Women favour men with vulnerbable side as hubbies
Alpha males, step aside! Women are more likely to prefer men who have a damaged, vulnerable side that makes them ready to be tamed into 'husband material', according to new research.
While nearly two centuries have passed since moody Mr Rochester gave Jane Eyre the run-around in Charlotte Bronte's 17th century classic, it seems the tropes and narratives of romance have barely moved on.
Carol Dyhouse, professor of history at the University of Sussex in the UK studied what creates heterosexual female desire and found that those knee-trembling moments for women are just as pervasive today, even if their lives – and their expectations of men – are completely different to several generations ago.
Reviewing the heroes of novels, magazines, films and a parade of popstars over the decades, Dyhouse in her latest book, "Heartthrobs: A history of women and desire" showed how economics and technology have shaped women's passion as much as the accessibility of the men themselves.
For Victorian women, a man was a passport to security and a future.
Without marriage, the wellto-do would have remained being supported by their father, or brother. "I don't think you would have found much discussion of heartthrobs. It would have been irrelevant," Dyhouse said. With the advent of cinema, it also soon became apparent that the traditional ideal of masculinity was not what women craved.
—PTI