interaction with others is strictly dictated by your place in the pecking order. I watched my father’s behavior change from commanding to subordinate depending on the rank of the person he was talking to. He was adjusting his behavior constantly, and so was everyone else. It took me years to figure out the codes of behavior, and to understand why he wasn’t the same person at home and when he was out mixing with other soldiers.
This notion of hierarchy exists throughout the male kingdom (even in animals, hence the term alpha male ). Whether they’re sanitation workers or chief executive officers, men are innately conscious of being in a “one-up” or “one-down” position in any given situation. 16 This fuels a competitive drive to hide vulnerabilities that could lessen their status in the eyes of others. Rising above vulnerability in all aspects of life is a fundamental principle of male culture, which is reinforced by movie and TV characters all the time. Women, on the other hand, proactively seek help and input from others. Sometimes they even ask for help when they don’t need it, just to make someone else feel good.
In a nutshell, if men measure self-worth by achieving status and doing so independently, women measure self-worth by the quality of relationships they’ve established in their lives, starting with their own families.
For Men, Help Is a Four-Letter Word
T HESE kinds of gender differences impact how people shop. I saw this in action recently at an old-fashioned hardware store. A young woman was shopping with her husband in the plumbing section. One of the old guys who worked there came shuffling down the aisle. The woman stopped him, motioned to her husband, and asked the employee where they could find size D batteries.
The man in the apron pushed up his thick glasses, ignored the woman, looked directly at her husband, and said, “You’re looking for batteries? Do you know you’re in the plumbing aisle?”
The husband shot a look of disgust at his wife, said curtly, “We don’t need any help, we’re fine,” and waved the man off.
Then he turned to his wife. “You made me look like an idiot in front of that guy!”
She looked startled. “But we already looked for the D batteries and couldn’t find them—what’s the big deal? That’s what the guy is here for!”
Her husband shot back, “I can’t believe you humiliated me like that,” and strode off without a backward glance, leaving her standing in the middle of the aisle.
Without realizing it, she had emasculated her husband. In his mind, she made him look stupid in front of another man. The fact that this happened with a perfect stranger who was theoretically a subordinate (an employee hired to serve customers) made no difference. The husband looked like he didn’t know what he was doing in a bastion of manliness—a traditional hardware store—and that was cause for humiliation. Asking for help would have been a lastresort for him, not a point of entry. He was happy to search for the product on his own, even if it took longer to do so.
And that’s why the notion of a man making it all the way to the top, as his own man beholden to no one—think Clint Eastwood—is the ultimate idea of success in masculine culture. You’ll start noticing that men’s magazines and mass-market advertisements (particularly automotive and consumer electronic ads, and those big lighted ads you see at airports) bear this out. In parallel, you have the phenomenon of stores cutting back on employees to save money but not realizing this may be driving away their women customers, who want human help. Like the young woman in the hardware store, women view asking for help as an efficient way to get something done. This kind of gender difference drives our preferences in where and how we want to be sold things.
Women are more likely to seek human interaction in almost any type of transaction. In a recent Wharton/Verde Group study, researchers found
This notion of hierarchy exists throughout the male kingdom (even in animals, hence the term alpha male ). Whether they’re sanitation workers or chief executive officers, men are innately conscious of being in a “one-up” or “one-down” position in any given situation. 16 This fuels a competitive drive to hide vulnerabilities that could lessen their status in the eyes of others. Rising above vulnerability in all aspects of life is a fundamental principle of male culture, which is reinforced by movie and TV characters all the time. Women, on the other hand, proactively seek help and input from others. Sometimes they even ask for help when they don’t need it, just to make someone else feel good.
In a nutshell, if men measure self-worth by achieving status and doing so independently, women measure self-worth by the quality of relationships they’ve established in their lives, starting with their own families.
For Men, Help Is a Four-Letter Word
T HESE kinds of gender differences impact how people shop. I saw this in action recently at an old-fashioned hardware store. A young woman was shopping with her husband in the plumbing section. One of the old guys who worked there came shuffling down the aisle. The woman stopped him, motioned to her husband, and asked the employee where they could find size D batteries.
The man in the apron pushed up his thick glasses, ignored the woman, looked directly at her husband, and said, “You’re looking for batteries? Do you know you’re in the plumbing aisle?”
The husband shot a look of disgust at his wife, said curtly, “We don’t need any help, we’re fine,” and waved the man off.
Then he turned to his wife. “You made me look like an idiot in front of that guy!”
She looked startled. “But we already looked for the D batteries and couldn’t find them—what’s the big deal? That’s what the guy is here for!”
Her husband shot back, “I can’t believe you humiliated me like that,” and strode off without a backward glance, leaving her standing in the middle of the aisle.
Without realizing it, she had emasculated her husband. In his mind, she made him look stupid in front of another man. The fact that this happened with a perfect stranger who was theoretically a subordinate (an employee hired to serve customers) made no difference. The husband looked like he didn’t know what he was doing in a bastion of manliness—a traditional hardware store—and that was cause for humiliation. Asking for help would have been a lastresort for him, not a point of entry. He was happy to search for the product on his own, even if it took longer to do so.
And that’s why the notion of a man making it all the way to the top, as his own man beholden to no one—think Clint Eastwood—is the ultimate idea of success in masculine culture. You’ll start noticing that men’s magazines and mass-market advertisements (particularly automotive and consumer electronic ads, and those big lighted ads you see at airports) bear this out. In parallel, you have the phenomenon of stores cutting back on employees to save money but not realizing this may be driving away their women customers, who want human help. Like the young woman in the hardware store, women view asking for help as an efficient way to get something done. This kind of gender difference drives our preferences in where and how we want to be sold things.
Women are more likely to seek human interaction in almost any type of transaction. In a recent Wharton/Verde Group study, researchers found
Similar Books
