Pull up a chair...

Every weekday morning, I get to work/school before the building I need to be in is unlocked. So, I go sit in the lounge in another building and wait out the 30 minutes kicked back in front of the fireplace, pretending to do work. Today, two other people had the same idea. The lounge has comfy chairs and couches and little coffee tables, and these two were sitting at one of the chair-couch-table clusters. The girl was sitting primly on the couch, legs crossed, hands tucked under one leg, and she'd squished herself tight up against the arm of the couch. The boy had melted himself in one of the chairs, legs spread wide, arms flung out over the sides, head laid back. It all reminded me of an article I read a while back, which of course I can't find now, about the differences in the way that girls and boys sit, and why.

Girls: We sit with our legs crossed or close together. It's proper, its appropriate. We are taught, whether directly or indirectly, to take up the least amount of space possible. We usually jam ourselves as close to one end of the couch as possible. We wouldn't want to make someone uncomfortable by having to sit awkwardly next to us! We don't let limbs overflow from the sides of chairs, we don't kick our legs out to encroach on others' space. And god forbid we expose ourselves in any way! Look at a woman sitting somewhere sometime. She'll probably have her legs crossed, to hide her "you-know-what", and her arms positioned in a way to cover "the girls". And her back straight, of course. It's the whole "seen and not heard" idea, only "seen" as little as possible as well. You know, ladylike.  

See how proper and reserved women are? ("Morning News" by Jack Vettriano)

Boys: They sit, splayed out, taking up as much space as possible. They are comfortable. Confident. They own that couch, dammit. They're slid way down on the seat, laying back, legs spread wide, arms up on the back of the chair. Or they're sitting backward on the chair, or leaning forward with their elbows on their knees (which are spread wide again, of course). What girls try to hide, boys put on display. They have nothing to hide, and nothing to hide from. They're in charge. They're manly.

The interesting thing is though, I don't sit like a girl. I plop myself down right in the middle of my couch, and then I expand. Too bad if you wanted to sit there too, because I've managed to take up that entire middle cushion, and then some. Or I slide myself down into the chair so far that I may as well be laying down, prop my legs up on the table and put my hands behind my head.  

This is NOT how pretty girls sit. (Wow, I really looked like a little boy with that haircut!)

(I wonder if the way I sit says something about the way I was raised. Or maybe its the way my brain functions. My sexual orientation, maybe? Of course, it could also be that I'm just way too lazy to worry about being proper...)

Blurry picture from High School. Wasn't I so ladylike?

Why do you suppose we still do this? Why do any of us care? But really, its an unconscious thing. We sit the way we've been programmed (Nature? Nurture?) to sit, and we think it looks "weird' to see a girl sitting backward on a chair, or a boy with his legs crossed. Really, we do. Take a look around the room. If all you could see were black silhouettes, could you guess the genders of the people around you by how they're sitting?