Argentine women have plenty of ways of signaling their interest to suitors, but as in the United States, men tend to initiate contact. Women sometimes approach men, but most of those we spoke with said they thought men found aggressive women a turnoff. “I think they love the chase,” said Sara. “Whenever you’re forward, it’s like, Whoa—why is she after me?”
The use of technology in Buenos Aires mirrors the street culture. There’s a level of aggression that Americans just don’t hit. Emilio, a twenty-eight-year-old from the United States, told us that he’d taken to friending hot friends of friends on Facebook just to ask them out. Eduardo, thirty-one, said he messaged about thirty women a week in hope of making something click. He’d hit them up on Facebook, Instagram, anywhere he could find them.
Despite all this, very few young people we spoke with actually used online dating sites like OkCupid, in part because online dating still carried a stigma of desperation. But, more important, it simply wasn’t necessary. As Eduardo put it, “If you’re an Argentine woman, you don’t need online dating to hook up with other people because men will be after you all your life.”
Texting, however, was huge. When we asked the single people in our focus groups in Buenos Aires how many partners they were currently texting, few had less than three. It wasn’t uncommon for people to be in multiple relationships of various levels of seriousness. One expat from the United States, a twenty-seven-year-old named Ajay, compared the dating scene in Buenos Aires to an asado—a barbecue.
“You get all these different cuts of meat cooking at once,” he said. “You’ve got your sausage, which cooks fast. You’ve got your big steak, which is your best cut, which takes some time, right? You got to talk to all these girls at once just like you take care of all the meat at once.”
After he made this analogy, I presented Ajay with a trophy that said “Most Sexist Food Analogy of All Time: Meat and BBQ Division.”
When it comes down to the business of actually getting into a relationship, Argentines have a reputation for being histérico. The idea of histérico (histérica for women) came up frequently in our discussions. It’s one of those culturally specific words that’s kind of hard to define to someone who isn’t from that culture, but I understood it to mean that someone acts one way toward you initially and then completely reverses course. A woman who says, “no, no, no” and then, finally, “yes” is said to be histérica, as is a man who flirts madly, then suddenly disappears for weeks without contacting you again.
“When they are trying to pick you up, they really act like men,” said Sara. “They will talk to you and talk to you . . . until you hook up with them. And then they will act like girls. If you’re not interested in them, they will become obsessed with you. If you are interested in them, they will disappear. It’s like . . . it’s like math. It’s an equation.”
One common approach we heard about involved a man pursuing a woman by repeatedly professing his love for her and proving it in a distinctively Argentine manner: inviting her to meet his parents for a Sunday barbecue. “He’ll say, ‘I love you, you are the love of my life, I want to marry you, I want to have kids,’” said a twenty-seven-year-old Argentine woman named Sofia. “But then he never calls. In Spain they tell you, ‘I love you,’ because they really mean it. It’s not just a word. Here they don’t mean it.” Another woman told us about a popular Argentine phrase that means, “Lie to me because I like it.” It’s all part of the chase.
Even people in notionally committed relationships said they liked to keep a past lover or potential partner waiting in the wings, ready to swoop in if their current relationship fell through. Several people we spoke with had a backup plan in case their current relationship didn’t work out. Isabell, twenty-eight, reported flirting with several men over text, even when she was in a relationship. She called it hacerte la linda, which translates roughly as “to make yourself pretty” and refers to a kind of flirting. “Just because you’re on a diet, it doesn’t mean you cannot check out the menu,” she said. “I mean, just as long as you don’t pick up that particular plate.”
What’s up with these people and the food analogies?!
“Even when I had a boyfriend, if I went to a bar or something and I met a guy, I would give him my phone number just in case,” said Marilyn, twenty-five. “Like, I wouldn’t cheat, you know?”
“But you kept your options open,” interjected another woman.
“Yeah,” said Marilyn. “Because you never know, right?”
? ? ?