The general consensus online is that women think men want strong dominant high maintenance women while men actually want a sweet girl next door type of girl.

But in reality the opposite is true. Women think men want a feminine calm graceful woman while what men actually like is a woman with a man's personality.

I don't promote the gendering of personality traits, when I used " a man's personality" I didn't mean that I believe that some types of personalities are men personalities, I just used it to adhere to stereotypes for the sake of my post.

You see content targeted to women about how they should act femininely to attract men (content made by women), they teach them how to move like a woman, how to be graceful like the 50s women, how they should talk softly because men like soft voices, how they should dress in skirts and high heals and drop the sneakers, how they should be patient calm and nurturing, how to have a peaceful impact on their surroundings... That's actually what women believe men want, you'd never see a content creator making content about how to attract men promoting competitiveness or anger or loudness or ambition...

On the other hand, you check any thread asking men about their celebrity crushes, or their fictional characters crushes and you discover readily that men actually like the bad bitch archetype, a mix of dedicated super heroes and hot headed strong willed protagonists, and sarcastic no filter characters. Or the career driven charismatic character, the strict no bullshit milf or the law breaker rebellious college girl.

And it's something you observe in real life too, in any workplaces or friends gatherings men fly to the most dominant woman in the group, they seek her approval and try to please her, they show a lot of respect, they like to befriend this type of women to gain in social standing and from the friendship they try to take it to more. And every woman knows that the woman with the wildest stories of men pursuing her is a woman of some variety of the bad bitch archetype.

So that's my point, what women think men want is different than what men actually want, but not how you would think.