Ogling you

If you use public transport to get to work, then you'll be familiar with the annoying behaviour of your fellow commuters. They will play their music too loudly. They'll wear a pongy perfume that makes you sneeze. They'll rummage noisily through their belongings, engage in grooming sessions (which may include fingernail or even toenail clipping) and heedlessly fling their bag or backpack in your face as they stand up to get off the bus or the train.

But some people can enrage us without making a noise, wearing a foul fragrance or ever laying a finger on us. To all the world they seem to be leaving us entirely alone and unmolested. Except for one thing.

Their gaze.

One of the more benign starers.

If another person stares at us – and we become aware of the staring – we can feel profoundly unnerved. Is the starer sizing us up to figure out if it's worth the effort of robbing us? Are they ogling us with unwholesome and lewd thoughts, deciding if they're going to ravish us? Perhaps they just hate the look of us. We might be too expensively dressed for their liking or be from the wrong race or ethnic background – whatever that may be.

Even if we're not frightened or discomfited, being stared at by another person in a public place can annoy us. Yet the strange aspect of being stared at is that nothing from the person who stares at us necessarily impinges upon us. It's purely an act of reception – not transmission – yet it can be the most disturbing of these mild annoyances that other people perpetrate upon us. They're not emitting annoying sounds or odours and they're not touching us. The act of staring is entirely contained within the starer. Yet most of us find it profoundly disturbing to be stared at, and we can instantly feel anxiety or hostility  well up inside us.  It could be an idle gaze, but many of us feel that an element of malevolence is contained in the look of someone who stares.

But what can you do when someone stares at you in a public place, especially when they are a long way from you and probably out of earshot, unable to hear any reprimands you might want to make? I have experimented with a technique that has always worked for me, so allow me to share it with you. 

Most of us, when stared at, don't want to match the starer in their pointless and intrusive activity. We tend to look away for a few moments, then look back at the starer to see if they're still ogling us, which they invariably are. So here's what I do to stop starers: even if they are not within earshot, I look at them and start talking to them. I usually say something like, "You've been staring at me for some time now. Why are you doing it? It's extremely annoying and it's perverse. Stop doing it." 

I usually make sure that I'm enunciating clearly, to increase the chance that they can lip-read my message. Occasionally I might include the f-word. Even poor lip readers seem to have no trouble in deciphering this word with its unambiguous fricative. Placing your top teeth on your bottom lip followed by the opening of your mouth doesn't leave much doubt about what you're saying, even if the other person can only see your mouth and not hear the words coming out of it.

The starer invariably seems to find this speaking directed at them to be disturbing enough to make them quickly desist; they usually look away within seconds. 

So try this speaking strategy next time you feel a pair of eyes boring into you. And let me know if you are successful with it.

Eleanor Catton – and cats

I work for a magazine, whose offices are located somewhere in the English-speaking world. Some months ago I mentioned the word aptronym in the magazine. An aptronym is a name that is apt for the person who bears it, usually because of the connection between that person and their career. The examples I mentioned included crime writer Karen Slaughter, New York meteorologist Amy Freeze and the Sydney-based veterinarian Dr Melissa Catt, who treats only cats.

The connection between the name and the interests or the physical characteristics of the person with that name could be coincidental, but I wonder if some strange subconscious process has occurred, creating an affinity between that person and the thing denoted or connoted by their name. In a previous blog post I mentioned a woman whose surname was Grey, and how she bristled when a colleague said that she couldn't stand the "drab, grey walls" in the office. Ms Grey said she didn't think they looked too bad. I also mentioned a woman called Glenda Browne, who, whenever I saw her, always wore clothes in a shade of brown. 

The connection between Dr Melissa Catt and her feline customers is clear. But I've also noticed that people with names that contain the word 'cat' – usually at the beginning of the name – also seem to have a strong affinity with cats. ABC Sydney radio broadcaster Angela Catterns is an example. She has frequently said on her radio programs how much she loves cats.

So when I heard that the young New Zealander Eleanor Catton had won the 2013 Man Booker Prize, I felt very strongly that she would also be a feline fan. But how to quickly confirm this without writing an email to her and asking her a leading question? I didn't have to wait long. I checked out her Twitter account (twitter.com/eleanorcatton) a few months ago and discovered that on 17 September 2013 she wrote the following:

So there's your proof that she's not just your average cat owner, but a besotted fan of the feline. But do her parents share and would her father's ancestors have shared this attraction to cats? Does the name 'Catton' subconsciously work an inveigling magic upon the minds of those who own it, causing them to have an affinity for this creature? Or could a genetic factor be at work here? Were the Cattons so called because they worked with cats and the affinity was somehow inherited? 

It would be fascinating to find out if a psychological researcher or an onomastician (a person who studies names) has carried out any research into the connection between a name and the things in the world that it denotes or connotes. Do bearers of certain names feel a stronger connection than other people with the thing in the wider world that their name denotes or suggests?  So, for example, do people with the surnames Catt or Catterns or Catton feel more positively towards cats? If a person with that name became estranged from their family, would they feel more antipathy to cats than their family members who are still very much a part of the Catt, Catton or Catterns clans?

One thing before I end: check out photos of the Australian actor Paul Chubb, and of Australia's Chief Scientist, Dr ian Chubb. I wouldn't say that thse two famous Chubbs are particularly overweight, but their faces do indicate a certain jowly jolliness.