Huh. I thought I was neurotic about every possible aspect of my self-presentation, but I find I have no idea at all whether my carriage and posture are masculine or feminine.
Hey heebie, which is longer, your first finger or your ring finger?
I can revert to a masculine carriage
I hear some species of fish can do that.
I have no idea what you're talking about. What do you do to be more feminine?
2: But that's probably mainstream, for one's carriage to match their gender.
3: 4th finger. I can't remember what that's supposed to mean, though.
I catch myself with my hand on my hip a lot, and presume I have a lot of "feminine" mannerisms from like, never being or having been around men.
In this neighborhood, it might be a problem to be seen as gay...or might not...but I have a lot of other characteristics that probably distract. Anyway, I am beloved, except by the teenagers, who should be in bootcamp anyway.
5: Hold my shoulders back slightly, instead of forward slightly. There's some hips and gait differences. It's hard to articulate.
Proudly upthrust bosoms is the male carriage, right?
I don't want to overstate it; probably most of everyone's body language is androgynous.
I thought women who were interested in making their boobs look perkier actually held their shoulders back more than men.
pwned by ned, who also adds "proudly upthrust bosoms"
4th finger. I can't remember what that's supposed to mean, though.
Fourth finger is which one? Fourth counting the thumb as 'one'? Fourth in from the pinky? Especially, I think we need you!
Longer ring finger than first finger means exposure to higher testosterone in utero. Means you're a bad-ass, or at least that's what I say it means about me.
I remember what the test in 3 means for guys, mostly because I have gay fingers.
most of everyone's body language is androgynous
I wouldn't say so. Women have to compensate for the weight of their breasts, and their center of gravity is lower, and all that tends to change how you hold yourself. Standing up straight with your legs wide apart tends to read as alarmingly masculine, on a woman.
Legs wide apart may be relevant here, as you can't really play sports well without your legs wide apart.
Fourth finger = ring finger, so I'm clearly bad-ass.
I have heard that having older siblings of the same sex primes the uterus to have more of that hormone, or something, for a younger sibling. There was a study my mom told me about, so I believe it was done rigorously but I never saw it.
Huh. 18 in response to
Standing up straight with your legs wide apart tends to read as alarmingly masculine, on a woman.
13, 17: What's with the equivalence being drawn between higher prenatal testosterone and bad-ass? That seems incompletely theorized.
16 is definitely part of it. (There was a post I did awhile ago about how holding a sporty posture gets you somewhere in being athletic, even if you're clueless, just because you're more ready to spring into action.)
In middle school someone told me I was crossing my legs the wrong way and I stopped doing it that way for probably ten years until I remembered that the feminine/communist/gay way to cross your legs is much more comfortable.
||
At what point is it unacceptable for an ex to still accidentally call and hang up? It's fucking *May*. Fucking delete me from your phone if your ass just can't seem to help itself.
(This has happened probably 5 times since the last time we broke up? So more than once a month.)
|>
Standing in anything but contrapposto (sp?) reads as masculine, depending on where you are. Also annoying, the feminine requirement to hang your head over sideways.
I am for the carriage of a Beaux Arts civic statue, which is upright and bold even though *actual* women at the time were expected to be not so. (Book on this. Marina Warner??)
24: The same thing happened to me on an 8th grade hockey team on the bench: "Only girls cross their legs that way, they do it to hide their pussies."
There is an enormous and highly flaky literature on the connection between prenatal testosterone, finger length, and all sorts of behavioral and physiological traits. As far as I can tell the take-home message should be "don't trust this stuff any further than you can throw it."
Which I suppose could be quite a ways, if you could use your 10' prehensile ring finger as a sort of atlatl.
dq, you need some relationship advice from television.
Yes, Sifu. A prehensile finger. That's unusual. Good one.
I just walked around and paid attention to how I walk/carry myself: how far my elbows are away from my body is part of it. I can't figure out quite what the gait difference is, without resorting to stereotypes.
24,27: I guess as a guy you're supposed to demonstrate how large and cumbersome your genitalia are.
25: You know she isn't just accidentally ass-dialing you, y/n?
31 made me snort involuntarily.
Yes, Sifu. A prehensile finger. That's unusual. Good one.
Heh, I was all set to make fun of that one.
