Shadowing Practice: What Women Choose When Given a “Dating Budget” - Learn English Speaking with Video
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What about that mate budget study that
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Norm Lee did?
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Because that was about trade -offs, right?
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And typically, some people generally have good things that come along with good things.
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But for the most part, there are some sorts of trade -offs.
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Someone's spent an awful lot of time dedicated on one thing.
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They've maybe neglected another part of another area.
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It's an interesting study there, right?
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Can you explain for the Normies?
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Sure.
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The Norm Lee's.
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so yeah norm lee normally
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he uh did a did a study where he gave people a budget of mate dollars
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and then asked them create create the ideal mate
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that you can with this budget some people got a big budget
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and where that was the case men
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and women they both um wanted everything they um
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they wanted good looks they wanted uh they wanted like a good job high status blah blah blah
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that the works um but if they had a smaller mate budget
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which i think is probably more like most people's situation in life no offense um
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if they had that they um sex differences became more pronounced and
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so people men would spend more to get an attractive partner
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uh whereas women would spend more to get a um a partner with resources
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and status yeah he also did a study where he had people
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allocate for themselves if i'm not mistaken and it mirrored the uh it mirrored
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that that same pattern where it's like
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when men were kind of rpg style building their own character
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i think it was i don't mean to give him credit
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if it wasn't but um basically men tried to make themselves richer relative to women
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and women tried to make themselves prettier relative to men
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so yeah the reason why we don't see women turning up in supercars with expensive rolexes at a nightclub
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or guys spending tons of time doing the beautification thing.
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We know, we have an intuition about what is effective.
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It's the failures just continue to stack up in really interesting ways.
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Well, this is something that we proposed actually in our PNAS paper.
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In the discussion section, we talked about this, where it's like it is interesting and quite conspicuous, but also quite circumstantial that over the 1900s,
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there's pretty good data from David Buss.
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It's hard to do.
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It's hard to gather this survey data, But it does seem that over time,
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throughout the 1900s, especially in the period after women's kind of financial emancipation,
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let's call it, mate preferences converged quite a bit between men and women.
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Oh, that's interesting.
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And then also we're now seeing this tremendous behavioral convergence where it's like women aren't doing sports cars and flashy watches,
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but they do have pretty nice handbags, pretty nice shoes, and they are pretty ritzy in terms of their finances.
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So yes, but that's only signaling to women.
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Well, maybe.
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But men are definitely, even if you say for the women's side, that's not true.
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On the men's side, we see that men have tripled their parenting effort since the 1970s.
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And male beautification, I know that it's really trendy right now with the whole looks maxing thing.
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But this is actually just the newest instantiation of a documented trend going back to the 1990s.
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You can read the historian Lynn Luciano's work on this, where male beautification has increased decade on decade to a point where basically everyone,
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even like a normal man who doesn't consider himself like a
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beautifying person uh his behavior his daily routine would be unrecognizable
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to his grandfather like the average shave your head dude shave your head
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you don't need to think about we did a we did
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a little data analysis um on using health data essentially seeing like how much has weightlifting actually increased
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and generation on generation
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it's like you go from basically like not a behavior to
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every young man is now like every every man like every
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other member of gen z essentially is like a recreational bodybuilder that's right i totally do find
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that attractive though right um they do find uh some some
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muscularity uh attractive and uh good grooming attractive they find parenting attractive
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but i'm not persuaded at all in fact i don't think it's the case
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that men think that um she's really hot i love
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that handbag yeah i don't think i don't think so either remember
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that was a bit cheeky but i do think
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that it is i do think it's conspicuous um and so it's worth pointing out where it's like,
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I don't think that women are necessarily signaling their resources to attract men, but it's interesting that they're signaling resources more over the same time period.
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And in the male beautification, I would really put my foot down and say, no, that is to attract women.
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And I think it is because they have their own money.
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Right.
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Okay.
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So this is your pet theory, right?
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That because the socioeconomic imbalance between men and women has been reduced or even reversed.
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Men need to find a different way.
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They need to compete on another domain of attractiveness.
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And that has been self -beautification.
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I'm going to make myself look nicer.
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Beauty is the flashy one.
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Parenting is the quiet one that's actually better evidenced.
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Dad not shared.
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Yeah, exactly.
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And we see this even in Lee's 2015 study, where it does seem that when women and have their own money, they recognize where it's like,
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well, I have the financial thing kind of sorted.
