Don't communicate “preferences” about your partner’s body: The Internet’s Least Favorite Take
I have gone viral and negative-viral several times each. Whenever I’ve gone “neg viral,” my comment section and DM’s are filled with men responding to my defense of the female body with how porn-like images are “theirs and every other man’s preference, so good luck being single!” These men truly believe they are entitled to give women a checklist of endless tasks they want those women to do to their bodies for the rest of their lives, and then try to innocuously claim “well it’s just a preference!”
Let’s see, what is a preference? Cambridge defines preference as: the fact that you like something or someone more than another thing or person. If you love someone, why would you tell them that you like them less than something else? How is that not inherently degrading?
In a world that has treated dating and courtship like a pickup joint, with endless swiping, fear of commitment, and blurred lines between loving and selfish, I am working to bring clarity. People largely don’t know how to date anymore. They tiptoe around relationship-defining conversations and can go months or years before asking basic compatibility questions. Good, nice people are struggling with this, as well as confused self-centered people who do the courtship dance while leading people on. The clear social structures and value filters that used to be in place are gone, and people are largely roughing it through the Wild West of Dating.
In that Wild West, casual objectification is rampant. Whether celebrities or not, people are often subjected to Hot or Not! assessments. Dating Apps make it seem like a meat market, where we have endless options and can afford to be picky about superficial things, such as eye color or height. In reality, every person on earth’s obstacle in courtship is temperament and value compatibilities. For people who have met "their person" and experienced that magical zing of soul-meeting-soul, they understand it would be foolish to risk missing it over a fastidious commitment to one particular look.
Superficial preferences can only exist if we begin with an assumption that it’s our right to reduce people to aspects of their appearance. Reducing people to their appearances is bad for the objectified and the objectifier. We are not ascending to our highest selves when we objectify others and start creating unnecessary hierarchies that reject healthy traits in other adults. A person with a healthy appreciation for other people’s humanity would not be customizing a “dream person” in their head.
For example, if you dated someone with curly hair you found beautiful, but broke up due to compatibility issues, it would not be healthy to try to make your next partner change their hair to match your ex. Longing for the curls of the ex, encouraging the new person to constantly change their hair texture to match a preference you nurtured from someone else, and trying to pick apart and combine the aspects of two people would be an unhealthy response. Yet there are those who do this every day and defend it.
You cannot pretend you’re being a loving person (willing the good of the other as other) by making someone else’s body resemble someone or something else. You are willing your pleasure by trying to change someone else to match a “dream woman” you had in your head. We are body and soul, so saying “I like your soul, but could you make your body match the other people I’ve found attractive?” is not loving, and therefore not being the best you can be.
So I’m just supposed to date someone I don’t find attractive??
Did I say that? Git! Scram! Shoo!
If you are generally attracted to someone but some aspects are “not your favorite,” you can:
- Not date them and wait until the flawless person you’ll accept comes along. Any day now! Hold your breath!
- Keep it to yourself, behave in a loving way, and see how time and their soul affect your perception of whatever traits weren’t initially your “preference.” Those traits may stand out as more important than before or they may become insignificant.
- No matter what, treat them as you’d like to be treated. Presumably you would feel hurt if someone critiqued your innate characteristics and suggested that changing them would make you more attractive. Whether this is telling someone to adjust their natural hair/eye color, lose or gain weight, or "fix" some feature, there is no need to wound someone else.
The irony of how strongly some people evangelize others to change to their preferred look is that often enough, the next person who comes along loves the original look. Do others the favor of leaving them available to meet someone who appreciates them.
You should not:
- Reject their intentional personal style because you “prefer” a different style. Nobody is your doll. It’s controlling and weird. Go watch Vertigo as your cautionary tale.
- Imply that you’d be more attracted to them if they did an appearance chore everyday to suit your ideal fantasy.
- Pretend that negging isn’t a form of coercive control and that “if they loved you they would just do XYZ everyday until they died so you’d be even more attracted to them.”
If you are not attracted to someone: do not date them. Do them the favor of staying far, far away. Do yourself the favor of not “settling” and then treating someone like a fixer-upper.
