Watch Mike in action, watch him make contact and signal his
availability. We all know at least one Mike, and we all envy him in his ability. What is the body language he uses?
Well Mike's appeal, his non-verbal clarity is compounded of many things, his appearance is part of it. Not the
appearance he was born with, that's rather ordinary, but the way Mike has rearranged his appearance to transmit his
message. There is, when you look at Mike carefully, a definite sexuality about him.
In part, it's the way Mike
dresses, the type of pants he chooses, his shirts, his jackets, his ties, the way he combs his hair, the length of
his sideburns, these all contribute to the immediate picture. But even more important than this is the way Mike
stands and walks. One woman described it as an 'easy grace'. A man who knew Mike was not so kind..."He's greasy".
What came through as pleasing to the woman was transmitted as disturbing or challenging and therefore distasteful
to the man, and he reacted by characterizing the quality contemptuously. Yet Mike does move with grace, an easy,
arrogant sort of grace that could well arouse a man's envy and a woman's excitement.
A few actors have had the
same movement (pardon the typos here); Paul Newman, Marlon brandow, Rick Torn, and with it they can transmit an
obvious sexual message. The message can be broken down into the way they hold themselves, their stance or posture,
the easy confidence of their motion. The man who has that walk, needs little else to turn a woman's head.
But
Mike has more, he has dozens of little gestures, perhaps unconscious ones, that send out elaborations of his sexual
message. When Mike leans up against a mantle in a room to look at the women, his hips are thrust forward slightly as
if they are cantileavered(sp?), and his legs are usually apart.
....
...
Watch Mike as he stands like this, he
will lock his hands above his belt right above his pocket and his fingers will point down toward his genitals.
You've surely seen this stance a hundred times in western movies, usually not taken by the hero, but by the bad guy
as he lounges a corral fence. The picture of the threatening sexuality--the villain that the men hate and the women,
well, what they feel is a lot more complex than hate, or desire, or fear. And yet it's a mixture of all these
things. With his blatent body language, his leather chaps, his cantileavered groin, and pointing fingers, he is
sending out a crude, obvious, but effective signal. "I am a sexual threat, I am a dangerous man for a woman to be
alone with. I am all man and I want you."
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