As an avid reader of romance novels (which is a genre written by women for women), my observation is that some male protagonists are kinda assholes, but that’s probably a minority. It is true that almost all male protagonists are stereotypical “alpha males”: strong, courageous, confident, assertive, high status, possessive. But many of them are also honorable and kind, which is the opposite of asshole.
Personally I prefer nice nerds, but I’m probably atypical.
Yes, this seems reasonable. I guess I’m curious about which of these traits is more robustly attractive. That is: assuming the ideal male protagonist is both an alpha male, and honorable and kind, would their attractiveness drop more if you removed just the “honorable and kind” bit, or just the “alpha male” bit? I suspect the latter, but that’s just speculation. We might be able to get more quantitative data by seeing how many male protagonists fall into each category.
As an avid reader of romance novels (which is a genre written by women for women), my observation is that some male protagonists are kinda assholes, but that’s probably a minority. It is true that almost all male protagonists are stereotypical “alpha males”: strong, courageous, confident, assertive, high status, possessive. But many of them are also honorable and kind, which is the opposite of asshole.
Personally I prefer nice nerds, but I’m probably atypical.
I think many romance novel characters have the “asshole with a heart of gold” stereotype going on—still assholes, but assholes that care.
My observation of assholes in real life who have great long term relationships is that they fit this stereotype as well.
Yes, this seems reasonable. I guess I’m curious about which of these traits is more robustly attractive. That is: assuming the ideal male protagonist is both an alpha male, and honorable and kind, would their attractiveness drop more if you removed just the “honorable and kind” bit, or just the “alpha male” bit? I suspect the latter, but that’s just speculation. We might be able to get more quantitative data by seeing how many male protagonists fall into each category.