Western influence on African flirts

March 2004

Western influences in the media appear to be making young Africans question their traditional beliefs and values when it comes to flirting, research at Monash South Africa has found.

The research, by communications lecturers Dr Linda Venter and Ms Franzel Du-Plooy-Cilliers, aimed to explore the flirting techniques used in traditional African cultures and to examine the interaction between different cultural groups with regard to accepted flirting behaviour.

Forty young people aged 18 to 25 from Sotho, Zulu, Tswana, Tsonga and Sepedi communities took part in the study.

The findings were presented at the Transformation in Politics, Culture and Society Conference in Vienna in December and will lead to further research in the area

Dr Venter said that while flirting was not common in many traditional African cultures, young people were adopting Western flirting methods to attract members of the opposite sex.

"According to both female and male participants in our study, females usually make the first move but it is done in very subtle ways, such as making eye contact with the male, smiling and looking away," she said.

"This is interesting because it is against the cultural norm in most African cultures for a female to approach a male. In most African cultures, strong eye contact is also seen to be aggressive, yet young people are adopting this Western trait when flirting."

Ms Du-Plooy-Cilliers said that while in African culture males generally used a direct approach and made their intentions known immediately, the study found that Western influences had resulted in some Africans using pick-up lines to approach females.

However, she said African males would often then compliment women on their bodies, which was not usually the practice in Western cultures.

"For instance, men would say to women that they had a beautiful body or a nice behind," she said.

Participants in the study said they had learned how to flirt through watching television, particularly soapies, reading magazines and from their peers.