At least twice it's been actual accidental ass dialing - I know bc I picked up. ("I'm so over you I dont have to ignore you!" Etc.) Other times she's hung up before I could answer. It does seem like a high frequency. Still, I dont care either way; just stop fucking calling me.
From 35:
males tending to swing their shoulders from side to side more than their hips, and females tending to swing their hips more than their shoulders.
Yes, I just got up and walked around my office and confirmed this. If I'm alone, my shoulders will definitely move more than my hips. If I feel like I'm conspicuous, I'd hold my shoulders still, and so my hips would sway slightly.
From 22:
He was tall, and since one study estimated that each inch of height corresponds to $6000 of annual salary in contemporary America, that matters.
Wow! Where's my $420000?
Oh, if that's what we're talking about, I suppose I'm fairly unfeminine. (Everyone can be surprised now.) I'll swing my hips if it occurs to me and I'm trying to look appealing, but I don't if I'm not thinking about it. (Or, I do it much less -- given that I'm not watching my ass, there's a limit to how much I know about my own gait.)
If I'm alone, my shoulders will definitely move more than my hips. If I feel like I'm conspicuous, I'd hold my shoulders still, and so my hips would sway slightly
I'm sure these lyrics appeared first in one of the filler tracks on a mid 70s ABBA album.
Ellen Page in the opening credits of Juno is a great example of the gay gait, which I suppose is considered masculine.
33: Cue the famous LBJ pants-ordering phone call:
Yeah. Now another thing, the crotch, down where your nuts hang, is always a little too tight. So when you make 'em up, give me an inch that I can let out there, because they cut me. It's just like riding a wire fence. These are alllmost...these are the best I've had anywhere in the United States. But when I gain a little weight they cut me under there, so leave me uhhh...you never do have much margin there, but see if you can leave me about an inch from the front of the zipper (at this point the President loudly belches into the phone) ends, right on under the back of my bunghole.
Ellen Page is everything-but-the-Advocate-interview known to be family, nay?
The thing about height and salary makes me want to kill people. Or buy some lifts. Or buy some lifts and beat someone to death with them. And then wear them to a job interview and earn more money.
Wearing a corpse to a job interview is a bad idea.
46 assumes a gender-neutral-singular-3rd "them." I'm ok with that, though.
It is a rainy day here and everyone has their umbrella. Umbrellas are so very frequently the examples in a sentence demonstrating the problems of gender-non-ambiguous 3s. Someone left their umbrella.
45: It really does suck. There's a junior lawyer I'm working with who's tiny -- maybe not quite 5' and under 100 lbs. I got called in to help her out on a case with a crazy judge, partially because I'm more experienced and things were getting wacky, but also partially because the judge was explicitly riding her about her lack of experience from the bench, and my supervisor figured that he'd be happier with someone who looked older. Going into court with her, people really do try to push her around in an unreasonable way. And she's tough, and pushes back -- she really does do fine against people giving her a hard time, but she gets a much harder time than I ever did, and I think it's the eight inches of height and 50 pounds of mass I've got on her.
delete me from your phone if your ass just can't seem to help itself.
Booty calls, amirite?
Yes, I just got up and walked around my office and confirmed this. If I'm alone, my shoulders will definitely move more than my hips. If I feel like I'm conspicuous, I'd hold my shoulders still, and so my hips would sway slightly.
So you walked around alone, covertly monitoring your gait... and then invited someone into your office and repeated the test? Weirdo.
It wouldn't be right to fake feeling conspicuous.
45: Oh my God, yes. Evidently she's very private, but, you know, she still walks in public. That is sufficient.
26: I'm pretty sure the beaux-arts-period lady was expected to be rigidly upright and symmetrical when seen from the front, and an s-curve (but still rigid) in profile. Of course, once her corset was removed, the lady would slither bonelessly to the floor, unable to rise without the help of a lady's maid.
Also annoying, the feminine requirement to hang your head over sideways.
This must be where I went wrong.
One of the things that I have to teach (kickboxing not philosophy), is to break a particular gendered* way of holding one's body and moving. Specifically a way of holding the shoulders and upper body that's closed rather than open, and a way of holding the feet and legs that is similar. Its both static posture and ways of moving. It's not particularly correlated with how 'femmy' or not people are in other ways, or even how much confidence they have, but some people shed it easily and some still move in a closed/tentative sort of way a long way down the line.
* largely, it doesn't break down strictly by sex, some men have the same issues.
