Battle of the Sexes – things are(n’t) hotting up

In sub-zero Ireland currently, people are desperately trying to keep warm, adding another clothing layer, another log to the fire.

Like me most days in fact.

My husband bought me a fab new watch for my birthday. And a new electric blanket. And a slanket. You getting the picture? I often go to bed with my Holy Trinity of electric blanket, hot water bottle and fleecy jim-jams. And still I am freezing. My (t-shirt clad) husband opens windows. I close them. We do a similar tit-for-tat with radiators. Which I then actually sit on sometimes…

I could go on with my cold, hard evidence. But I know I’m not alone. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve swapped stories with frosty female friends and family. And if you google the words ‘why am I always cold’ you will see, amongst the facts, a myriad of other whiny, funny blog posts from shivering women on this subject.

 

 

 

 

Look how I persevered to write this post...

 

Author Catherine O’ Flynn, interviewed in the Antiroom Blog recently, is a woman after my own cold heart. She mentioned ideally having the heating on in her house for 10 months of the year. Bliss! It’s probably just as well I don’t live alone in my own house. It would be a hermetically sealed unit, with not so much as a molecule of fresh air being let in. The central heating would be on full blast from day break ‘til sun down. On both health and cost grounds I couldn’t possibly live here if left to my own devices.

Other (non-scientific) proof of female frostiness;

Dual control electric blankets – surely designed with freezing women and their less chilly partners in mind?

In my case, my (naked) husband’s control panel for his side of the new blanket sits unopened on the bedside locker, mocking me in my frozen-ness.

Coat sales. How many men – compared to women – do you know that own a full winter coat?! I think it is neither coincidence or a fashion statement that vast multiples more women than men buy winter coats. As far as I can see, men of a certain vintage, principally those attending race meetings and rugby matches, are some of the relatively few male purchasers. Tom Dunne wrote in his column recently that he reckoned shirt-clad men outside pubs didn’t feel the cold because they were smokers. No Tom, it’s because they are men.

Women naturally have higher levels of fat cells than men. They’re for childbearing don’t you know. Eh, thanks for that, Mother Nature. But even this, or the extra-stubborn post-baby layer, doesn’t shield us from feeling cold.

So why are so many women so freezing?

A quick Google search produces the following;

Women generally have less dense muscle mass than men do, which lowers their average body temperature.

Women can be more prone to thyroid problems – an underactive one apparently can leave you intolerant to cold. But I have also anecdotally heard of women only dying to hear this diagnosis, it also being a reason why some cannot lose weight. ( Hurrah, something to blame other than too much wine and too little walking…)

But I also have some of my own (less scientific) more colloquially based theories;

The Immersion Factor; I grew up in the (comedian) Des Bishop-esque era of home heating. It might just have a lasting effect on a body. Heat turned on in individual rooms, being ‘kept in’ in case it escaped, like a rabid, wild dog. Check this out if you haven’t seen his take.

He also does a hilarious piece about trying to score Irish girls in his dingy Irish bedsit, having to push the super-ser up to the edge of the bed, with the cailin in question undressing under the duvet, all the time shivering “ but I’m freeeeezing !!! ”

Irish Weather. My German friend, who has also lived in Norway, put it best.           ‘ My country is colder, but this Irish damp really gets into your bones ‘ . Y’ see?? It’s just a more invasive cold we have here. I think Frank McCourt was on to something. Incidentally, she thinks all Irish people cough, and says her children never coughed ‘til they reached these shores. I find this most interesting. And for another blog post perhaps.

So that’s it then. My genes, my gender and my country are all against me. I’ll just have to go on f-f-f-reezing my sorry, extra-layer-of-fat, Irish, female ass off.