Beauty is Imperfection

(Originally posted Thursday, July 24, 2008 )

BUFFALO, NEW YORK (API) — George Smeaton thoughtfully sips a vanilla chai latte on this hot summer afternoon in Buffalo, just a few tables away from a bevy of comely young women out in summer jersey dresses. Though some of them look his way, Smeaton peers down into his book and avoids eye contact.

“It’s too enervating,” he says.

Scientists claim that Smeaton is just one of many people contributing to rising rates of global passive-aggression, a trend that could reduce mating and ultimately lead to the end of the human race.

“We’ve found an increasing number of people simply refusing to connect or make eye contact in social situations,” says Dr. Javier Santos of the John Hopkins School of Medicine. “As social mores change, both men and women refuse to be the instigators of social flirtation and the sexual dance. This spells catastrophe.”

The Mayo Clinic defines passive-aggressive behavior as a way of expressing negative feelings in indirect, unhelpful and obstructive ways while pretending to be complicit. Santos gives as examples showing up late, pretending not to want the very thing you want and Woody Allen.

Patricia Wally, a grad student at the University of Nebraska, said she was recently in the science lab studying the territoriality of hamsters when she was approached by male student Benjamin Gumm, a senior.

“He was really cute and all,” says Wally. “But he put a lot of pressure on me when he started talking. I had to think of all kinds of things to say when I wasn’t ready. I really showed him my feelings by walking to the open window and jumping out of it.”

Santos says that with social mores changing and passive aggressive behavior on the rise, they have noticed a widespread decline in courtship behavior, recognizable by such signs as winking, smiling, casual touches, and “proteans” another word for such physiologic signs as a woman touching her hair. For men, protean behavior is often seen when they dangle out of trees, do back flips in front of a girl, or beat up an inferior male specimen.

Sadly, Santos predicts, all of these behaviors are disappearing.

With such drastic rates of decline in flirting, Santos predicts that humanity will cease to exist sometime in the 50th Century, “unless we are hit by a meteor first.” When told that colleague Susan Jenkins was inquiring after him and asked whether he would like to get together with her, Santos said, “Well, I’d like to. But whenever I express interest in a woman by making the first move it just gives her all the power. Who needs that?”