Some might imagine that Harvard students eating in the fancy Annenberg Hall would be the picture of proper diners. But David S. Fisher '02, an anthropology concentrator in Greenough Hall knows the truth.

Fisher observed the table manners of students dining in Annenberg for his Anthropology 106 project, focusing on Harvard men in their ancestral hall.

"I watched people in Annenberg and watched all-male group versus female-male group table manners," Fisher says.

He hypothesized that men would improve their manners when in the presence of women, reasoning that males would invest in practicing proper manners to make themselves more attractive to females, who generally have mate choice.

"I looked at 25 tables--16 mixed and nine all-male--for five minutes each. While there is a trend that males improve their manners in mixed company, it's not statistically significant. People are slobs for the most part," Fisher says.

Bad table manners were defined as chewing with an open mouth, putting elbows on the table, reaching across the table, belching, and talking with food in mouth. Fisher also looked for an increase in good table manners, which he defined as passing food or napkins and keeping hands in lap.

Fisher found that the number of occurrences of men chewing with their mouths open decreased from an average of 4.333 to 3.250 when women were present. Good behavior, such as keeping hands in lap increased in the presence of females, from an average of 0.333 to 1.188 occurrences in five minutes.

In other words, Harvard men stop salivating at the dining table over Harvard women, who they want to impress.

Sexy Skivvies

For Lindiwe Dovey '01, an English and visual and environmental science concentrator in Currier House exploring women's thoughts on lingerie is something that has interested since before she took Historical Study A-33.

"I'm from Australia and I tried to join a radical women's group and quickly withdrew when I saw what they were about. They would take spray paint and spray paint all the lingerie billboards around Sydney," Dovey says.

The women did so to combat the image of women the ads presented.

Her research project gave her the chance to explore the issue. She posted a survey on the World Wide Web that women from around the world have filled out.

She says she wanted to evaluate whether women had positive or negative attitudes toward lingerie. Did the image of lingerie make them feel liberated or oppressed?

Dovey says her initial analysis shows that women feel more liberated. Of those who wear lingerie, Dovey says many started "because their friends wore it. It was female-induced. They did it for themselves, not to please a man."

In her survey, Dovey also asked when women thought lingerie had been invented. She says, the results show that "no one had any idea."