54: This was always my theory about why some women have difficulty learning new sports after early childhood.
43: I was trying to explain this to Junie as we were idly specualting on the sexuality of a couple of young women out walking as we drove by, one of whom had a distinctly boi-ish gait. I was having a hard time articulating what the component parts are, but the shoulders and hips thing cover a good chunk of it (also combined with length of stride).
Counter point to the female "hang your head over sideways" thing: James Marsters as Spike did this constantly, to the extent that some fan-girl even put up a page devoted to pictures of Spike tilting his head and discussing the meaning of various amounts of tilt.
Arguably, Spike was the non-dominant part of Spuffy.
Men are perhaps meant to walk as (I believe) the Alexander Technique instructs us to: as if drawn forward by a string attached to the sternum.
as if drawn forward by a string attached to the sternum.
I am unable to visualize this except as performed by a mime.
Well, men are meant to be mimes. Seen, not heard, and frequently trapped in invisible boxes.
60.--Huh, we did that visualization exercise in at least one of my dance techniques. Other common metaphors: string attached to the top of your skull, your spine is a giant tree, your ribcage floats above your pelvis, your heel is driving all the way into the earth, your toes suck up the floor, etc.
Spike was totally the dominated fraction of Spuffy. Spike was Werther. Droopy Spike!
Until my mid-twenties, I could choose to walk like a boy well enough to fool lesbians who knew me (from behind, anyway). I still got cruised when walking through bad parts of town at night, but not as as combatively as when I was looking like a girl. Huh.
Seen, not heard, and frequently trapped in invisible boxes
Excellent, dq! Funny, but also captures the misery of male existence!
Back to the post:
One thing I really like about playing women's soccer, as opposed to coed soccer, is that I can revert to a masculine carriage, and it's expected and blends right in.
You feel conspicuous even playing sports with a masculine carriage if you're on a co-ed team? That seems odd.
re: 60/63
Yeah, I've heard lots of similar metaphors when I did a (tiny) bit of Chinese martial arts. That and imagining various parts of one's body supported by rubber balls. The French seem to be less metaphorical.
My invisible box is very rigid ... laydeez.
66: Other women aren't doing it as much. Men are around. I don't feel self-conscious about it - on the soccer field, I still play the sport the same way, but there's not a cohort of women all holding themselves in a masculine way.
I got it now -- the difference isn't in how you carry yourself, but that you blend in doing it. That makes much more sense than how I read it before.
examples
Your Spike-tilt link didn't work, sadly.
I tend to do the head-tilt, myself.
I tend to think of masculine and feminine postures less in terms of gait than in terms of what I want to call poses (but maybe properly called postures, just not particularly involving standing up straight and so on). The legging-crossing thing is well-known: women rarely cross their legs by heaving one leg up and resting the ankle across the knee of the other leg.
There's also the limp-wristed thing, an elbow bent, with wrist dangling. I catch myself doing this from to time and try to stop.
Is it women or men who are more likely to fold their arms across their chests? I'd been about to write that women do this, but there's a masculine pose involving folded arms as well that seems a bit different, perhaps with shoulders thrown back along with the folded arms.
54. A new field of cis-gendered cisgendered kinesiology beckons.
I post my 8 words
7 of them are correct
The 8th, a mistake.
20
What's with the equivalence being drawn between higher prenatal testosterone and bad-ass? That seems incompletely theorized.
A connection between abnormally high prenatal androgen levels and some masculine traits in women seems fairly well established. See here .
OT, but in the squaring your shoulders thread for a reason:
I realize this is late on a Wednesday night. I've been commenting up a storm this evening in part because I'm unsure what to do: I have now here a $2500 bill from the lawyer's office for my mom's estate for their putting together the final estate tax return this past April 15th.
Buh? 2500 dollars? Seriously? For preparing a tax return? (Which showed, as we knew, that we owe nothing, expenses having exceeded income.) Last August I sent them preliminary paperwork and paid an $800 or so bill for their review and prepping of the final return; I had an email exchange with the paralegal in which she said that unless anything untoward came up, it should be a straightforward and not terribly time-consuming matter.
I don't need to walk through details now; but does anyone besides me think that $2500 is really quite a bit much? I'd like some feedback prior to composing some kind of letter, the nature and tone of which I'm unsure of, some time in the next few days arguing for a reduction of the bill. I'm completely appalled.
