For men, is our attraction still essentially physical?

“You have to love women, not understand them” , they said in the 90s, referring to the fact that women are not rational and logical beings, but rather unpredictable and illogical. That you have to love them because they are beautiful and that is their only value, physics, silencing their ideas and their arguments. Although times have changed thanks to the feminist movement, according to experts, it is a reality that exists today and is palpable among the old, but also among the new generations. How valid is it still that our value is in the physical?

This kind of macho dynamic happens in many areas of our lives, but when it comes to love, the cost is paid by us women. We pay for it by comparing and competing and working on something that, according to the sociologist Francisca Valenzuela , This is not the most important. A few weeks ago, Valenzuela released her first book “Maldito Amor”, where she details how this way of seeing women works. “Many, unfortunately, take these notions of what a relationship should look like at face value, and for the same reason they seek out physical attractiveness rather than other qualities in women. But as they are taught to honor our physical beauty, we are strengthened to love men for their intelligence, talent, greatness, experience, and wisdom. They teach us the love of idolatry towards them. Maybe someone disagrees with what I’m saying here, but too many times I’ve had to see and listen to people praising men for having a “beautiful” partner, as if the beauty was a triumph, a trophy,” he says in the book.

It feels outdated, 90s and way above what women say they’re willing to accept, at a time when feminism has made us reflect on social constructs, gender stereotypes and how we deserve to be treated. But no, it continues. For Martina Yopo, sociologist and director of the Observatory of Inequalities at Diego Portales University (UDP), these stereotypes are still valid “because they are rooted in cultural constructions about gender and the differences between men and women, but lose their strength as a consequence of advances in gender equality, such as the greater participation of women in the labor market and in positions of power in society”. Advances that she attributes to the feminist movement: “it has played a very important role in the installation of a critical reflection on gender norms in society, helping to break down the stereotypes associated with what it is to to be a man and what it is to be a woman”. ,” she says.

Many of us have worked to tear down the social constructs we grew up with from this reflection. However, these same constructions continue to be demands that society imposes on us. We see it in the unattainable standards of beauty and in the models of desirable and “lovable” women that social networks show us, explains Francisca. Models that make us believe that if we don’t see ourselves that way, we are worthless. “It’s brutal how it permeates women’s physical self-perception because it makes you feel like if you don’t live up to the standards, you’re also taking yourself away from being loved the way you are. want,” she said.

Years pass and the dynamic repeats itself, even in new generations. Because? The director of the Observatory of Inequalities of the University Diego Portales (UDP) affirms that it has to do with the fact that gender continues to be one of the main axes of social structuring and plays a very important role in the definition of our identities, roles, ways of life . “It also affects the fact that through socialization we learn that the value of men and women in society is determined by different aspects such as, for example, that intelligence tends to be valued more in men and beauty more in women,” he says. . In addition to this, Valenzuela says that sometimes it has nothing to do with the formal education that boys and girls receive at school or at home, but rather with the digital education offered by social networks, where “value is placed disproportionately on the physical and the external and reinforces stereotypes of unattainable beauty in girls and adolescents, which is reflected in the love and affective sexual plane”.

Today we can see modern examples of this dynamic. Analyzing the behavior of new generations on social networks, sociologist Francisca Valenzuela comments that she has identified two trends. The first was the phrase “if your boyfriend won’t show you, get out of there”, which has gone viral in different formats, but with the same background: “it’s something outside, it’s to what you look like, how beautiful he thinks you are and that’s what he shows on social media because your inner world is not shown there, nor the other qualities of a person but it all depends on the physical, on his appearance, ”she says.

The second refers to the popularization of reviewing what the current couple’s ex is, comparing each other around physique and appearance, “as if our main value lies there when we relate to a person”, explains the author of “Maldito Amor”, who also says that many followers write to him on instagram —where she posts thoughts on love and relationships—to tell him that they can’t help but compare themselves to their partner’s ex and that the comparison they make doesn’t always have to see with what she is, but with her appearance. “We ourselves internalize the idea that the physical component is too determining and that it becomes one of our main spaces of comparison between women, which is very detrimental because we all receive this education based on precariousness and probably these same women you compare yourself to. , they deal with the same insecurities that you do, these same pains” ensures.

This perspective is harmful to women because it permeates their physical self-perception. And it is that the way we see ourselves is mediated in an important way by the way others see us and by the place we occupy in society, explains sociologist Martina Yopo, who adds that “if the body, the beauty and physical appearance are at the center of how society sees and categorizes women, this is going to have a significant influence on how we see and value ourselves”. In the same way, he assures that “it puts us at a disadvantage because it limits our place and our value in society to traditional gender roles, which also poses significant obstacles to the possibility of participating in other spaces of society and to advance gender equality”. ”.

And it is that, if so, it implies that what is not precious and recognizable in women is their voice, it is their opinion and that is what they have to say. Therefore, what is taught, says sociologist Francisca Valenzuela, is that “when you have to love your partner, and she is a woman, what you have to worry about is her appearance and not that she should contribute to a realm of opinion and decision. This reinforces other things in the logic of love, such as the fact that ‘women should be loved and not understood'”.

In this logic, there is a valid type of beauty: that desired by the heterosexual male gaze. This is what we learn and seek, but it is not a triumph for us, it is for machismo, concludes Valenzuela. “It’s a triumph that we obey these standards and forget about what we really want, like our self-acceptance; that we are overly critical of our body, of who we are; and often we put aside what makes us truly valuable, that is, our inner world, what we have to contribute, our thoughts, ideas and opinions. This is why it is so important to rehabilitate ourselves collectively from them and to do the critical exercise of reflecting on how they teach us the place we occupy in our bonds and what is truly precious that society teaches”, concludes -he.