American Women Learn Potency of Flattery

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5329, 15 February 1947, Page 3

American Women Learn Potency of Flattery

Young American women are recliscovgring the patency of flaltery. They are careful never to seem cleverer than their eseorts, even if this ioeans letting their friends think them ntupid. Forty per eeitt. of a large n'um'ber of women college sludents interviewed by a wriler for "The American Journal of Sociology" admitted to having* ieliheralely "played dum'b" when they went out wfth men friends, in order to swrell the egos of their eseorts. The studcnts said they coneealed their aq^demic achievements as if they were disfigurements, deliberately •lost games and arguments when they saw they were in danger of winning, and in general prctended to be hopelessly befuddled by financial, technical and intellectual problems. Some of the various tricks revealed by the girls Avere illuminating. "One cf the nicest techniques is to spell long words incorrectly once in a while. My hoy friend seems £0 get a great lcic'k out of it. and writes back, 'Honey, yo^i c.erfainly don't know how to spell'." "When a girl aslcs me what marks I got last term I answer, 'Not so good — only an A.' When a hoy asks the same question I say very brig'htly and with a note of surprise, 'Imagine I got an A!' " The crux of these girls' problems was whether to be feminine and helpless, oj completely modern, and often the pressure in both directions is extreme. One of the g'irls sums up the problem by saying, "*1 sometimes play dumb on dates, 'hut it leaves a bad taste, and my emctions are complicated. Part of me emjoys puttihg something - over -on an unsuspecting male, hut this sense of superiority over hirn (is mixed with a fee'ling of guilt for nly hyprocisy. "Towards 'The Date' I feel some contempt, beca'use he is taken in hy my technique, 01*, if I like the boy, a kind of maternal condescension. "At times I resent him. Why isn't ■he my superior in all ways in which a .inaii should excel, so that I could be my natural self ? What am I fioing here with him, anyhow ? S'lumming?" . ' •X