Pierre Bourdieu's distinction between economic capital, cultural capital, and social capital as the major three personal assets of any person is too famous for any scholars in social sciences and humanities.
Catherine Hakim, a sociologist at LSE, put forward a fourth personal asset, erotic capital. She considers 'erotic capital is just as important as economic, cultural, and social capital for understanding social and economic processes, social interaction, and social mobility.'
Erotic capital has greater value when it is linked to high levels of economic, cultural, and social capital.
Our modern societies are highly 'sexualized individualized' and 'erotic capital becomes more important and more valorized.' Hakim identifies six elements of erotic capital and some of them highly intertwined with each other.
Firstly, beauty is a central element though it could vary in different cultures and societies.
Sexual attractiveness is a second element, which is about sexy body and they way someone, men and women, moves, talks, and behave.
A third element is rather social: grace, charm, social skills in interaction, the ability to make people like you, feel at ease and happy, want to know you, and desire you. In other words, it is like flirtatious skills.
A fourth element is liveliness, a mixture of physical fitness, social energy, and good humour.
The fifth element is social presentation: style of dress, face-painting, perfume, jewellery or other adornments, hairstyles, and the various accessories that people carry or wear to announce their social and style to the world.
Last but not least, the sixth element is sexuality: sexual competence, energy, erotic imagination, playfulness, and everything else that makes for a sexually satisfying partner.
Erotic capital, Hakim suggests, is a combination of aesthetic, visual, physical, social, and sexual attractiveness to other members of our society, and especially to members of the opposite sex, in all social contexts.
She contends that erotic power becomes increasingly important in the most advanced societies, because it incorporates interpersonal skills. Sexuality is a performance, one that is learnt well enough to become second nature, and includes emotion management.
Women have more erotic capital than men in most societies because they work harder at personal presentation and the performance of gender and sexuality. She also tries to explain the intentional oblivion of the social sciences to erotic capital. Women generally have more erotic capital than men, so men deny it exists or has value, and have taken steps to ensure that women cannot legitimately exploit their relative advantage. Feminists have reinforced 'moral' objections to the deployment of erotic capital.
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