Yes, I think it's a bit much. But I don't have any useful thoughts about how to communicate that to them. I have a bad habit of just paying things rather than putting in the time and energy to contest them.
78: My impulse is to just pay it and walk away cursing, but I don't think that's the right course of action here. 2500 dollars? Half of that would be my brother's money, anyway, so I have a responsibility to look after it.
Should other people tune in tomorrow, in the light of day, I'd appreciate further feedback.
IF I WERE YOU, I'd call before writing a letter, and just note that you were told that unless anything untoward came up, it should be a straightforward and not terribly time-consuming matter, and you aren't aware of anything untoward that came up, so you're surprised by the size of the bill. Then stop talking and let them explain. Ask questions as necessary. If you remain unsatisfied and they don't offer to reduce the bill, you can write a letter. But call first.
AND I WOULD SUGGEST you call the lawyer, not the paralegal.
Urple's suggestion is good.
Also note that lawyers often do negotiate down their bills; it's a common practice, not like asking the supermarket to charge you less per pound for broccoli or something. So be encouraged.
As to whether or not $2500 is in fact too high, there's no way of knowing without knowing a lot about the work that needed to be done, the lawyers involved, etc., and I don't think anyone here is an estate lawyer.
80: Okay. Thank you, urple. I didn't expect to be corresponding with the paralegal. It's actually the accountant or finance person (who signs the cover letter for the bills) that I'd be talking to.
I will mention that the bill provides a fairly detailed hourly breakdown, with attendant charges, of the time spent on various activities in connection with the preparation of the tax return, though this mostly reads like: "9.80 hours, reconciled this, reviewed that, conferred with accounting department, email correspondence, confirmed this other thing, checked with Registry of Deeds, assembled and collated correspondence, prepared letter to [parsimon], revised letter to [parsimon's brother], etc. etc."
I'm not sure how to argue with that.
I would call the lawyer, not the finance person.
83: Okay. After squinting at the paperwork for a few minutes, I realize that the person signing the bill's cover letter is actually the lawyer, not the finance person. It's a little weird, since the original lawyer left the firm last October or so, so I've never had any dealings with his replacement; we were never actually introduced even on paper.
I have one additional question about this: is it to be expected that I should pay legal fees for any discussion I have with the lawyer regarding the bill? It was already annoying enough that I was billed when I emailed the paralegal to ask when I might hear back about the preparation of the final estate tax return (Oh! She read my email and replied: $30!)
re: 74
I'm not sure what you mean, or what point you are trying to make.
I can revert to a masculine carriage
Throughout this entire thread I have been unable to interpret this as referring to anything other than a particularly butch sort of horse-drawn vehicle. A phaeton, say, or a curricle.
"Mr Eldridge visited us on Saturday, mamma, and he came in a most respectable and harmless landau, but Cecily tells me that she saw him in Town the next day and he had reverted to a more masculine carriage."
I have had the same thoughts about the "masculine carriage", mainly accompanied by mental images of Prince Harry, trundling down the Mall after his brother in a camo-painted, solid-wheeled version of his brother's bridal landau.
re: 87/88
" ... and here comes Prince Harry in the TopGear-MaxPower 2011 State Coach."
I was delighted to see that the Scottish State Coach is different from the other state coach in that a) it's painted a dour Presbyterian black, rather than gold and b) it has a roof to keep the rain off.
88: I am picturing a State Hussite War Wagon here. With perhaps an Afghan captive standing behind the driver, muttering "Remember, Harry, thou art pissed".
On the posture/dance technique subthread, I heard the following quote recently: "About six months in, Pina [Bausch] came over to me and said "You need to get more CRAZY". And that was all she said to me in 20 years".
(Actually this reminded me of quotes attributed to the great football managers - they never quite come across as good as they probably sounded at the time. Leadership reduces to words as well as dancing does.)
On the state coach issue, completely off topic, this weekend a gay acquaintance of mine confessed to harbouring fantasies about Prince Harry.
re: 90.2
Mullah Omar, maybe? He has the eye thing going, like Žižka.
92: would be an excellent idea, but I'm pretty sure we haven't captured him yet.
94: It has a touch of Alexander about it. If he was alive, that is. If it's just his head, it's more Conan.
