"Feminine" Laughter: Part 2

            It is more than just the use of laughter that separates a man’s interactions with other men and a woman’s interactions with other women.  It is how the laughter arises from each situation.  Men tend to tell basic jokes or display their wit.  Ever been in the presence of a large group of men when one tells the first joke?  It never ends there.  After a polite chuckle from the others, a second member of the group will begin “Have you ever heard the one about the barber who…”  A third joke will follow, and then a forth, and so on.  Instead of laughing and enjoying each other’s jokes, it now has become a “joke-off,” a competition to see who has the funniest joke and will walk away as being thought the cleverest of the group.

            Conversely, women do not just tell jokes.  They tell stories.  Whether it ranges from the simple klutz moment of dropping all their books down the stairs that morning to the hilarious vacation they had with Uncle Joe four years ago, the laughter caused here comes from an actual event, not just a joke or sarcastic remark.  Either way, these stories are personal to the teller and in turn, to the receiver.  Perhaps this is why women laugh more, or are more likely to laugh in another woman’s presence.  Their laughter comes from a source that is meaningful to all parties involved and is much deeper than a bar joke.  Through these stories, women can share little tidbits about their lives to one another.  Even though laughter is not the start of the connection between two or three women, it is what allows that connection to grow.  If a woman were to not laugh at another’s embarrassing story, they most likely would not continue their acquaintance with one another.  It is laughter that allows them to feel comfortable and precedes the exchange of more inside information about their lives.  Again, men do not feel the need for laughter to be present when hanging out with their “best-bud.”  But girls, we cannot deny we need laughter.  In this I again repeat:  laughter is most decidedly feminine.  We let men use it, but only a woman, or more specifically a group of women, are able to use it to its full potential.

"Feminine" Laughter: Part 1

A thought just occurred to me as I was sitting in the library:  why did I choose to write about women and laughter, not men and laughter?  Yes, it may have something to do with the fact I am a woman, and will admit to being a very strong-headed, stubborn one at that.  But as I was looking over my blog posts, the one about the three girls in the cafeteria struck me as peculiar.  Not because it is unique, but because I have witnessed that exact episode replicated time and time again with three or more girls in multiple places across campus.  When there are several girls in close proximity, you can guarantee that laughter will be heard within three minutes of their conversation starting.  Even if they have never met before, the girls will undoubtedly giggle and laugh as the conversation progresses.

            For some reason, I have serious doubt if this would hold true for men.  If I put three men together right now, I will bet you a good ten or twenty minutes will pass before one of them releases as much as a chuckle, let alone a full blown laughter attack.  To them, laughter would seem a sign of weakness or incompetence.  They would not want to come off as being the lesser guy in the group, especially if they have never met before.  But for women, laughter is a bridge that can cross any boundary, including previous knowledge of the other.  I have shown how laughter works as a bonding mechanism.  This is even truer when women are the context of the situation.  A woman who is surrounded by other women and who does not laugh at all would appear stoic and unfriendly.  This is because there is something decidedly feminine about laughter.  Laughter is a necessary part of our interactions with one another.  I am pretty sure I have never had a conversation with one of my close friends in which there was not at least some chuckle or giggle expressed.  Even in a serious or sad conversation, we will cope with it through laughter.  Men, on the other hand, can go an entire day without laughing and probably not notice.  I will not say men do not need laughter in their lives. We all do.  But women employ laughter much more frequently and rely on it much more heavily than their opposing gender does.

Txting Laughter

So we are all attached to our phones nowadays.  As I was texting one of my guy friends and one of my girl friends, I began to notice a distinct difference in their texts, especially ones that were sarcastic.  The guy just said whatever was on his mind and left it at that.  Texts such as “That’s a dumb idea” were standard, and I did not take any offense to these remarks as I knew he was kidding.  On the other hand, when the girl would text me some sarcastic remark such as “I am always right,” it would always be followed by an “lol” or “haha.”  At times if she left it without a clarifying word, another text would quickly follow that would say “just kidding ;)” or “love ya.”

The common belief is that girls are just acting “girly” and the guys are being “tough.”  But what exactly is the function of a girl’s “laugh out loud” addition to the end of every sarcastic comment?  It may have something to do with the “girly,” definition, but not quite.  Instead, girls add a lol or a haha because they know how easily their feelings are hurt, so they do their best to avoid hurting another’s.  This goes against the previous idea that girls cannot be direct or that girls say things in roundabout manners, unlike guys who get right to the point and do not waste their time with extra nonsense words.  But to girls, these extra laughter remarks are not nonsense.  They are a sign of an individual who is acutely aware of another’s feelings.  Even if the only reason a girl adds that is to prevent her friend from getting mad at herself, she is still acting in a positive manner, attempting to prevent an argument from occurring.  When guys forgo a clarifying laughter symbol, it is not because they think the person on the receiving end is tough, but because they just do not think through all the ramifications their statement could have.

Girls are sometimes criticized for over-analyzing situations.  But many times, this is a much better attribute to have then being thick-skulled and never considering the implications of one’s actions.

Crossing the line??

     As I have mentioned previously, there are situations in which laughter can form bonds and at other times, split people apart.  So is this feature of laughter, one in which casing groups to be formed, a positive or negative quality?  I would like to think laughter as only a positive quality, bringing joy and peace to everyone who hears it.  But we have to admit there are times in which laughter is unwarranted or seems excessive to the point of distancing others.

