@Bitter Crank
Your comments are awesome and really helpful. Media plays a great role when it comes to our general representation of social standards and practices and I think we could talk loosely about the dangerous distortions of male and female attractivenes that it causes. But now I'm not worried about the dangers of our archetypes of beauty, I'm worried about our concrete social interactions and the unjustified inequality between genders when it comes to flirting and all its uses within social negotiations and relations. I think that within our practices, we just don't recognize men to often as beautiful. We think that men don't need to feel attractive, they just happen to be in some cases. We also ridiculize those men who show a need to feel beautiful while we think this is a totally valid feeling and belief for a woman. Some people may say that this is no more whining about a meaningless thing, but thinking that that is so is to, again, avoid recognizing beauty and the recognition of beauty as parts of what allows a person to have a healthy psychology and a healthy construction of his identity.
At least from my experience, I have found that women are educated within a culture that sees recognizing male beauty as something ridiculous. Women who are not quite independently minded or are attached to common practices clearly show discomfort if you ask them if they find you attractive. This does not happen when you interact with gay men. Actually, my experience interacting with gay men has been radically more fulfilling than my interactions with straight women. Eventhough I am not gay, when I interact with gay men I found myself inside a totally different and more liberated social space. Gay men tell me without problem that they find me attractive and that they would be willing to engage in romance or sexual relations with me, and that just feels amazing. I feel more vitalized, I feel happier, I feel better about myself and I am more willing to treat other people as sexy, valuable and beautiful beings. Meanwhile, my interactions with women are often frustrating. When someone, specially your romantic or sexual partners, seems to ignore the fact that you are a sexual being who wants to be found attractive, you just end up feeling like garbage. And, after a long time experiencing this you start to ask yourself if the lack of compliments is caused by you being unatractice, undesirable, ugly, you even start to question if your attitude is unpleasant, your whole identity starts to crumble as something that seems to be wrong and that could never be valuable or desirable.