When Did Being Disappointed by Men Become an Aesthetic?

Caroline Huckeba

Aug 24

4 min read

A few weeks ago, I found myself deep in a YouTube rabbit hole watching someone explain Sabrina Carpenter's place in heteropessimism. It was one of those ideas that seems, at first glance, either like profound cultural criticism or exquisitely packaged word vomit.

The term heteropessimism, coined by writer Asa Seresin, describes the performative public disavowal of heterosexuality: the jokes about how terrible men are, the declarations that dating is hopeless, the "I wish I were gay" tweets from people who nevertheless continue dating the opposite sex. It's less about rejecting heterosexuality than performing exhaustion with it.

Then came the backlash.

Just before Pride Month, The New York Times published Magdalene J. Taylor's essay, "There's Nothing Wrong With Wanting Men" (originally titled, somewhat more provocatively, "Being Straight Is Great, Actually"). The piece argues against the growing cultural assumption that heterosexuality is uniquely miserable.

"I'm going to go out on a limb and say it," Taylor writes. "There has still never been a better time in human history to happily and successfully pursue heterosexuality." She ends by proposing something she calls "hetero optimism."

Of course, the essay sparked its own controversy. Writer Phoebe Maltz Bovy argued on Substack that Taylor borrowed heavily from the thesis of Bovy's forthcoming book, The Last Straight Woman: On Desiring Men. Taylor also made comparisons between online feminists and the Tate brothers that left many readers scratching their heads. Before anyone could even debate the original idea, the discourse had become another internet food fight.

But what interested me wasn't the drama.

It was the assumption shared by both sides that the conversation is primarily about whether women should feel hopeful or hopeless about men.

I don't think that's actually what heteropessimism was trying to describe.

Because if women seem pessimistic about heterosexual relationships, that pessimism didn't emerge from nowhere. More than one in three women in the United States will experience physical violence, sexual violence, or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime. Globally, approximately one in three women experience physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence. Those aren't abstract statistics. They're conditions under which people learn what love can cost.

Personally, I have an ex-boyfriend I would call 911 over if he came within twenty feet of me. Another relationship ended with what I believe was infidelity. Those experiences don't make me hate men. They do make me understand why so many women approach heterosexual dating with caution rather than optimism.

And I don't think that's unusual.

To ask women to become "hetero optimistic" without acknowledging the structural reasons for their disillusionment feels strangely similar to telling someone to smile more. Optimism isn't a political position. It's often a luxury afforded by safety.

Yet I also think something has happened to heteropessimism in pop culture that deserves criticism.

Artists like Lana Del Rey and Sabrina Carpenter have become fluent in its language. Their music often wraps female disappointment in glamorous Americana: lipstick, motel signs, pageant smiles, Catholic guilt, vintage convertibles, beauty queens, and bad men. They revive the aesthetics of 1950s Hollywood while narrating relationships full of manipulation, neglect, and emotional instability.

It's brilliant art.

It's also easy to mistake aesthetic for analysis.

The danger is that heteropessimism becomes less about critiquing patriarchy and more about romanticizing dysfunction. The toxic boyfriend becomes another accessory, another character in the fantasy. Suffering becomes stylish.

As the philosopher Gillian Rose once wrote, "People cannot be rescued from forms of suffering that they themselves relate to as badges of honor."

Disillusionment can illuminate systems.

But it can also become identity.

Sometimes I wonder if we've confused hatred of men with opposition to patriarchy. Those are not the same thing. Patriarchy doesn't only harm women; it scripts men, too. It rewards emotional repression, dominance, and entitlement while punishing vulnerability and reciprocity. The problem isn't simply men. It's a system that teaches everyone distorted versions of love.

That's why I find both "heteropessimism" and "hetero optimism" strangely limiting.

Take sexuality out of the equation for a moment.

If we're talking about love, then yes, I believe optimism matters. I believe people can repair relationships, grow beyond inherited patterns, and learn to love each other better. Hope is essential to intimacy.

But if we're talking specifically about heterosexuality as a social institution, then optimism cannot exist independently of politics. It has to contend with the unequal conditions under which women have historically dated, married, and lived. You cannot simply declare heterosexuality healthy without asking what kind of heterosexuality you're defending.

The question isn't whether women secretly wish they were gay. The question is whether we've mistaken dissatisfaction with patriarchy for dissatisfaction with desire itself.

Those are radically different conversations. Maybe the real challenge isn't becoming hetero optimistic.

It's becoming structurally optimistic: believing that heterosexual relationships can become more equal, more reciprocal, and more humane, not because women lower their guard, but because the conditions that made them guarded begin to change.

Until then, I don't think women's disillusionment is the problem. I think our willingness to aestheticize it, or dismiss it, is.