     It seems as though it is the situation rather than the intonation of the laughter that causes this break in social groups.  My suite could all be laughing and having a good time together, and even if one of us smirked or had a quiet laugh to ourselves, it would not cause any unease.  On the other side, if there was a disagreement and everyone was arguing and then the laughter came about, a different reaction would take place. The individual or individuals who laughed would have separated themselves through their actions.  A further example of this occurred the other day.  One of my friends was texting another and occasionally letting out a small chuckle.  Some might say I should have felt out-of-the-loop or get upset as I was not privy to their secret conversation.  However, quite the opposite occurred.  I actually felt a small happiness that she was able to laugh while in my presence in complete confidence.  If there had been tension, I am pretty sure my reaction would have been different.  But due to our friendship and companionable silence we were sharing, her laughter seemed fine and even was welcomed.

     Although her laughter was accepted in this situation, we still have not decided on whether or not there is a "line" that needs to be drawn about when laughter's grouping mechanics move from positive to negative.  Does there only need to be a little tension in order to make laughter inappropriate?  Or is it more complex than that?  I tend to agree with the latter in which each laughing scenario needs its own individual analysis in order to be deemed positive or negative.

Coping With Disappointment

            When you have been working towards an event for months, with no other object on your mind, you may become fixated on the outcome of that event.  When it is not just you working towards this event, but an entire team, it means so much more to everyone involved.  The event in this case was the Ivy League Indoor Heptagonal Championships, and the team was my track team.  We had trained for months and months and put it all on the line last weekend.  Unfortunately the result was not what we had hoped for.  Out of the eight teams there, Yale finished eighth.

            Emotionally, we were all pretty much a wreck.  It was not surprising that many of the girls had tears in their eyes.  However, a few, when asked about their performance, could only laugh.  Now at first glance, it may be seen as though they did not care about the results from this weekend.  Some might even call them indifferent.  But this was not the case.  They were using their laughter as a coping mechanism for helping them through such a disappointing weekend.  Most of us were in shock at just how horribly we had performed.  All the pent up excitement and tension leading up to the weekend should have been released in a joyful manner.  However, due to our last place finish, this emotion could not be released in an explosively cheerful manner.  It was still released through laughter, but this laughter contained the exact opposite meaning of joy.

            A non-team member may not have understood exactly where this laughing was coming from.  But to each other, our laughter seemed natural and even expected.  We were laughing in disbelief.  In a way, our laughter helped us see the weekend as a dream.  It placed the events in an unreal state, because dealing with the reality of the situation would have been too painful at that moment.  Our laughter was shared between each other and helped us sympathize with the disappointment we were all feeling.  It was a testament to our bond as teammates to be able to understand one another on this deeper level.  Laughter allowed us to move on past the frustration of the meet and look towards the next one.

Tension Through Laughter

My suitemate rarely goes out on the weekends.  She is perhaps the most efficient and no-nonsense person I know.  So when she came back around 3 in the morning one Saturday, I and the rest of my suitemates were naturally curious as to where she had been and what had happened that had kept her out so late.  When we asked her how her night had been, she just turned to us, said “Oh nothing” and then turned away and smirked.

Now we all knew she is a very independent and private person, yet we were all in shock.  If she had just told us “Oh nothing” and left it at that, we probably would have all been cool with her.  However, that smirk just about set us over the edge.  The way she used laughter conveyed to us, not exactly superiority, but something along that line.  In just a single smirk, she was able to convey to us that she had an amazing night while that we were not privileged to hear about.  It almost seemed as though she was looking down on us.  In her mind, there was no way our nights could have exceeded hers and was able to communicate this very effectively.

What is even more interesting is that it would not have been socially acceptable for her to say all these thoughts out loud to us.  However, was her smirk really any different?  It still told us all she was thinking whether she meant it to or not.  Her small laugh, may have been pleasurable to her, but it was not well received by others.  Instead, it created animosity in the room and raised the tension to a level that mere words could not have managed.

Invite Only

            Ever been in a situation where you know without a doubt that you are on the outside of some interesting and exciting event?  Where you can clearly define a boundary between you and the group partaking in a secret act?  Well, today I was the unfortunate outsider in this scenario.

            I was enjoying a nice lunch by myself at the end of a table, completely unaware of who else was sitting around me.  My silent meal was then punctured by the loud cawing and cackling of three girls only a few places down from my seat.  Now previously, I (and most likely everyone else having lunch at that moment) had not given them a second thought or care.  And they probably would have gone unnoticed if not for their obnoxious, uncontrolled outburst.  Let me clarify for a moment to impress upon you just how loud this laugh was.  There was nothing subtle about it, such as a giggle that gradually manifests itself into a hearty laugh.  In fact, if there ever was a perfect antonym to subtle, these girls nailed it.

            But let us turn to the matter at hand:  the girls laugh, and invariably, every person pauses as all heads turn to look at this select faction.  For that brief second, everyone shares in the same act.  All, including the three girls, are interested in what had caused this extravagant laughter.  Yet, even though the girls are sharing their laughter with the public, they are at the same time excluding others from participating in it.  In this way, the girls use laughter to act as a social restriction.  Those of us who do not laugh clearly demonstrate the divide between ourselves and the three girls.  Only those who are lucky or special enough to be allowed in their circle would have access to the joy they are now experiencing.  Through laughter, they portray their happiness of being a member of the focal group.  For this reason laughter acts as a means of thankfulness:  the girls are laughing at their fortune of being one of the “elite” so to speak and not a member of the “ordinary lunchers” who are missing out on such a funny story or joke.

          As I said before, without the noise, they would not have made an impact on anyone’s lunchtime.  Instead, as I made a slight breach of social etiquette and eavesdropped on the table behind me, I heard a couple wondering what could have been so funny.  I smiled, as I myself had been thinking that very same thing, and wondered how many similar conversations were occurring at other tables.  The girls most likely did not realize it, but they had created a social tier within the lunch room consisting of those who laughed with them and those who wished they had.