The Desire to be Objectified

But also loved unconditionally

I’m sure at least some of you have played the fun, innocent and relationship enhancing game of “Would you still love me if I was a worm?” The point of the game, other than starting unnecessary arguments, is to soothe the anxiety that your partner doesn’t really love you for you, but for some collection of your legible traits instead. The game is most often played with traits which could reasonably be lost (attractiveness, wealth) and which aren’t normally considered to have ethical value. It’s much more common to ask, “would you still love me if I was ugly” than “would you still love me if I was deeply unkind”. I think this reveals that to the degree that we possess ethically weighty traits like kindness, we count them as core to our being, not as something mutable. But either way, the game often boils down to: would you still love me if I had lower mate value.

It’s not just women who play this game. Kendrick Lamar’s Love is basically just a series of “would you still love me ifs” asked of his fiancée. But, immediately after asking her to assure him of her unconditional love, “If I didn't ride blade on curb, would you still (love me)?”, he demonstrates his love to her with the very money he just asked her if she’d still love him without, “I want your body, your music, I bought the big one to prove it”. This brings up a seeming paradox: we often desire to be appreciated by our partner for precisely the legible traits which we’re anxious to know their love is not dependent on.

The flipside of “Would you still love me if I was a worm” is the equally productive game of “Am I as X as her/him?”. But, asking, for example, if you’re as pretty as some other girl is… pathetic. So, if you’re competent in addition to being insecure you’ll seek this information indirectly, saying something more innocent like “wow, isn’t she sooo pretty?” and waiting for the right (“she’s ok, but not nearly as beautiful as you!”) or wrong (“yeah, I guess so”) response. In this game the desire is to soothe the anxiety that your partner might find someone who they think is “better” and leave, as in this Eliezer tweet. It basically boils down to: do you think I have high (or high enough, or higher than anyone else you could date) mate value.

Of course, mate value is to a significant degree in the eye of the beholder. Most of us don’t lose sleep over the fact that we wouldn’t win first prize in a competition that ranked average mate value across a large population, but we do want to win that competition with our particular partner. And not only do we want to win that competition with our partner, we want to win it for the right reasons. We want them to appreciate, in particular, the characteristics which we are most proud of in ourselves or which we see as most core to our identity. This brings me to something that came up in one of the comments on my post “Female Neediness or Female Status Seeking”.

Etticus Gumperton

said:

Women find a guy with a lot of money very attractive. But the reverse doesn't hold (i.e., men care far more about appearance and personality than salary). Yet many women do not realize this. Thus, very successful women believe that they are more attractive than they are (since they think their wealth to be a plus). They are thus very picky. And many are confused and frustrated when this strategy does not work out.

It’s not uncommon to hear successful women complain that they struggle to find appropriately eligible men to date, and I more or less agree with Etticus’s description of the likely cause. There’s a significant gap in how much value women place on earning potential in male partners vs. how much value men place on earning potential in female partners. While I’m sure it’s sometimes true, especially in more patriarchal cultures, the narrative that “men are just too intimidated by my success” which some women turn to (a la Pavneet in Indian Matchmaking) seems like an obvious cope. I’d guess most men view earning potential in women as a positive, just as less of a positive than women view it in men. There’s probably also a gap in how men vs. women value intelligence in their partner, but I’d expect it’s much more narrow.

While it’s unreasonable to demand that men change their romantic preferences, I sympathize with these women. When what does determine your value in a romantic context differs markedly from what you think should determine your value in a romantic context it can lead to frustration and resentment. These women have high standards for their partner, higher than those of their less successful female friends, because they have high standards for themselves. And it’s natural that they feel resentment when they observe how much more credit men with their level of success get for it on the dating market.

But let’s think about the other side of this for a second. Do women really want to be pursued by men on the basis of their career success? Or to be with a man that wouldn’t have wanted to date them if they were less financially successful? Isn’t that a bit… objectifying? This is a sort of objectification which most women haven’t experienced and which therefore might seem desirable. What most women have experienced however is feeling physically objectified.

Women’s relationship to physical objectification is particularly fraught. On Simone and Malcolm Collins’ podcast (this episode is well worth a listen btw!) Simone talks about having some trouble adjusting to looking more “middle-aged” which she says surprised her given she never saw her looks as her “edge” anyways. For many women, even those who know their physical appearance is not their main source of value (to their partner or in general), the deep desire to be seen as beautiful remains. But on the other hand, the last thing you want is for them to be with you because they think you’re beautiful. Even women who know their partner largely values them for their beauty don’t want to admit it… calling someone a “trophy wife” is generally not taken as a compliment. In Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth she discusses the difficulty men often face when they try to comfort a female partner regarding her appearance:

Nothing he can say about this is right. He can’t speak. Whatever he says hurts her more. If he comforts her by calling the issue trivial, he doesn’t understand. It isn’t trivial at all. If he agrees with her that it’s serious, even worse: He can’t possibly love her, he thinks she’s fat and ugly. If he says he loves her just as she is, worse still: He doesn’t think she’s beautiful. If he lets her know that he loves her because she’s beautiful, worst of all…

Opposite to how some women feel about career or financial success, where they think it should be valued highly and are frustrated when it’s not, many women really want to be seen as beautiful by their partner, implying that beauty is a relevant marker of their romantic value, even if they reject that it should be. So we end up here: “If he says he loves her just as she is, worse still: He doesn’t think she’s beautiful”. Not all of us can, like Aella, have the maturity to be able to process our boyfriend telling us we’re not that pretty as a positive sign of 1. How honest he is and 2. How great he must think we are otherwise.

So… would we really want our partner to love us if we were a worm? Eliezer doesn’t think so and neither do I. In fact, I think really believing that your partner not only loves you unconditionally but will stay with you unconditionally is probably a net negative for the relationship. What we want is to feel as sure as possible that we’re such a good match for our partner that they won’t find someone else whose mate value (to them) is higher enough than ours that they’d be tempted to leave. Women who care a lot about and are proud of their career success can’t change the average preferences of men, but it makes complete sense for them to prefer a partner who values their career success more than most men do. And while there’s only so much you can do to become more physically attractive, if you’re lucky you’ll match up with a partner who thinks you’re hotter than most people do (aka where you’re their type). Add to that the increased subjective value you have to your partner as a result of time spent and projects built together and hopefully, you can feel pretty secure. So no, they wouldn’t still love you if you were a worm. But that’s ok, because you probably wouldn’t want to be with them if they would.