Digital Desirability: A Sexual Fields Approach to Examining Young Women’s Unequal Dating App Histories

Sociologists have demonstrated how the features of specific dating apps establish rules for attracting partners. By focusing on specific platforms (i.e., Tinder or Hinge), we’ve paid less attention to how dating apps, as a collective site, structure intimate expectations. To address this gap, I adopt a sexual fields approach to investigate the dating app histories of young adult (hetero)sexual women. In-depth interviews reveal that the young adult dating app sexual field is characterized by casualness. To attract partners, women managed their fronts—including self-presentation, attitudes, and emotional investments—in digital and in-person contexts. I refer to this process as constructing digital desirability. However, systems of sexual racism and classism structure the field, creating barriers to the sexual capital of casualness and shaping women’s constructions of digital desirability: going with the flow or taking it seriously. As a result, affluent white and Asian women described histories of reaping the benefits of dating apps—casually dating “respectful” men—while marginalized women were placed in double binds of either remaining on apps while being “mistreated” (i.e., “used for sex”) or permanently deleting them. These findings advance sexual fields theory, revealing how digital technologies can diffuse sexual fields and extend their influence across digital contexts and locations.