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I really need like a helper at the nest a little bit more.
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And that's been the preference shift.
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And men have definitely responded to that.
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I mean, men have tripled their...
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A man today spends more time with children, I believe, I think I heard this from you, that it was than women did in the 1950s.
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There's a dramatic difference, though.
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At least in the U .S context, I've read that this differs by socioeconomic status and education,
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where educated, upper -middle -class men are spending far more time with their children than fathers in the past,
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whereas non -college men are spending the same amount as decades past, or even slightly less.
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And the average is getting brought up by… Primarily by college educated men.
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Yeah, hilarious.
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Although those women don't necessarily have as much money.
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Yeah.
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It's part of it though… But then the men are also spending less.
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Yeah.
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It's part of it though, just that guys are thinking it's only fair.
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They're responding to arguments that have been made by feminists and others.
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Just that guys haven't been pulling their weight in the past and they think that they should.
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To a degree, on this handbag point, I think I heard this from Tonya Reynolds,
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that she suggested that it's not that men obviously aren't attracted to these luxurious handbags.
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And in some cases, women, they're buying these handbags or wearing them to impress women.
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I know what you're going to say.
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But it's about deterring.
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Deterring rivals.
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Look at how much my husband is in the hole for this stupid bag that he doesn't understand what it is.
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None of his friends understand what it is.
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I'm not even doing it for other guys.
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It's not my boobs, right? which would be the sort of thing that wouldn't be a deterrent.
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It would actually probably be the cause of ire from other women.
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Whereas women would compliment handbags more than they would compliment boobs.
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Yes, yeah, yeah.
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100%.
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So if you imagine that we're in an environment of increasing mate competition, if you were an attractive man.
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Big engagement ring.
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Why the massive engagement ring?
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Look at how much he's in the hole.
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For me, stay clear.
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But what's the benefit though of intimidating other women and saying, look at this great handbag.
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To keep them away from the partner.
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If guys don't care about it, why would other women think, well, I better stay away because I don't have as nice a handbag.
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Well, if he's so invested in her that he spent 20 grand on a handbag,
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then it's probably not worth my time to poach him or to attempt to poach him.
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I see.
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So it could be mate poaching deterrence.
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It could also be just kind of classic high status to low status threat behavior.
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I remember literally the first day of my PhD arrived in Melbourne and went for a walk with Candice.
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And I asked her this exact question.
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And I was just like, why do you think women love the handbags?
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Because I knew that she was really into the beautification stuff and that she really had her head around those things.
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And just immediately said to scare young women.
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Just immediately.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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And so I was like, okay, interesting.
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And I do think that it is, I feel like I've since then maybe tried to observe it as like a second order thing.
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And I think it's kind of maybe the male equivalent of
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like a guy who's really jacked walking into the room when a woman walks in and she's very glamorous.
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She's got the expensive shoes, the expensive bag, just throws it on the table.
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It's like, I run this shit.
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Like it's kind of like that atmosphere.
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But there's also a sense, at least with guys, guys that have got a ton of muscle on them, you have to have spare time.
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You have to have spare time.
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You have to have spare money to be able to afford the food and the PEDs.
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You need to be at least somewhat disciplined.
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You need to have the time to be able to plan your training sessions
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and not be at work every single hour of the day in the same way as the long nails
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that a woman might have and the well -done hair and the good beauty regime is costly in terms of time.
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And that indicates an awful lot more about lifestyle than just resources do.
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But I totally didn't think about the fact that guys going to the gym is a form of male beautification.
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If you class that in, which I just like totally did not consider,
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if you add in guys going to the gym as a form of male beautification, it's got to be 4X,
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5X, 6X, 10X, what it would have been 100 years ago for male beautification.
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Yeah, I mean, that's what the best, that's what the best study on beautification did.
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It's Mardukowal's study um it's and she found
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that in all except for seven countries women beautified more uh there were there were seven
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that men beautified more um slightly um
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and this was the weightlifting side of it essentially was what was
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that was the behavior where men were a big pac -man chunk
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that's been taken out of the side yeah it is
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and uh and some might say oh well a lot of men beautify a lot of men hit the gym, sorry, for health, not beautification.
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And some of them do it for status competitions.
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They actually, but they thought of that.
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They had a question in there that it's like, okay, doing it for beauty though, basically how much time are you like bodybuilding?
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And so they, they, they really were able to drill down on that.
