“Peacocking,” according to Urban Dictionary.com, happens when males wear flashy colors, like the exotic bird, with hopes of attracting a mate.

The other day, I saw this ritual at work on a small scale. My lovely friend and I were on campus enjoying the anachronistic sunshine by studying outside. Nearby, a couple of guys were casually throwing around a Frisbee. They didn’t seem to acknowledge us, but as we were both studying quietly and within ear shot, everyone in the area was, by proxy, acutely aware of the conversation.

After they left, my friend and I made eye contact and giggled. We both had noticed how these guys seemed to be puffing themselves up—shoulders rolled back, boasting about sports—and verbally bringing other “douche” guys down. At an intuitional level, the conversation didn’t come across as genuine; it came across as a metaphorical kind of peacocking, where they were trying to make themselves appear flashy and attractive in conversation.

I’m not trying to rip on these guys. I’m sure they’re great dudes. Honestly, I’m not even sure this is a conscious rhetorical strategy. But even among my close male friends, I’ve witnessed this phenomenon at work.

In my experience, this is how peacocking works: Guy 1 and Guy 2 are talking in the presence of females, whom they typically either don’t know very well, if at all, or whom they are actively trying to impress. The conversation then becomes a landscape upon which each guy tries to make himself stand out. Sometimes, this goal is achieved by bragging, whether subtly or not so subtly. More often than not, Guy 1 achieves this goal by throwing Guy 2 “under the bus.”

The problem is: I don’t think this technique is working as well as offenders perceive it to be. In my experience, girls are often more hyper aware of intention than their male counterparts, so they instantly see right through this ulterior motive.

Unless the friend-bashing is aggressive, or the bragging obnoxious, however, most girls seem to find peacocking endearing. Even so, I don’t think “endearing” is the adjective these men are aiming for. A disclaimer: I’m not arguing that all men do this. I’m just saying that when they do, it doesn’t work as effectively as they’d like. I would also like to point out that both men and women peacock, though female peacocking manifests itself in other ways, which I have yet to explore.

Perhaps an alternative solution to peacocking is “wing-manning,” a term used by some of my male friends use which means that Guy 1 helps Guy 2 look good by talking him up. In a sense, wing-manning is the opposite of peacocking.

Imagine for a moment that the conversation as a landscape again. Each man uses his words as blocks in order to build a tower on these landscapes. In peacocking, men work toward building their own towers and destroying the towers of their adversary. In wing-manning, one man leaves his territory to help his friend build the most beautiful tower possible. Thus, peacocking is a destructive force, and wing-manning is a productive one.

I think most girls would agree that wing-manning makes both guys look more appealing in the end. That being said, social interactions are complex and visceral beasts. According to Charles Darwin, the strongest survives. But in Social Darwinism, our question becomes: What character traits to do we consider “strong” in interpersonal interactions? Do women prefer dominant men or collaborative men?

Here, I argue for collaborative men, but perhaps there are exceptions to this rule. Perhaps the kind of guy who peacocks attracts the kind of girl who is wooed by dominant men. As one of my co-workers articulated when I pitched this idea: “Two peacocks of a feather fly together.” Maybe we’ve created a false dilemma and the true answer is to use neither “peacocking” nor “wing-manning” as a strategy for attracting the other sex. If we always presented ourselves authentically to the opposite sex, we wouldn’t have to worry about any of this at all.

Thoughts? Questions? GVSU men, do you disagree? Email me your response at [email protected].