The web is a sea of hot people. Conventionally attractive influencers monopolise social media via algorithmic bias toward young, symmetrical faces; we’re served constant behind-the-scenes content of lovely celebrities; and porn and AI favour the de-facto toned, young hot person. Even those near us are rendered preternaturally flawless via filters, Facetune, and the artful mastering of lighting and angles.
It’s been well established that the digital ubiquity of “unrealistic beauty standards” is whittling away at our self-esteem and mental health. What has been unpacked less exhaustively, nonetheless, is the impact it’s having on our dating lives. Online, men are calling Sydney Sweeney and Margot Robbie “mid”, rating the latter a seven out of ten on the universal scale of hotness, and plenty of my gorgeous friends lament never being hit on in real life. “Back within the olden days they [men] would see like 200 baddies of their whole life and now it’s like, they’re desensitised to it,” posited influencer Tinx, to resounding agreement on TikTok and beyond. Over half of US adults say dating has gotten worse during the last ten years. Has overexposure to good-looking people skyrocketed our standards?
It’s a theory that carries scientific backing. We all know that what we discover attractive is formed by cultural forces in addition to biology, with the media pickling our brains in beauty standards which have a knock-on effect on who we’d like so far. But while historically we might occur across one percentile beauty standards only rarely – in movies or in magazines – every beautiful person with web access now lives in, and is pushed by, our phones.
A 2014 study conducted by Carlota Batres, assistant professor of psychology at Franklin & Marshall College and the director of the Preferences Lab, found that participants with access to the web favoured more masculine men and thinner, more feminine women. “The web influences our perceptions of what it’s that we discover attractive,” she tells Dazed. It’s a theory bolstered by a later study by Batres, which found that our visual weight loss program – or the faces we see most (on or offline) – shapes our perception of what’s beautiful. It’s no wonder that a dissonance is going on after we step out of the lacquered digital realm into the true world of idiosyncrasies and textured skin, where we’re illuminated by fluorescent overhead lighting as an alternative of ring lights, and also you see every angle of somebody’s face.
It’s a take echoed by psychologist and researcher Michelle Drouin: “I believe you’ll be able to put it right down to basic habituation. We have now now grow to be habituated to the pictures that we’ve seen online and we expect that that’s our reality… Physical attraction is what makes someone walk across the room for another person. And in the event you don’t have that initial prime [attraction], since you’re so habituated to all the gorgeous, perfect images that you just see online, then what’s the trigger that makes you walk across a room?”
Not only does the web put hotness on tap; it tricks us into believing those that yield it are nearby. Attractive content creators propagate an illusion of accessibility by engaging with followers, while dating apps proffer a smorgasbord of rigorously curated profiles, stoking an illusion of infinite selection. As argued by sex author Magdalene Taylor within the New York Times, “We never must have been exposed to what the apps originally provided: the sense that the dating pool is a few unlimited, ever-increasing-in-quality well of individuals.” Even Hinge itself acts as a microcosm of the broader problem: once you retreat from the “standouts” (heavily-liked people you would like a premium subscription to match) back to the fundamental algorithm, your options don’t seem quite as desirable.
Porn, unsurprisingly, compounds the issue: while there’s been plenty of moral panic surrounding its impact on real-life sexual behaviour (with good cause), we haven’t reached a consensus on whether or not consuming content of good-looking porn stars influences who we’re drawn to. Rob Weiss, a clinician specialising in digital-age intimacy, is sceptical that overexposure to porn has the facility to overhaul one’s type. He does, nonetheless, imagine it could actually incite us to hunt down a more attractive version of that type in real life.
“I could also be drawn to women with large breasts and large butts who’re 200 kilos. Would I see some that were more attractive online? Same woman, body type, but she is more emblematic. You understand, her face, her skin, how perky her boobs are, whatever that’s. Would I be looking more for that? Sure,” he explains. It’s a shift in standards that may even impede real-life intimacy. “Considered one of the issues we’ve with men who’re extremely compulsive sexually with porn, taking a look at it again and again and once more – the younger men – they don’t get aroused after they’re with an actual woman… When it becomes a norm, whether it’s the wonder, nonetheless I define beauty, I’m going to search out the true world not as interesting since the super stimulus is my norm.”
Theoretically, the usual warp (as I’m coining it) can befall all sexes. But heterosexual men are arguably more prone to it: the ever-present male gaze implies that images of adherent women are in every single place, while women are more likely to be content creators and subsequently eat ‘For You’ pages. It even harks back to basic biology: “evolutionary theory says that men are [more] concerned with physical attractiveness,” says Drouin. There’s also the next prevalence of pornography use and online sex-seeking amongst men, meaning they spend more time consuming such content. Meanwhile, while in pre-internet times the standard buff jock might need been the paradigm hot guy, lately, women often lust after quirkily attractive men (see the rodent boyfriend trend and recognition of ‘dad bods’). Women, nonetheless, rarely get the identical grace, with thinness, youth and femininity still being prized above all else. In other words, not only is women’s self-esteem more likely to suffer attributable to online content, but men could also be less more likely to fancy them due to it.
So how can we reset our beauty detectors and get back to appreciating potential partners – and their personalities, which is, afterall, just as necessary – within the flesh ? While unplugging from the recent matrix entirely could also be inconceivable, considering critically and limiting your time in it could help loosen its grip. “We must always attempt to be more mindful by way of our social media usage, by way of attempting to take into consideration how these technologies that we’re interacting with is perhaps affecting us… If we’re probably not aware or understanding it, then I believe that’s where it’s going to have the best effect on people,” advises Justin Lehmiller, a social psychologist and research fellow on the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University. “With regards to plenty of technology, social media, porn use, and so forth, using it in smaller doses will likely be higher,” he continues. “It does go away, nonetheless, in the event you take the porn away from men,” parallels Weiss.