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And there was one other behavior.
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This is so counterintuitive where among the people who did it, men actually did this behavior more.
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So think about different beautification behaviors.
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I won't bore you by making you guess, but it was makeup.
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Among people who wear makeup, the men who wear makeup spend way more time on it than the women um just
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because they're less good at it they've been growing up on youtube tutorial yeah i think
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that it's um what she said to me was that she thinks
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that it's um essentially men who wear makeup have some kind of special qualitative difference maybe it's
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that they're like a sense i told her look
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you're picking up on like male beauty influencers essentially like like who is
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and so they just have different yeah yeah but i thought
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that was interesting is that the um is
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that in terms of numbers among the people charles on repeat yeah
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it's just james strolls clocking in 16 hours a day and causing the difference.
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But it was interesting.
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So it was basically, yeah, there was this, the second biggest difference technically was the weight lifting.
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The biggest was the makeup, but it was because of that effect.
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Tell me if this sounds familiar.
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You train regularly, you eat reasonably well, you feel fine, but you're just kind of going off vibes.
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Thank you very much for tuning in.
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If you enjoyed that clip, you will love the full length episode in all of its glory right here.
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Come on, press it.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “What Women Choose When Given a “Dating Budget””. This video has 203 sentences and 2344 words to shadow. The speech runs for 11:49. The speaker talks fast, about 198 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| essentially adverb | /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/ | In essence: by nature. |
| resource noun | /ɹɪˈzɔːs/ | Something that one uses to achieve an objective, e.g. raw materials or personnel. |
| whereas | /(h)wɛɹˈæz/ | In contrast; whilst on the contrary; although. |
| spare adjective | /spɛɚ/ | Being more than what is necessary, or what must be used or reserved; not wanted, or not used; superfluous. |
| attract verb | /əˈtɹækt/ | To pull toward without touching. |
| norm noun | /nɔːm/ | That which is normal or typical. |
| necessarily adverb | /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/ | Inevitably; of necessity. |
| relative noun | /ˈɹɛl.ə.tɪv/ | Someone connected by blood, marriage, or adoption; someone in the same family. |
| mirror noun | /ˈmiɹɚ/ | A smooth surface, usually made of glass with reflective material painted on the underside, that reflects light so as to give an image of what is in front of it. |
| awful adjective | /ˈɔːfʊl/ | Very bad. |
| engagement noun | /ɪnˈɡeɪd͡ʒ.mənt/ | An appointment, especially to speak or perform. |
| triple adjective | /ˈtɹɪp.əl/ | Made up of three related elements, often matching |
| wisdom noun | /ˈwɪzdəm/ | An element of personal character that enables one to distinguish the wise from the unwise. |
| shoe noun | /ˈʃu/ | A protective covering for the foot, with a bottom part composed of thick leather or plastic sole and often a thicker heel, and a softer upper part made of… |
| preference noun | /ˈpɹɛf(ə)ɹ(ə)ns/ | The selection of one thing or person over others (with the main adposition being "for" in relation to the thing or person, but possibly also "of") |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| bring up verb | To mention. |
| get off verb | To move from being on top of (something) to not being on top of it. |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. |
| go off verb | To explode. |
| pick up on verb | To notice, observe, learn, or understand, especially something otherwise overlooked. |
| point out verb | To identify among a group of similar subjects, or in a scene where the subject might not be readily seen or noticed, with a gesture of the body. |
| run over verb | To exceed the allotted time. |
| stay away verb | To avoid or not go anywhere near someone or something. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- I'm going to make myself look nicer.
- I know what you're going to say.
- I'm not even doing it for other guys.
- It's not my boobs, right?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | haven't been pulling · they've been growing |
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | If you enjoyed that clip, you will love |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have tripled · has increased · has been reduced |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | has been reduced · have been made · aren't attracted |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 38 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, they're, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: gather /ˈɡæðɚ/, grandfather /ˈɡɹæn(d)ˌfɑðɚ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, shoe /ˈʃu/, shave /ˈʃeɪ̯v/, regime /ɹəˈʒiːm/, luxurious /lʌɡˈʒʊəɹi.əs/
- Long words — get the stress right: essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, hilarious /hɪˈlɛə.ɹi.əs/, technically /ˈtɛk.nɪˌkəl.i/, reasonably /ˈɹiː.zən.ə.bli/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like essentially, resource, whereas.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.