Scripts

I've read through Autumn Whitefield-Madrano's series on beauty and infidelity, and was struck by one thing that just about never came up: male beauty. I've written before (see the tag) about the importance of male beauty in regular ol' heterosexual relationships - i.e. the importance of women drawing a line based entirely on looks (which are largely subjective) between men they'd consider for romantic purposes and those they would not, and only then looking at personality, character, etc. No one for a millisecond doubts that men do this, but women of course do it as well, despite being under social pressure not to. A 15-year-old girl can care about male appearance, but past the fainting-at-boy-bands age, no more.

But it would seem the same principles could be applied to cheating. Whether it's the woman who's married/partnered, or the man, or both, male appearance no doubt enters into it. ("Anna Karenina," people! Not that this Vronsky was so great, esp. when the Karenin he was up against was Jude friggin' Law, who granted has never been my favorite but still.) What happens in these cases, I'd imagine, is that women follow certain scripts, and conform to a narrative about wanting to be found beautiful themselves. Well, perhaps so, but why by whichever man in particular? Might it have something to do with his looks? This is, at least, what women do - I believe - in regular, non-illicit relationships. There's this script of, eww, gross, men, which must be followed even if the man in question isn't remotely gross (to the woman in question), quite the contrary. That heterosexual means a woman likes men, this we kind of ignore, as if a heterosexual woman is merely not enlightened enough to be a lesbian.

Anyway, I'm now not remembering if this was in one of Autumn's posts or in an NPR podcast I listened to on the train post-Affaire Petraeus, but it would seem likely that if women claim to only cheat (or, more broadly, notice other men) when their relationships are going badly, whereas men are just kinda admitting to turning their heads whenever a female mammal crosses their path, this is because women are following a script that says that female sexuality is about being desired, not desiring. So if a woman desires, it's can't be that. It must be that she desires to be desired. If said woman is already in a relationship, it must be that she's not getting the you-are-beautiful affirmation she requires from the first dude.

So, rather than articulating a relationship between male beauty and infidelity, I'm going to offer one between male beauty and fidelity. If men and women alike recognized that women are human beings really not all that different from men, committed hetero relationships would benefit tremendously. There'd no longer be this ridiculous narrative about the sad-sack wife or girlfriend who simply can't believe her dude could experience even the most fleeting attraction to another woman. Nor would women try to convince themselves that their relationships were on the rocks when something happens like Keanu Reeves walks by (and this can happen!) and they, you know, look. It holds for both sexes that if you're noticing other people all the time, if you're not so much appreciating beauty in your preferred sex as plotting to run off ala Anna Karenina, your relationship is probably not 100%. But if both partners get that the other person has the potential to be attracted to others, that this isn't something unique to men-who-are-pigs, then there'd be a more even playing field, and, I suspect, a certain amount of drama spared.