But Helen, some people really are “fixer-uppers!” My husband didn’t brush his teeth or clip his toenails before I told him I’d like it if he did!
My Siblings in Dignity, basic hygiene is not a mere preference. It serves a key purpose in health and sociability. Someone with bad oral hygiene can spread that bacteria through spit. Who wants to date someone who’s gonna increase their risk of cavities? No one. Literally protecting your own health is not a “preference.” Not wanting your legs scratched or bed sheets shredded is also not a preference that rejects that person’s body. You didn’t ask this person to rip out their teeth and ablate their toenails. These are universal expectations that do not diminish anyone’s gender, ethnicity, age, or other immutable attributes. Virtually everyone on the planet is expected to trim their nails, bathe, and practice oral hygiene.
Call me a hopeless romantic, but when you’re discerning whether you want to spend your life with someone, introducing insecurities and comparisons is not building a solid foundation!
If you’re not physically attracted to someone or feel no chemistry, don’t date them. Do not try to make them your version of attractive. Chemistry is about the sweet spot between how comfortable you are with someone and how much curiosity you have about someone. If you’re desiring to recreate them in your own image, the curiosity is over and you’re killing future chemistry.
If you straight up do not like physical traits in someone, do not date them. It is heartbreaking when you hear stories (particularly of mothers and daughters), where the mom marries someone she didn’t find physically attractive and then spends her daughter’s childhood trying to fix all her paternal genes. Do not choose this path!
If you are unfamiliar or unsure about parts of someone’s appearance and think it may grow on you, give yourself some time to privately see if that happens. If you end up liking it, great; your original dislike will soon be a faint memory. If you do not end up liking it, do not continue to date them.
If you do like the core of a person, but they do not shower, cut their fingernails, or brush their teeth, are you really still attracted to this person? Do not continue to date this person. If you discover that your spouse does not wipe or wash their butt, document evidence and provide it in court that is not a “preference,” that is a hygiene issue and no woman deserves a UTI from someone refusing basic bodily maintenance. Stand your ground.
If your past partners were all people who looked one way, and now you’re attracted to someone who looks another, you will likely be even more attracted to them and all their differentiating features in 5 years than you are 6 months in. If you have hope for the future, clinging to the features of past people and imposing them on a future person makes no sense. Grow as a person, grow in your taste.
If someone solicits for your preferences in a relationship “do you think I should wear this or that tonight”, great, go ahead and offer a casual preference. “I’m thinking of trying a new haircut, do you think I should keep my regular style or switch things up?” a simple “I bet you’d rock either, but if I had to choose, maybe __.” Preferences that respect that your partner is still the keeper of his or her own body are fine and healthy. “Preferences” that make it sound like your affection is conditional are coercion.
Okay, so what preferences can I have without harming myself or others?
The larger conversations about “sharing preferences with another person” are usually littered with toxic examples of people casually dehumanizing one another. It is absolutely normal to have some key preferences in dating that help you find someone with shared values. If camping is a major part of your life, it is normal to seek out someone else who is outdoorsy. If you speak another language at home, it is completely fine to try and find someone else who can speak that language at home.
A few years ago, actor John Boyega was attacked for saying that as a black man he only dates black women, but I don’t actually see a problem with preferring a shared heritage/ethnicity/race in your future marriage and extended family life. It would be abusive if he dated outside the race and then tried getting the woman to alter herself, or treated her as less than. I am willing to bet that people can see how hurtful such a “preference” would be to a partner–rejecting her race once he dates/marries her. But, thanks to how pervasive misogyny is, they can’t see how hurtful it is when women are given checklists that battle their biology and autonomy.
A preference is the fact that you like something or someone more than another thing or person. Dating and then marrying a person is intrinsically declaring that you are choosing that person and forsaking all others. Therefore by definition, your spouse should be your preference. That alignment is supposed to be there.
In Short
Love looks a lot like self-sacrifice and not very much like self-indulgence, which is why I think we need to culturally retire telling romantic partners how they should be customized. For all of these reasons, and even a few more, don't communicate “preferences” about your partner’s body. And run, not walk, if someone tries to play Build-a-Bear with your body.
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