LADIES IN RED

Some years ago, I wrote an article for a woman's magazine about colour dressing and it's effects on men. I totally forgot about it until I heard about a recent survey on a local radio station today.

During my research, I elicited the help of three other girlfriends. We carried it out over a two-month period (6 outings in total), where we patronised the same place on different days - each of us taking turns to wear different coloured dresses. We also took great pains to be consistent with our hair, make-up and behaviour on the night just to make sure that no one gained an unfair advantage.

At any one time, the four of us took turns to wear a blue, black, green and red dress. From the onset, we knew that green and blue had a rather tame effect but there was some disagreement when it came to black and red.

So we all sat at the bar, open to approach. I based things on the number of times men came up to us. The figures do tell a story.

Hit Count
1. Red Dress - 21 hits
2. Black Dress - 16 hits
3. Blue Dress - 8 hits
4. Green Dress - 3 hits

So the red dress clearly stood out as a man-magnet. Men appeared more daring, vocal and let their egos ooze when they approached any of us who wore red for the evening. It's almost as if they were desperate to impress. One of my girlfriends had a great analogy - She said, 'It was like they wore their balls on their chins.'

What was initially surprising was the high number of hits that the black dress mustered. But on retrospect, it might have been due to my friend June who didn't wear a bra that evening. You see, she is one of those who has hard protruding nipples - which I guess gave her an unfair advantage. She mustered 8 hits on that night alone.

But on a more scientific approach, it does make some measure of sense. It's what scientists and anthropologists attribute to the 'red-sex link' - part of our biological set-up - where female primates tend to display red on certain areas of their body when they are in mating mode. This attracts the males to them.

While men, I feel, always want to give the impression that they are sophisticated beings, who are thoughtful and not responsive to surface traits of a woman, to some extent, their preferences can be considered primitive.

Interestingly, this study of mine showed that men have a preference to women in red but it also demonstrated (as with my friend June), that if there is one thing that can overpower the effects of a red dress, its showing your nips! So if you really don't have a red number but want to elicit a male audience, then let your nips show through.

Missus Singapore out!