“I will be hyper sexualized and that's just what I should come to expect.” Replied Remi, when asked her opinions on dating apps, "I have an interesting situation as a Trans woman,” Remi, a 21 year old college student at USF is one of the 23 million Hinge users online today. According to data collected by Jeff Beckman, an author at Tech Report, folks the ages 18-24 make up 20% or 4,600,000 users of the app's total participation in 2024. Gen Z is the first generation to experience technology from early infantry all the way into adulthood. It's only natural for the generation to use tech driven mediums to gauge romantic endeavors. 

Dating Apps today resemble something similar to a game. The photos are large and often overshadow the written responses created by the app's users. This format physically illustrates an  imbalanced focus on appearance rather than personality. Despite Hing's motto “The app that is meant to be deleted” this is often proven difficult to accomplish as much of the users' interactions are based on surface level attraction. This concept is strangely similar to Tinder’s interface- an app widely used for hookups.
On both Tinder and Hinge one can only begin a conversation if both users approve of the others dating profile pictures and short responses first. Sofi, a communications major at USF, was fairly deliberate in choosing her photos for her dating profile. She explained “I wanted it to seem like I was a niche artsy girl, and that I had all of these things about me that were desirable…I know in my head what works and what is the ideal, so I guess I tried to mold myself to that.”  When later asked if her profile was a genuine representation of who she was she simply said “No.”

  “When I tried the apps I wanted to try something else and see if something new would work, like a total 360 of who I was. ( …) It was almost an instinct to be more feminine.” Said Sofi. Whether it was our poses in a photo, the answer pink to the question of our favorite color or even a change in the tone of our voice over the phone, we as women fell into the intrinsic pressure to impress our male suitors. 

I know, I can feel the judgement as I'm writing this, and to the true feminists reading this, I applaud you for your strength in resisting the patriarchal discourse. But alas, in a society that so blatantly boasts womens assumed roles: sex appeal and maternity, it proves to be rather difficult to drown out these expectations. This pressure to perform this ideal femininity is driven by the fear of being an outlier amongst the other thousands of perfectly palatable feminine dating profiles. Oliver casually defined these outliers as “The ugly ones,” when asked what kind of language is used behind the screen when “flipping” through profiles.

 Curious if Oliver had noticed this hyper fem performance many women take on within the apps I asked if he had ever wondered why women do this. To which he said “I could definitely see it as a way to get people's attention.” My train of thought halted. Had this age old dance simply been for attention? Had Sofi been sweet and compliant within the apps for attention? Had Remi ,“Allowed them to ask invasive questions and make invasive statements” for attention? Had I posed in the photo with my mom on Christmas Eve wearing a black skirt for attention? 

 According to Pew research center “ 33% of women under 35 say they have been sexually harassed online, while 11% of men under 35 say the same.” The objectification and hyper sexualization of women dates all the way back to Roman and Greek art, where women were depicted as objects of beauty, and nothing further. In the world we live in today,  “98% of porn use in 2021 was via online porn, with 69% viewed on cell phones.” Stated Dr. Kent Hoffman, an addiction specialist at Addiction Help. Pornograhpy in today's day and age is just another app on the phone. Easy access to this explicit content normalizes viewing women in obscene sexually objectifying lights. The lack of separation between paid actresses in porn and the digital dating profiles of real women on the very same device is the reason no one even bats an eye at dating apps that are scientifically formatted to do the exact same thing. That is, marketing women for their physical and sexual attributes.  “I probably say I pay attention to photos and short answers like 60/40 favoring photos” Said Oliver.

Due to apps like Hinge’s interface, it can be challenging to escape from the essence of hookup culture and sexually explicit behaviors regardless of what app a user decides to use. “As much as people wanna be quirky, people are not going to judge you based on that, they judge you based off of the biggest thing on their screen and it's a picture.” said Sofi. Both Tinder and Hinge, apps that dominate the dating app pool have made space for individuals to express their sexual wants and desires without fear of societal norms and expectations as users are protected behind a screen. “Boys have the most scary descriptions of women objectifying them. Talking about not looking for a serious relationship, just looking for a body. The pattern is that they are joking about using women and then leaving.” Remi explained to me as she described what it's like scrolling through her dating app feeds.

By nature dating apps on their face are undoubtedly objectifying and hyper sexualizing. The physical size difference from the photos and text responses in any given dating app profile births a certain performative aspect to the interactions that take place between one user to another. “I start putting on this really hyper feminine persona that I know is catering towards the male gaze.” Said Remi. This action of adopting stereotypical feminine attributes is a common thread amongst the women I interviewed. In spaces such as these apps, that seemingly strip women down to their appearance and perhaps a couple quirky sentiments, often makes women feel the need to act in ways that they know will bring the most engagement to their digital profiles. More commonly than not that means submitting to gender stereotypes. “The only thing I can really attribute to them is looks before actually having a conversation.” Said Oliver, a 20 year old cis male who is exclusively on Hinge.

Dating app interactions resemble less and less of human interaction and more of a calculated exchange. Oliver, when asked about his experiences behind the screen illustrated just how careless users often are when scrolling through the apps “I have seen guys just flipping through it like it's a magazine.” He said. The “magazine” being hundreds of women’s profiles in his local area. “It's just an app on your screen. Most of them feel kind of superficial at times cuz’ I'm just scrolling and texting and so I think there's just not that much thought behind it.” 

 I couldn't help but spot the glaring difference between the cadence in which the females I interviewed went about using the apps in comparison to Oliver; your average aloof straight white male. To Oliver, the apps were often boring or led to what he called “Doom scrolling,” whereas to the women I interviewed, their experiences carried much more nuance. Remi, a transwoman, Sofi a curvy woman of color, and myself, a Bisexual plus sized woman engaged in somewhat of a performance within the apps. Beyond the public profile, the very way in which we spoke to men within the apps changed in comparison to our normal everyday selves.

Due to the influence of pornographic media today, both men and women are conditioned to expect or perform through a pornographic lens that succumbs to the male gaze. This translates within dating apps as not only the hyper sexualization of women, but also the outward hyper feminine performance presented by many women within dating apps. “A lot of my real life started feeling like a forced persona.” Said Remi.

This vicious cycle of female performance for male consumption is perpetuated beyond digital apps and instilled within the actions of the real human beings behind the screens of dating apps that seem so “unreal”. Based on a survey of 1200 women conducted at Columbia University “31% of the women in the survey reported being sexually assaulted or raped by someone they had met through an online dating site.” This statistic alone only further illustrates just how much of an impact pornographic media truly has had on its consumers. Thus, aiding the dehumanization of a process that is often known to be the most vulnerably authentic thing of the human experience: emotional sexual connection. To conclude, a woman’s submission to the male gaze is not simply an act for attention, it is the effect of internalized presupposed sexism that facilitates the idea that a woman must perform in order to be loved.