and not the women they dated, were now in control. This equation held straight
through to the last third of the 20th century, when feminism and the sexual
revolution started to shake things up. In Bailey's view, the old gender-specific roles didn't prepare women or men
for marriage particularly well. Here's how fast the generations can change: "My mom says you should never
have to depend on a man for money," says Paige Nichols, the Arlington senior.
"She said I didn't have to be with a guy to be valued. I was afraid to have a
boyfriend because I was afraid she'd get mad." Her friends at Starbucks all nod knowingly. They've heard the same questions
and admonitions: Why do you need a boyfriend? Don't get wrapped up in a guy. You
have all the time in the world to learn about relationships. Such parental warnings ignore the undeniable tug of romance, leaving girls to
seek love without guidance except, perhaps, the dictate to "Just say no" to
sex. Some mothers, like Sarah Brown, concede the dilemma. Brown is mom to three
daughters, including Helen, the senior at Stanford, and runs the National
Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. "It offends me to say to girls that you have to look good, learn how to
flirt, how to walk, in order to compete," she says. On the other hand, parents
need to say something. "I don't think any mother says, 'Here's how to be sexual
in a way that is fun, appropriate and will get you what you want, a
relationship.' " Absent that guidance, says Brown, young women rely on mimicking
what other girls do (or say they do) and what they glean from music and the
media. Are they really better off watching a barely clad 22-year-old Christina
Aguilera making love to a mike stand at a concert? Or signing on to
BarBitches.com, which promises advice on how to "properly conduct a hook-up from
start to finish"? Or following the advice of that babe bible, Cosmo, which in
its October issue says, "Giving him access to what makes you tick shows that
you're friendly and puts him at ease"? Not all young women have abandoned the feminine arts. Law student Illig is
one of those women for whom flirting comes as naturally as breathing. Voted
"class flirt" as a high school senior in Buffalo, she continues to charm men
with her big smile and easy conversation, sometimes to the point of having to be
pulled out of her favorite clubs late at night by Donis, her law school
roommate, who just wants to go home. The more diffident Donis captivates men with her dark eyes just as her
Spanish forebears did. "Eye sex," she calls it. These law students talk wistfully about what seem like relics of the past:
love letters, long face-to-face conversations, doorbells. "My mom talks about having a date in the afternoon and another date in the
evening," Illig sighs. "Girls would love that." Girls can have it, says Caitlin Colmes Davis, if they work at it. Davis, a 24-year-old assistant manager at Zagat Survey, grew up near Boston
where "we never dated in high school. We'd hang out at each other's houses, see
each other at parties. If you liked a guy, no one thought twice about making the
first move." Then she landed at Tulane University in New Orleans where, during her first
week, a Southern fraternity boy called to ask her to a football game. Her
roommate advised her to shed shorts and T-shirts for a cocktail dress. She did,
and got asked out again and again. She joined a sorority of mostly Southern belles who gave her other tips:
Don't call guys back right away. Encourage them, when you first go out, to talk
a lot about themselves. Wear blue; it matches your eyes. Learn something about football. For a brief period she dated a Yankee. "He wanted me to come over to his dorm
and watch movies, or meet him at a party. The Southern guys would go out of
their way to borrow a car and pick me up." She leaves no doubt which approach
she preferred. "It was nice to be treated like a woman." When she moved to Manhattan after graduation, Davis started sharing the
Southern courtship ways with her Northern friends. "Men and women have
differences, and they should use what they have to their advantage," she'd say.
"It's all about respecting yourself." She introduced her pals to Ronda Rich's book "What Southern Women Know (That
Every Woman Should)." They embraced Rich's approach to life as something they'd
been missing. "Flirting is the great equalizer," Rich, a marketing consultant, said in an
interview from her home in Gainesville, Ga. "A woman not considered a great
beauty can skillfully employ charm." Romantic flirting, like social flirting, "makes other people feel good about
themselves and about you," she continued. "It acts as kindling in a
relationship, producing a slow, sure, hot fire. When you cut to the chase
instead, there's not much of a fire." Rich is adamant that flirting and independence can thrive side by side. Davis
agrees. Her boyfriend of three years is in law school at the University at
Virginia. He asked her to move to Charlottesville and she said no, her work was
too compelling. So he joined her last summer in New York, and now that he's back
in Virginia they take turns visiting each other on weekends. Courtship is not easy under these conditions, she says. "It's hard to separate career and life independence from romantic
independence," she says. "I have friends who excel in their jobs and have money,
friends and family, but they struggle with dating. Either they act as if they
need no one in their lives or they need a defined relationship from Day
One." Davis tempers her toughness with acts of tenderness that she picked up from
her grandmother, Dorothy Colmes. When she and her boyfriend are separated, she surprises him with little notes
and packages. When they're at a party she catches his eye and gives him the
dazzling smile she has been practicing since her days at Tulane. And occasionally, she'll wink at her boyfriend, just as her grandmother
winked at her grandfather for 61 years.
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