Evo-lie-tion
Everyone puts on a brave face. There are a few special people who’ll willingly expound upon their untold hardship (not that it’s really untold in any sense), but they’re mainly frowned upon for being whingers, moaners or Charles Kennedy.
There’s nothing like telling a few hundred assembled reporters crammed into a tiny room about your drinking problem, and your lying problem about your drinking problem, to conjure up a miniscule amount of sympathy. Unfortunately, this sympathy comes coupled with the instilling of a massive desire of every newspaper editor in the country to pick the image taken by the press photographer lucky enough to have caught you grimacing in the most intoxicated way during the announcement and plaster it all over their paper’s front page.
So, we can see why most people keep a brave face on.
From an evolutionary standpoint, this is quite plausible; your potential mate is not going to be to impressed by how badly things are going at work, how likely you are to fail your next set of exams crucial to your degree or the poor quality of the previous three wildebeest you’ve caught.
So, we can see why most people keep a brave face on. Though a happy face would probably be better, as a brave one implies that you’ve got some stress, exams or low-quality hunter-gathering to cover up.
Why, then, do people at sleepovers always deny that they’ve been asleep?
At an hour which increases approximately in proportion with your age, people at the party gradually start dozing off and, whenever they awake with the accompanying slightly embarrassing surprised noise of someone who fell asleep leant half against a chair, half against the wall discovering that they are now awake, half against a chair, half against the wall, those around them will shortly accuse them of having been asleep. “No, no,” the no-longer-a-sleeper mumbles groggily, followed, if they are feeling especially clichéd, by “I was just resting my eyes.” Or maybe “I’ve sought professional help and haven’t had a sleep for two months.” Or something.
Why the denial? Some might claim it was ‘manly’ to be able to stay up for extended hours and thus brought you slightly closer to the esteemed alpha male who at a sleepover, presumably, is he who is awake last and can steal the Greek-lettered crown from its large, be-muscled and virile owner, who is now sleeping like a baby. Sadly, he will be entirely unable to parade it around in any useful fashion as all the beta-or-lower males and females of whom he is champion will be fast asleep. The alpha female will obviously also be asleep, because men are better than women.
It’s not manly to be able to stay up late; it’s weird. It’s saying to all your potential mates that “I may be happy and not have a drinking problem, but staying awake for ages doesn’t make me tired!” Nutter.
The same phenomenon can be observed on nights out in any town you care to choose. “No, I’m not drunk!” comes the incoherent slur from the latest victim of the rising national predisposition to liver cirrhosis.
Are you some kind of freak for whom imbibing large quantities of alcohol does not make you drunk?
“Why, then,” the implied interlocutor above should retort, “did you spend all that money on all that alcohol if, as appears to be the case according to your slurred assertion, you are not experiencing any effect as a result?”
Has the person who’s “not drunk” convinced themselves it’s worth twenty quid’s worth of shots because they enjoy weeing?
I, at the New Year party which reminded me of the latter two phenomena, was sadly both asleep and drunk. Luckily, I do not have a soon-to-be-exposed drinking problem which I will have to explain to the national press. Unluckily, I’m not going to do very well in the next set of exams. Luckily, they’re not degree-crucial, so I’m going to put a brave face on it.
January 8th, 2006 at 20:48
You? Drunk? Have any photos?
January 8th, 2006 at 20:57
Not one…well, actually maybe one or two, but I certainly didn’t take any, as
I’ll see if I can find any for you.
January 9th, 2006 at 11:06
Evolutionarily-speaking, in a society like that similar to the early hunter-gatherers (we’ve not had long to shake off old behaviour patterns), where men are expected to compete (either against a hostile environment or even against one another) for the chance to pass on their genes, it makes sense to deny your vulnerabilities, particularly to other men (your “rivals” in natural selection). Sleeping leaves you prone to an attack. Getting ill suggests that you are susceptible to the invisible hostiles around us. Crying shows that you can be hurt. And so a huge number of human males will claim outright that they never - or very rarely - do any of these things, downplaying the facts that might make them appear less worthy as a genetic seed.
March 13th, 2006 at 01:10
Who exactly made these audacious claims?