In Defense of Body Language
Hey, do you want to go grab McDonalds? Okay cool. Oh, which one? The one over there. Y'know, the one over that way. What's that? You don't know which way that is? You can't see that I'm making a motion pointing to the McDonalds just across the street from the cafe where I'm currently sitting, writing this extremely meta article opening? Ahh, that's because you can't see my body language. You see, body language is a really powerful way that people communicate, all across the animal kingdom in fact. There are some people, however, who for some reason see body language as a lesser form of communication using verbal words. Or, possibly written words in this case. I personally however, disagree. Don't get me wrong, I like yapping a lot. But I think that both human language and body language are good at very different things. For instance, in pointing out where the McDonalds is. I could say "Want to go to McDonalds? It's the one that's like 5 oclock from where I am. You could say it's at "123 urger oad" You could say "it's at 10.630011 by -61.427921" But, you could also just point in the direction of it, and that gives all the same information much easier and faster, with no real background neededthere is a McDonalds around here.
Sometimes my boyfriend has a bad day at work. Sometimes when he gets home, he just wants to lay down with either me or my partner on the couch and just decompress for a while, without doing anything. I, on the other hand, am very similar in real life to how I am online. I'm very loud, I like saying and doing things, I'm sporaic. When my boyfriend comes home I like to hug tackle him and shout things at him like "I love you!" and "I thought you were never coming back!" and "This is the best day of my life!" Sometimes, he's not in the mood for that. Conveniently, he's able to tell me whether or not he's looking for a warm welcome, or a chill one within a second of getting through the door with his body language. It might be the difference between a smile or a scowl on his face. It might be the way he holds himself, either walking in eagerly and excitedly, or dragging himself through the door. He might carefully take off his shoes, or he might kick them off and stomp over to where I am in the living room. Can you imagine if every single time he came home I had to verbally say "Hi before I set my tone as to how, are you in more of an excited mood or a sad mood? I just want to respond accordingly." And then he says "I'm in a good mood actually" and then I say "Oh nice!" nd then proceed to do the tackle and the other stuff? That would be so hilariously inefficient when we have the much more superior body language in order to be able to convey the same information instantly.
Imagine you were at a sports game. I don't really know sports, so uh, let's just say football so both our American and European audienceare happy. You're in the crowds, the game is tied at a score appropriate for whichever sport you're imagining. The team you like gets the ball and they do the sport really good and wow! Big score! Immediately, the crowd erupts into people speaking loudly! "Yes you did the sport good!" "Great sporting!" "The way you did the ball into the zone the ball was supposed to go was excellent!" ...Now, I might not be a sportser, but from my experience that would be a weird way to celebrate. You might instead picture clapping. You might picture yelling. You might picture all sorts of strange noises from a man painted in his teams colors in the middle of the audience. But certainly not everyone just speaking words. See, here's the thing. Cheering is also body language. If we're going to say cats purring when they're comfortable, or dogs growling when they're angry counts as body language and not verbal language, the same has to be said of cheering when we're excited. It's not speaking. It's making noise with our bodies for the purposes of conveying an emotion. It's body language. And it's a much more exciting way of communicating than everyone just saying words is. To feel the roar of the crowds gets your heart racing. Your blood boiling. It's exhilarating! It's thousands of people all using their body language together to speak.
Okay, now let's talk about dating. To flirt is to make subtle references about your attraction to another person. Sometimes it's verbal for sure. Compliments, certain things you say, the way you say them. All of that is super valid flirting. But that's very rarely step one when it comes to conveying interest in someone. Before then, it's much more non verbal. It's a smile, with a certain look in the eye. It's brief touches. It's the way they act around you. Without body language, the start of the courting process would be walking up to someone and saying "Hey I think you're cute wanna date?" And again, that's not the end of the world, but it feels like you're losing a lot of starter information that could really help to predict the other party's answer. But let's say it worked, and now you're on a date. The date goes really well, and as you're saying goodbye to one another, you say. "Excuse me, I would like to kiss you." They respond. "Yes that is good" Don't get me wrong, consent is key. But isn't that a little..Dry? Like, it's not the end of the world, but it's not very romantic. Instead, what if you and them were standing on the porch, and you're super close to each other. You say "I had a really amazing time tonight." You lean in a little more. They say "Yeah, me too.." And lean in a little more. Your lips touch. That's passionate. That's interesting. I don't think it's somehow abusive to not verbally declare your intentions if you're using body language to speak to one another.
Hell, even when using spoken word, body language is still the icing on the cake, so to speak. If you had a conversation with someone that actively chose not to use body language, you would think they were a robot! Really pay attention next time you're having a conversation with someone. See how much you're learning from just their body language. What can you learn from their face? Are they smiling, frowning, scrunching up their nose because you're really stinky? How about their posture? Are they sitting up at attention, showing that they're stressed? Are they leaned back and casual, showing they're relaxed Are their arms at their sides, crossed in front of them, balled up into fists? As humans, we're body language novices. We don't rely on it for communication nearly as much as other species do. And yet even though we barely pay attention to it, at the same time our brains are both performing the actions that convey the thing, as well as subconsciously picking up on what other people are doing and translating that for us. Body language is hard coded into our brains to the extent that even babies who certainly don't understand the spoken word or language still understand the body language of the people around them. That's why people who are uncomfortable with babies will typically have worse reactions from babies than people who are genuinely excited to see them. They understand it.
And all of this is just scratching the surface. Body language is amazing. So much more amazing than we give it credit for. Which is why it's so frustrating to me when people say that the reason zoo relationships are invalid is because body language isn't good enough. Like I mentioned at the start, I'm not trying to say that body language is the same as spoken language. My point is that different kinds of communication have different ups and downs. Written word, for instance, is different than spoken language, and also has things that it's better and worse at. Body language can communicate so much. And, what's even crazier is that we're so much worse at body language than other species. Have you ever tried to learn another language, and , frankly almost insulting version of that language to a native speaker? Not only is it so hard to convey anything to that person, but also if they try and reply you're even more doomed. Maybe you can get the basics. maybe in a sentence you might understand a word or two, and be able to use context clues to piece it together. But maybe you just stand there confused as they repeat themselves over and over, before giving up. The nice part with dogs in this example however is that they do actually speak English. A little anyway. They might not be able to speak it themselves, but they also have some words that they recognize, and can usually put it together via context clues and do what you want. It's not a perfect system, but it's pretty damn good.
And gets even funnier when we look at this in the context of what people use this argument for. They say it's impossible for a dog to consent because body language can't communicate enough information. But if my partner grabs his leash off the door and brings it to me, what do you think that means? If my partner starts nosing around his food bowl, do you have a guess as to what he wants? If my partner rolls over to his back when I'm petting him, can we glean anything from that action?
Body language is amazing. Way cooler than we give it credit for. A
Article written by Tarro (March 2025)
Find ZDP on Telegram at https://t.me/zooeydotpub
Find the ZDP RSS feed link in our footer any time you're on the website! That url for anyone interested is https://zooeydotpub.zdu.se/feed.xml
Questions, comments or concerns? Check out our Discord server! discord.gg/EfVTPh45RE
Find Tarro at https://twitter.com/hereforthezoo
