The Tragedy of Heterosexuality

by Jane Ward

Heterosexual desire and mutual likability did not come naturally, they acknowledged, but could be cultivated with the proper tools. Last, they accepted the premise that women and men often found each other’s bodies undesirable and hence advocated for the consumption of beauty products that help stimulate opposite-sex desire. Laying the foundation for the midcentury explosion of beauty interventions targeted to women attempting to appear “fresh” and “lovely” for their husbands while laboring at home, eugenicist advocates for hygienic and modern marriage offered soaps, perfumes, makeup, douching, and other consumer goods as keys to happy heterosexuality. They made explicit that heterosexual marriage was no longer a labor contract in which both parties showed up “as is” but an ongoing affective project requiring access to precise tools and information that would build mutual affection. Each of these interventions set the stage for straight culture’s emergence as the romantic arm of misogyny, wherein the delicate coexistence of hate and love, the slap and the kiss, would come to represent the heteroerotic. But this era also initiated straight culture as a gendered mode of consumption in which the purchase of beauty products and relationship advice were vital to maintaining this delicate balance.