Ever woken up on the wrong side of bed? In fact, each morning do you wake from a peaceful slumber to realise that, oh, wait a second, every side of the bed is the wrong side?
You’re not alone because Sleep Cycle - the app that helps wake you up at just the optimum moment within half an hour of your alarm (based on how much you’re wriggling around and therefore most ready to be woken) – where were we? Oh yes, they’ve done a survey of a million users across 50 nations over 9 months. And they've used the data of people's sleep recorded onto the app. And they’ve found that women aged 16-55 sleep more than men. Not only that, but in most countries, (apart from Ukraine, Portugal and Colombia), women reported worse morning moods than men.
Why’s that? Well, according to a 2013 study by Duke University, women just need more sleep because we’re hard-wired to feel crappy the next day without a good night of it: ‘We found that women had depression, women had more anger, and women had more hostility early in the morning.’
But we’ve got some other theories as to why we apparently wake up so vexed. FYI, they’re totally general, but that’s because this study is totally general.
1. Life’s so shit for women
We wake up in the morning, check our phones, look at the news and social media and whatever and realise how shit the world is – especially to women – and wonder why the fuck we even bother?
2. We talk about how shit it is
Is it just that the female respondents were actually happier to report feeling grumpy than men were? After all, we’re encouraged at every turn to talk about our feelings, whereas men are encouraged to bottle them up.
3. We prefer evenings
Are we just more likely to feel at our prime in the evening? After all, while men feel horniest at 7am, women feel horniest at 11pm. That is, at least, according to this study, by, um, Lovehoney.
4. We dream nicer things
Could it be because men’s dreams (and let it be known that dreams are simply repeated images of stuff you see throughout your day, so will obviously be gendered) are so gross compared to ours? Loads of studies point towards women dreaming of emotions, relationships and family members whereas men dream of things like violence, strangers, cars and sex with unknown partners. If you’ve spent the night dreaming of wonderful things, it’s likely that waking up and realising you’re in the real world and there’s dribble on your face and you have to go and get ready for the day is pretty depressing. Whereas if all your dreams have been about violent sex with strangers in cars, or simply just sex with cars, waking up and realising you’re in a safe comfy bed of warm sheets is actually a joy.
5. We’ve got so much more to do with our mornings
As Beyoncé sang in If I Were A Boy: ‘If I were a boy/ Even just for a day/ I’d roll outta bed in the morning/ And throw on what I wanted and go.’ And maybe that holds true, at least in many women’s sleep-drunk minds? Women are held to a higher standard of beauty than men which means that in order to go out for the day, they’ve got so much more to just…do!
6. Women are more likely to have to wake the kids up
Ok, ok, so this might not necessarily concern us right now, but when waking up involves waking up kids and wiping their snotty faces and putting them in badly-sized uniform then driving them to school before you even start your work, or even just changing a hefty nappy, it’s no wonder some women might feel grumpy at the prospect! Childcare, and crappy panel shows full of blokes late at night, might also explain why some women go to bed that bit earlier.
What about you? Are you grumpy in the mornings? Why do you think that is? Tell us @TheDebrief
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.