It's a trope straight out of every high school rom-com ever made: the skinny, nerdy guy who's caring, and artistic, and in touch with his emotions, but the girl never pays attention to him because she's too busy pining over the buff, athletic jerk who cares more about football than he does about her and thinks feelings are for girls. It's simplistic and reductive, and nobody really believes the world works that way, except...well, except that we kind of do. Whether it's movies or TV or classic real-life lines like "He only picks on you because he likes you," we're all trained starting early in life to equate traditionally masculine behaviors with attractiveness in men. But does that mean that we actually find men who display traditionally masculine behavior more attractive in the real world?
Curious, Buzzfeed decided to test the theory by recording one model performing a series of behaviors we typically associate with masculinity (things like acting aloof, refusing to commit, the dreaded manspreading) and placing them side by side with the same model acting more "feminine" (listening attentively, expressing emotions, dressing more formally), then having their staffers, as well as online poll takers, rate how attractive they found him in each scenario. While some of the behaviors were a surprise (apparently hand gestures are feminine, because real men don't move, I guess?), the real shock for anyone who's been indoctrinated into the idea that masculinity is attractive was in the results.
While body-language cues got varying results (a smile absolutely crushed the classic bad-boy smolder, garnering 83 percent of the votes, while standing still and not performing a lot of those "girlie" hand gestures was considered more attractive by 54 percent of people), when it came to behavior, "manning up" was a big loser. Being attentive and looking into someone's eyes was sexy to 86 percent of those polled, while just 14 percent wanted a guy who made them work for his attention. The majority also responded better to guys with high "emotional intelligence," and almost everyone was more into a guy who was willing to nail down a firm plan for a date than a play-it-by-ear type—all traits considered to be less traditionally masculine.
