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Why you should never talk to a woman wearing headphones

I wear headphones on a daily basis. Sometimes to listen to music, sometimes for work purposes, and sometimes because I don’t feel like talking to strangers.

When it’s the latter, you probably don’t want to come up to me and ask me to remove them. Not only will I think you’re a d*ckhead, I’ll also feel like you’re invading my personal space.

Unfortunately, some men haven’t gotten this memo, which I find pretty baffling. To me, wearing headphones is a clear sign that someone doesn’t want to be bothered, especially by someone trying out bad pickup lines.

So if you’re one of those men that have tried this before, please let me school you in the art of talking to a woman with headphones on: don’t.

Photo: Getty Images.
Photo: Getty Images.

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Unfortunately, men like Dan Bacon encourage this behaviour by publishing drivel titled “How to talk to a woman who is wearing headphones”, which is littered with gems of advice such as, “If a woman wearing headphones is single and hoping to meet a boyfriend (or even a new lover), she will almost always be happy to take off her headphones to give you an opportunity to create a spark with her.”

Even when I was single, I wouldn’t remove my headphones. It didn’t matter if the offender looked like Brad Pitt back in his hey days. I would have automatically placed you in the “rude, offensive and crazy” category.

The fact that Bacon has detailed “how” to make a woman take her headphones off is perhaps most disturbing of all: it reeks of physical threat:

What to Do to Get Her Attention
1. Stand in front of her (with 1 to 1.5 meters between you).
2. Have a relaxed, easy-going smile.
3. Is she hasn’t already looked up at you, simply get her attention with a wave of your hand. Wave your hand in her direct line of vision so she can’t ignore it.
4. When she looks at you, smile and point to her headphones and say, “Take off your headphones for a minute” and pretend to be taking headphones off your head, so she fully understands.
If she doesn’t understand (most women will), simply gesture that you want to talk to her by briefly pointing back and forth from you to her and say, “I want to talk to you for a minute.”
In most cases, you won’t have to go to that extreme, but some girls are shy and will be hesitant to take the headphones off right away because they are feeling a lot of nervousness and excitement about what is happening.
5. Then, do what we call “Acknowledging the Awkwardness” by quickly mentioning something about the awkwardness of the moment, to demonstrate you understand that approaching a woman in this way isn’t the most common of experiences for either party.
This helps put her at ease and know that you are a cool guy who she can relax and open up to.

If this happened to me, I would not relax and open up. I’d probably be on alert, thinking that you are either about to attack me, offend me or tell me the world is about to end and I should probably take my headphones off.

Having a man ask you to take your headphones off ranks somewhere up there with people on the street who tell you to smile. Don’t even get me started on that!

Unfortunately, Bacon argues that women who ignore a man’s pleas to take their headphones off are simply playing hard to get – and he couldn’t be more wrong:

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"Women love to test guys to see how confident they really are and a favorite test of women is to ignore a guy’s attempts to converse with her and see what he will do next. Will he walk away in shame, or will he remain calm and continue talking to her in a confident, easy-going manner?
This is her way of gauging his interest in her and also a way of determining whether he is mentally and emotionally strong enough for a girl like her.
If a guy gives up at the first sign of resistance, most women will be turned off by his mental and emotional weakness as a man.”

Guys, if a woman doesn’t remove her headphones, it’s a clear sign she is not into you. There’s no game playing here: do not pass go, do not collect $200, but do expect to go to jail if you try anything.

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