In trying to charm women, the difference between the average American guy versus the average Italian guy is, in car terms, something like a used Dodge van versus a perfectly polished Maserati.
In verbal terms, that might be a “Hey, how’s it goin’?” versus a “Pardon me, beautiful lady, while I look into the friendliest eyes I’ve ever seen.”
Line 1 holds zero romance, but the heavily perfumed line just doesn’t come off the American tongue very gracefully. Yet, I have seen men in Italy cast this kind of spell at one woman so powerfully that it even bounced off and hit other women nearby as a kind of charm shrapnel, causing blushes all around.
I’ve seen this, but I have no clue how to accomplish it. I don’t know if the Italians teach this stuff in elementary school or what, but they’re naturals.
Yet, a study published in the journal Psychology of Men and Masculinity may hold some clues.
Researchers David Tager and Glenn E. Good of the University of Missouri at Columbia found Italian men to be much more of a pliable, less traditional sort than are American men.
Italian university men were quizzed on how strongly they agreed or disagreed with 11 masculine traits, such as winning, self-reliance, primacy of work, risk-taking, emotional control and power over women. But it turned out to be the Americans, surveyed on the same traits, who followed those characteristics more rigidly.
Thus, the researchers determined that the stereotype of the domineering, macho Italian male is unfounded. One stereotype did stand, however.
The Italians didn’t waver when it came to the playboy image, something that I think is a point of pride with them. And that’s why they are so dangerous in the competitive quest for women, because if they have the hormones working in concert with sensitivity, there is no stopping them.
More Top Picks Best Text To Speech Devices For Dyslexia
I’ve been to Italy a couple of times, and each time I felt like somebody’s pimpled cousin at a dance. The Italians dress with stunning panache, and they speak in a kind of music. And now we find out that they’re sensitive, and they want our women.
How are American men to compete with this?
I asked Karen Klages, a colleague who spends significant time in Italy, what it is about Italian guys that makes them so appealing. Once she got done swooning, here’s what she said, and keep in mind, this is a bright, no-nonsense professional who subscribes to reasoned feminist concepts such as, say, equal pay:
“They know how to make a woman feel like a woman. It doesn’t matter if you’re 25 or 75. It’s just a real appreciation for women. And it’s everybody from the cabdriver to the kid next to you in an espresso line.
“And when you pass them on the street, they look at you in the eye. They talk to you without making it seem like they’re hitting on you in some big, bad way.”
That sounds like post-feminism in a nutshell.
But I wonder, too, if it isn’t the feminism-battered American male psyche that has rendered American men virtual eunuchs when it comes to the art of charm. For so many years, we weren’t supposed to notice that women are women, so we just learned to keep it to ourselves.
And now we’re totally out of charm practice, and these Italian guys are purring with poetry, wearing scarves in summer and topping American men in sensitivity surveys.
So when it comes down to it, they actually are winning and gaining power over women. By giving up, by saying they don’t want to win, they win.
Spaghetti, anyone?
———-