Betty White, male genitalia, and costly signals

The deceased celebrity misunderstood (wittingly or not) why male genitalia are shorthand for toughness

I first encountered the comedic timing of Betty White on Golden Girls, and enjoyed her work up to and including Hot in Cleveland and Betty White's Off Their Rockers—shows where White especially shines.

It was only recently that I encountered Betty White’s take on the phrase ‘grow some balls’ (and variations thereof)—a phrase meant to tactfully convey that someone toughen up and be strong. White took issue with the saying—either purely for comedic effect or not, I am not certain—claiming that male genitalia are too sensitive and weak to be a symbol of toughness. And for that reason, the saying should instead by something like ‘grow a vagina’—they undergo major physical stress and trauma and yet continue to function and thrive. So, on its face, the saying doesn’t make much sense.

The issue here, though, is that there is a more plausible interpretation of ‘grow some balls’ that makes sense of the saying without having to change to subject to vaginas. One way to think about the phrase would be to interpret it in light of costly signaling theory. The theory roughly holds that people and animals have qualities that are not immediately obvious, but where a signal could reveal those otherwise opaque qualities that others would benefit from knowing about. If one is looking for a good employee, a bad approach to finding one would be to simply hire someone based on how they look—their appearance, though somewhat relevant, will likely not reveal many such traits like their trustworthiness or work ethic. Signaling that one is a good employee with signals that few would send if they weren’t a good employee—a track record of solid work and high marks, for example—is beneficial both for the employee (they get a job!) and the employers (they get a good employee). So, basically, signaling theory holds that people send signals to reveal qualities about themselves—intelligence, contentiousness, toughness—which would otherwise be opaque to observers. As Wikipedia explains,

A signal differs from a cue in that signals evolved to influence the behavior or perceptions of others, while a cue is any piece of information an organism uses to alter its current state that was not created for this purpose… As signals evolve due to their communicative effects and are often not fully linked to the qualities being signaled, they have the potential to be easily faked by those who do not possess a trait.

Someone can signal their physical strength to someone by easily lifting hundreds of pounds over their head with little effort where that strength wouldn’t be as obvious without the signal. However, the signal won’t convey much information it if can be faked easily. And that is where the costliness of the signal comes into play. To quote Wikipedia once again,

Signaling in a costly manner is thought to satisfy these anti-manipulation adaptations when the resultant signals are comparatively cheaper to produce for those who have the underlying quality compared to those who lack it. … In these instances, individuals with the quality can maximize their fitness by investing more in the signal relative to those who lack the quality or possess it to a lesser degree, thereby resulting in a signal that, while often not impossible to fake, tends to not be worth faking.

So perhaps, contra White, the constant vulnerability of having testicles—which are highly sensitive and painful to the mere touch—is a feature not a bug. If males wanted to advertise their toughness, whether witting or not, one hard-to-fake approach would be walking about with a high accessible, and highly sensitive reproductive organ that, when even barely touched, produces a lot of pain. Someone who can physically best their opponents with such a painful and obvious vulnerability truly is tough, and not to be easily messed with. So perhaps the sensitivity and weakness of male genitalia is a feature, not a bug, at least where signaling theory is concerned: it is a hard-to-fake signal that someone is tough, where their toughness may be opaque to those observers who would otherwise lack good evidence of toughness. Perhaps, then, the saying makes sense, just the way it is.