Tweet of the week goes to Lynn Trang who said, 'Cristen Conger just had a marathon of your
videos and Professor Boyfriend. Omg you guys. By the way I don't have a flat-iron #guycosmo.'
I've made so many videos I kind of forget what you're talking about I think it's the
Professor Boyfriend and me reading Cosmo together. Wait, should that have been Professor Boyfriend
and I? It's a lot of scrambled eggs up there sometimes.
This week on Stuff Mom Never Told You there was no video on Labor Day and that's a holiday
and you know what? It's good for people to take holidays so I did. But then on Wednesday
I came back swinging with 'Why do Women have bigger butts?' Then on Friday it was '7 questions
women probably don't want to answer' which probably yes I have been asked which is probably
why I made that video. Now onto Ask Cristen. First of all thanks to everybody who watched
and commented on last week's Ask Cristen video, 'Why do people call their significant others
baby?' It was a lot of fun reading in the comments what you all call your significant
others. Maaling says, 'In Dutch the term "schat" or "shatje"-I can't, why can't I say this-is
used as a term of endearment. Its literal translation is treasure. So sweet.' That is
sweet although I wish I could say it. Lulululalala had this to say: 'I'm Brazilian and I always
call my boyfriend "amor" or "love" which I think is the most common term here. We also
use "lindo" or "linda", "beautiful", but that's more private so we only use it when we are
alone. Your own private linda. Merelf said, 'I never call my husband his proper name and
he never calls me by mine. We also use baby but usually we say it in Turkish which is
bebek or askim which means my love. I'm feeling the love. And now to this week's Ask Cristen
question which comes from twinklelight09, 'Why are we judged based on how we sit? Why
do we have to quote-unquote "sit like a lady?"' This is actually I touched on briefly in my
video a while back 'Personal Space: Men versus Women.' Men's personal space bubbles tend
to be larger than women's personal space bubbles because men tend to take up more space just
by virtue of how they sit, the kind of posture that we associate with being stereotypically
masculine such as this versus the more prim and proper and more ladylike posture that
we tend to associate more with being feminine such as this. That more masculine tendency
to take up more space in the way that you sit is referred to as expansive posture and
this was actually something that was noted in the book 'Sex Differences: Summarizing
more than a Century of Scientific Research'. Expansive posture was one of the things they
highlighted in terms of being a consistent, empirically based difference in how men and
women comport themselves. Men are likelier to engage in expansive posture versus women
who are likelier to sit with their legs crossed and their arms folded across each other to
make ourselves as small as possible. The only quibble I would make with that is referring
to it as a sex difference rather than a gender difference. A sex difference implies some
kind of biological underpinning whereas a gender difference is more about social conditioning.
Take me for example there are all sorts of ways that I am currently performing my feminine
gender. I'm wearing a necklace, I've got my hair long, I'm wearing makeup, my nails are
painted. When I was growing up I remember my mom often reminding me about one more aspect
of the feminine gender performance which was really important to her, she did this to my
sisters as well. She would come up behind us and run her thumb up our spines in order
to get us to stand up straight, shoulders back, stomach in and if we were sitting down
ankles-crossed. And why? In order to look like ladies. This whole sitting like a lady
thing actually has an impact on guys as well. There were no instances at least in one study
that I was looking at of men sitting with their legs tightly closed one on top of the
other. To me, guys are possibly even more outwardly penalized if they violate those
rules of public posture and gender and that's rules in quotes, versus women who might actually
have more leeway to sit how they want. Unless, and this is a big unless, she's wearing a
skirt, which I have a feeling has a lot to do with the whole origin of this ladylike
posture, the fact that women wore skirts and dresses and as those hemlines rose if you
weren't crossing your legs passers-by could possible see up your skirt and to your underwear
and then oh my god how improper would that be? I would think that by the time it became
commonplace for women to wear pants if they wanted to this whole ladylike posture thing
was firmly ingrained in our broader gender schema. Yes I just used the phrase 'broader
gender schema'. But now it's time for us to conduct our own mini-study on gender differences
and sitting-posture. Let me know in the comments below what your preferred sitting position
is. Have people ever commented on how you sit? And as always ask me your questions so
I can give you some answers. And some horrible pronunciations of Dutch words every now and
then.