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In my experience people have winked at me, I suppose, as a sign of acknowledgement or as part of cheeky banter. But what exactly does a wink mean? It’s shrouded in connotations of flirting and as a sign of sexual attraction, so surely the ambiguity of its modern usage is slightly lost in translation? What other subconscious signals are we giving off through body language and reflexive mannerisms, that even we are unaware we are divulging?
One dictionary defines winking as: “to close and open the eyelid of one eye deliberately, as to convey a message, signal, or suggestion”, this definition fails to explain what the message or signal might be. It only acts to enhance the ambiguous nature of the gesture. Winking seems to be a fairly suggestive behaviour, conveying a signal which can easily be misinterpreted. Someone once winked at me on my first day at work, it was a nice gesture, but I didn’t quite get exactly what it meant. On reflection it was a private gesture - an unspoken token of acceptance or approval, conveyed in a formal circumstance through a nonverbal means.
So there is clearly a duality to winking, one usage is as a friendly gesture and the other a more flirtatious “I’m interested in you wink”. It's highly dependent on the context of the conversation and social setting so the umbrella term is not so useful. I also associate the wink with certain people I know - there’s a certain kind of person who can pull of a wink well, with an air of cheeky charm.
As the wink is inlaid with sexual and flirtatious undertones, it’s a little tacky to use it when chatting someone up. It’s also crucial to insert the wink at the right time and in the right context if you want to imply a sexual interest, otherwise you will look like you have some kind of strange twitch - which is not exactly a great look. Maybe it works in the right moment but, in fear of looking like a deranged fool, I try to steer clear of the wink when meeting new people.
Apparently 55% or so of the first impression we give to new people comes from our body language, 38% is from the tone of our speech and only 7% comes from what we are actually saying. Admittedly these are mostly subconscious signals which most of the time we are unaware we are even giving.
There are, supposedly, five secret gestures that we convey if we are attracted to someone, they are:
1. Mirroring: we habitually copy the body language of people we are attracted to. Mirroring is a gesture that shows we are on the same level as them and that we are in a similar mood. Mirroring operates under the premise that we are attracted to people who are like us.
2. Blinking: apparently if someone likes what they see, their pupil’s get larger and their blink rate increases. This one is pretty hard to monitor.
3. Pointing: if we are interested in someone our body language tends to point towards them- pay attention to hands, feet and general positioning- they all tend to face the person we like. It’s a subconscious signal to make our intentions known or be seen by them.
4. The eyebrow raise: when we first see someone we like our eyebrows quickly rise then fall. If they are similarly interested they should mirror this. It happens so briefly but it’s a universal greeting, which we are usually unaware we omit.
5. The triangle: when looking at friends we look from eye to eye, then down to the nose and mouth. When we flirt this triangle gets larger and our focus extents to the body. When flirting intensifies; the more we look from eye to eye and the more time we spend looking at their mouth- perhaps imagining what it is like to kiss them.
Admittedly all of these signs are very ambiguous and hard to monitor. It’s pretty difficult to rely on subconscious signals to tell if someone is interested in you, but it is still fascinating how much we communicate without even speaking. As these signs are so precarious, maybe a deliberate symbol like winking can be used to cut out all the uncertainty, rather than procure even more confusion. Better still, we could depend on good old verbal communication for some clarity.
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