...actually, Alexander knew what he was doing with Afghans; he'd have ordered Harry point blank to go out to Helmand and not come back until he'd married the daughter of some influential local sheikh.
re: 95
Probably have kept the ginger Windsor in reserve for somewhere larger/richer; and sent off some minor scion of the Saxe-Coburg dynasty to do the deed.
I will mention that the bill provides a fairly detailed hourly breakdown, with attendant charges, of the time spent on various activities in connection with the preparation of the tax return, though this mostly reads like: "9.80 hours, reconciled this, reviewed that, conferred with accounting department, email correspondence, confirmed this other thing, checked with Registry of Deeds, assembled and collated correspondence, prepared letter to [parsimon], revised letter to [parsimon's brother], etc. etc."
I'm not sure how to argue with that.
That's why you don't argue with it, you just note that you were told that unless anything untoward came up, it should be a straightforward and not terribly time-consuming matter, and you aren't aware of anything untoward that came up, so you're surprised by the size of the bill. They'll either tell you about some irregularities that occurred, or say, "yeah, this does seem a little high, I'm have to check with the paralegal about what took so much time" (in which case you'll likely get a reduced bill), or they'll explain that this is a pretty typical bill (I honestly have no idea). The last would just mean that you and the paralegal have wildly different ideas about what "not terribly time-consuming" means, and if that's the case you ought to at least make them aware of that, and tell them you really wish you've been told explicitly if the bill was going to be anywhere near that much. They might offer to reduce it, or at the very least apologize for poor communication, and you'll be more clear at that point on how you want to proceed. (Telling them: "this is too high for me to pay right now" might do more good than you think--they're extremely unlikely to sue you to collect any unpaid bill, so an offer to settle for what you think is fair will probably be better received than you might expect. (Or let them make the offer.))
I have one additional question about this: is it to be expected that I should pay legal fees for any discussion I have with the lawyer regarding the bill?
No.
96: sharia law, remember? Harry's allowed up to four wives at a time. (Alexander married three wives for dynastic reasons: Roxana, and a couple of Persian princesses).
Anyway, Op ENTIRETY's on - Afghan's the main effort for the Army, and that should include their involvement in matrimonial stabilisation operations.
Vaguely related to the OP - the Women's World Cup (soccer) is in Germany this summer, and there is much angst among fans of the U.S. women's national team (USWNT) about how it will do. The glory days of the USWNT winning the 1999 World Cup are far behind us. The US won the Olympic tournament in Beijing but Olympic success does not seem to translate well to the World Cup. Maybe the team members (I think they're announcing the World Cup team this week) should undergo a posture check of some kind....
re: 98.1
Ah, that makes perfect sense, although not sure how the big ginger beard is going to go down.
Big ginger beards are quite the thing in that part of the world - a lot of old men dye their beards with henna.
big ginger beard
Making jokes about Fergie's size is just cruel.
re: 101
Here, rather than there. I was thinking of the Islamists-under-the-bed right-wing press.
FWIW, I see quite a lot of old henna bearded Asian men around London [and Oxford]. It's a strange look coming from a culture in which old men don't go in for that sort of thing.
Thanks again, urple. I'm going to give it a couple days before I phone, so as to be sure I can keep any peevish tone out of my voice (I specifically told the paralegal that I needed to keep expenses down, was considering farming the tax return out to a local accountant, and given that the law firm already had the relevant financial information in hand, would this been an expensive affair? blah blah blah mutter bleah)
Another vote for Urple's approach. And I wouldn't worry too much about sounding peevish -- I mean, be as polite and reasonable as you can, but if you're asking for the bill to be reduced, you're probably peeved about it and they know you are.
105: Heh. Yeah, but I don't like the sound of my own voice, or the way my brain semi-short circuits, when I'm peevish. I'd also intended to have one last bit of work done by them, but not if it's going to cost another thousand freakin' dollars or something for christ's sake! The total bill for settling an estate that had absolutely no *issues* to be resolved, no contested assets, no tangled legal arrangements or quarrelsome legatees, is now approaching $10K. You've gotta be fucking kidding me. (See? Right now I'm really, really annoyed about the whole thing, and it shows. Better wait before I talk to them.)
I don't like the sound of my own voice, or the way my brain semi-short circuits, when I'm peevish.
Maybe you can do your best Bullitt impression on the phone. Then you'll be Steve-ish.