Les relations amoureuses des lycéens

Abstract

The observation of flirtation practices in secondary schools shows that love affairs between teenagers are highly dependent upon the judgements of their peers. To have a love affair is a constituent of the social status of these pupils and each of them looks for the most valued partners, i. e. for those who possess the greatest seduction potential and particularly a significant capital of physical beauty. When an illassorted couple begins to form the better endowed partner’s friends show by their criticisms that this relationship is depreciating. Therefore the teenagers’ love affairs follow a prestige of logic which tends to make the relationship with a partner too rich or too devoid of resources quite unlikely. From this viewpoint love is the mental and affective expression of the meeting with a partner who is potentially valorising but whose physical capital does not place him beyond reach.