Women's erotic capital and its depreciation at 30

Women at 30: the depreciation theory in the dating market

In the labor market, age goes up in value: experience, connections, authority. In the dating market, at least for women, age seems to go down. The paradox is nothing new, but it has returned to the spotlight with a specific theory: a woman claims that at 30 she receives less male attention than at 20 not because of her looks, but because of her age. The reaction has been anything but subtle.

'Turgencia' as an implicit metric

The bluntest response has turned to the dictionary to point out that the RAE (Spain's Royal Spanish Academy) defines 'turgencia' as firmness and tightness, and that its antonym is flaccidity. Translated into market terms: physical value depreciates and age is just the price tag. It is a supply-and-demand reading applied to appearance, and crude as it is, it remains coherent: if young women are abundant and mature ones scarce, the price of youth goes up.

The alternative: character as an asset

Against that current, some argue the woman is partly right: that it is not her looks but her age, and that age brings character, experience and less tolerance for certain dynamics. That argument turns the thirties into a segment with less demand volume but more solid counterparts. The question is whether that change of audience makes up for the loss of attention.

The question remains open: if women's erotic capital depreciates at 30, why doesn't the market offer a premium for character? Perhaps because desire doesn't read balance sheets. Or perhaps because, like any theory, this one only works on paper.