Savvy Women

Last week I blogged about why women have sex. This week I’m going to write about whom they choose to have sex with.

I hope that doesn’t make me sound like a typical male chauvinist.

Just as a follow-up to last week’s Big Brother entry in which I briefly mentioned Deborah Tannen, linguist and author of numerous books on a variety of topics, including, most notably, the relationship between communication and psychology, I’ve decided to blog this twenty-nine minute interview between Tannen and a fawning Karen Allyn.

The video concludes with the two discussing Tannen’s next project (just released, under the title You Were Always Mom’s Favorite!)–a book about sisters–a relationship that Tannen describes as one that’s “extremely close, but it’s extremely competitive and hierarchical” just as is the relationship between mothers and daughters.

It’s the first Thursday in September, and that means I’ve been back in Cairo for exactly a week now.  That’s long enough for me to have developed a touch of homesickness.

I miss my family.  I miss Tex-Mex food.  I miss being in familiar places.  I miss being surrounded by people who speak a language I can fully understand.  I even miss TV, especially my favorite, summertime program, Big Brother, which I usually watch (quite obsessively, I might add) with my mother and grandmother. We have fun discussing the various houseguests, trashing those we hate, praising those we love, and making predictions about what’s going to happen next, who’s in jeopardy and who’s playing the game exceptionally well, stuff like that.

It’s Thursday, and that means the show is going to be televised this evening.  Someone is going to be voted out of the house today.  Once that happens, there’ll be only four houseguests left.

There’s unanimous feeling, on the blogs I read on a daily basis (see this one and this one), that Jeff is going to be evicted this evening.  Once that happens, three of the four remaining houseguests will be women.  Kevin will be the only man left.  That means there’s a seventy-five percent chance that a woman will win the $500,000 this year.

In my opinion, this scenario, where most of the surviving competitors happen to be females, validates Deborah Tannen’s theories about the communication styles of men and women.  Tannen, arguably the preeminent expert on this subject, feels that men are generally less inclined to be verbal and to use interpersonal communication as a tool to establish relationships.  Instead, they use it to project their own power in whatever social situation they happen to find themselves.  Women, on the other hand, use language to bond.  They use language to establish intimacy, not pecking order.

Of the men, Ronnie, Jessie, and Russell were the most “male” or “masculine,” as defined by Tannen, in their way of using language.  As a result, they came across as quite untrustworthy and were always subjects of suspicion.  These three prided themselves on being deceptive and were frequently engaged in verbal confrontations.  Communication, for them, was a tool used to bludgeon or manipulate the other players.

Jeff, I would say, was somewhat androgynous in his style of communicating, and Kevin, who openly stated that he was gay, was the most “female” of all the men in the way he verbally interacted with those around him.  As a matter of fact, Kevin appeared to spend most of his time, from the earliest episodes onward, huddled up with those of the opposite sex.

Big Brother seems to be the sort of game that favors those, of either gender, who can use language in a “female” way to establish the greatest number of loyal allies.

With that in mind, I’ll make my prediction about this year’s outcome:  Michele will win Big Brother 11.  She seems to understand the power that language plays in the game, and she is very talented in making those around her feel as if they are seeing the real Michele.  Honestly, though, I wouldn’t be surprised if Kevin ended up taking home the money.

The person least likely to win is Natalie.  Her way of using language is the most “male” of those left.

Let’s see how it ends up.