Ayuso and the fascination of power: why her looks spark so much noise in Spain

Ayuso and the fascination of power: it's not the body, it's the office

There is a paradox running through the whole conversation about Isabel Díaz Ayuso: most of those who pay attention to her looks agree that, objectively, she is nothing special. "She looks great for her age, but it's true there are better-looking women", sums up one of the most repeated takes. And yet the president of the Community of Madrid attracts a volume of comments about her attractiveness that no other Spanish political figure matches. The explanation gaining ground has nothing to do with centimetres or proportions.

It has to do with power. The fascination with Ayuso exists because she holds a lot of power, argues one of the most developed theses in the exchange: there are few women in Spain who can combine power and good looks at that level. The fantasy, the argument goes, is not that of the body in isolation but of authority crumbling in private. Someone who publicly has to be tough and at the same time decent, and then in a fevered mind the decency turns into filth. The same profile attributed to Giorgia Meloni, Italy's prime minister.

Power as an aphrodisiac: the Meloni effect

The comparison with the Italian politician is no coincidence. Both share a pattern: women who exercise authority in a traditionally male space while, at the same time, maintaining a polished, almost shop-window public image. That is the trigger. The dominatrix fantasy is tied to power, and the contrast between the hardness of the office and the apparent correctness of the staging is what fires the imagination.

Some take the analysis into more psychological territory: what attracts is not the woman who commands, but the one who pretends not to. In internet slang it is called brat or dominating through submission. One strand of the exchange describes it as the profile of the tradwife at home and the lioness in the street: someone who never strays from her own and couldn't care less about the rest of the world. That contrast, it is argued, is a massive turn-on.

Not everyone buys the argument. Us men couldn't care less about power in women, another voice cuts in. She's hot or she isn't. And there the sustancia ilegal opens: for some, the office is the trigger; for others, it's an unnecessary ornament. The debate over whether power adds to or detracts from attractiveness is, probably, as old as politics itself.

The real looks: a well-preserved forty-something with crazy eyes

When the conversation gets down to anatomical detail, the consensus breaks down. Now she has a certain well-preserved forty-something appeal, one comment concedes, though it recalls that in her photos from her twenties or thirties she was just some ordinary girl, not even pretty. Beauty, it is suggested, arrived with the years and with the office.

Another line of analysis focuses on her gaze. Her crazy eyes promised a steamy romp, says one voice describing the president as a beast in bed. It is a recurring image: that of the politician with a hint of instability who turns out to be magnetic. And a third, more prosaic take reduces it all to a need to be liked: Ayuso desperately needs to be liked, she's constantly looking left and right to see if anyone is looking at her.

Her body, in any case, does not come out well from the comparison. Her face is passable, but body-wise she's a completely average woman, rules one of the harshest assessments. Another goes as far as saying she isn't taller, doesn't have better breasts and can't get pregnant. The inventory is thorough and, overall, hardly flattering. Which reinforces the central thesis: if her looks don't explain the obsession, something else must.

The comparison with Arrimadas and other politicians

The exchange soon drifts into ranking territory. The hottest one was Arrimadas, says a voice recalling the wordplay with her surname. Another goes further: Inés Arrimadas, besides being a capable and grounded woman, and not a textbook careerist, is considerably better looking. The comparison between the two is, in several messages, a bold move in every sense.

Power, however, reappears as the differentiating factor. Arrimadas isn't president of anything; Ayuso is. And there the common thread returns: the Catalan-born politician generates admiration, but not the same kind of fascination. The power-plus-looks equation only works when both terms reach a certain level, and in the Madrid president's case, the argument goes, both conditions are met.

The conversation also brings up other figures: a councillor from Ourense, a former leader who abandoned communism and moved to the United States, and even a politician said to have broken more than one person's fascination detector. The pattern repeats: women with office, a polished image and a veneer of contradiction.

Contempt as a response: when the fascination makes people uncomfortable

Not all the messages are admiring. Part of the exchange responds with open contempt: Ayuso is disgusting, says a voice who claims to work surrounded by Ukrainian and Polish women. Another calls the participants in the conversation mentally ill. And a third reduces it all to hunger: people are going hungry.

The rejection has its own logic. For some, the obsession with Ayuso is a symptom of the Spanish right, which sees in her the ideal wage-slashing psychopath. For others, it is about confrontation: Ayuso is liked because she is constantly clashing with everyone else, like a warrior. Politics as spectacle, and spectacle as aphrodisiac.

There are even those who deny the obsession is carnal. The obsession with the beautiful Isabel Díaz Ayuso is not carnal at all, insists one comment defending the pleasure of watching her take on the leftists from half of Spain. Parrying, staying calm and keeping control without breaking a sweat. The fascination, in this case, would be political, not sensual.

The underlying cause: a country that isn't getting any

The most quoted explanation of the whole exchange is also the briefest: because in Spain nobody is getting laid. The phrase sums up a current that reads the obsession as a symptom of collective frustration. If desire finds no outlet, it is projected onto whoever holds power and appears on television.

Another line points to excess oestrogen and idealisation by position. And a third, more structural one, blames the party system for having parasitised the gonads: politics is worse than toxoplasmosis. The irony, at this point, turns acidic.

The result is a choral portrait in which no single view prevails. Some see power, others see looks, others see frustration and others see an image operation. The only clear thing is that Isabel Díaz Ayuso has achieved something very few politicians manage: being talked about even when the topic is, in theory, her body. Is that fascination, or simply politics turned into a mass spectacle?