Bad news for men in the war of gender equality. New research shows that in the art of seduction, women can talk like sexy babies and remain appealing, but men cannot. MISANDRY AT ITS FINEST.
Albright College psychology professor Sarah Hughes — who is the lead author on the study that, last week, was published in The Journal of Nonverbal Behavior — found that women, when instructed to “speak as if they were trying to impress someone with whom they were romantically interested” quite easily slipped into a tone that (despite my earlier sexy baby joke) was lower and huskier than their normal tone of voice. Across the board, straight male subjects found this voice — which we will be calling the “Sexy Bridge Troll” — extremely appealing.
When men were similarly instructed to talk flirty, it — in the words of Hughes — “got a bit worse.” Women, if anything found the men less appealing. However, subjects did find men’s voices more attractive when they sounded particularly confident. According to Hughes, this plays into some good ol’ fashioned stereotypes that, when looking to shack up, men are more interested in a hot bod and face (apparently a sexy voice suggests this) and women are more into “earning potential.” Jokes on you, ladies. I’ve met a lot of overly confident bartenders who talk a good game, but actually make very little money.
Personally, I don’t think that confidence is the only thing that makes a man’s voice attractive, but the only thing I’m basing this on is the dream I had last night where I was observing a student-teacher conference with Alan Rickman (IDK, guys) and, at one point, the kid in the dream made a bad joke and Rickman laughed loudly before turning to me and stage whispering, “We laugh so they don’t learn that we hate them.”
It was maybe the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard.
Image via Shutterstock.