Well after dark one night when I was in the fifth grade, on the bus ride back from a skating party, two friends and I were sitting together talking. What we were talking about I don't remember. But what I do remember was what my teacher, sitting in the seat in front of us, said to us. Everything about that moment made my little fifth grade self know that this sagely advice was something I should remember, and it was forever inked onto my brain.
She turned backwards in her seat, and looking deeply at us said that boys wouldn't be interested in us like they would other girls. She said that they didn't value intelligence as much as appearance. She wanted us to be prepared for the cold, cruel world of relating to men.
And so it was, I had to learn to relate to boys not based as much on who I was as what I looked like. Flirting was a must (what is flirting but acting all fake just to attract a guy?!). The only acceptable way brains could be conveyed to boys was through wit and sarcasm, the universal language.
I read the article "Men Just Want Mommy" in the New York Times today. The article reports a study that was recently done in England found that, "smart men with demanding jobs would rather have old-fashioned wives, like their mums, than equals. The study found that a high I.Q. hampers a woman's chance to get married, while it is a plus for men. The prospect for marriage increased by 35 percent for guys for each 16-point increase in I.Q.; for women, there is a 40 percent drop for each 16-point rise."
So basically, if you're a smartie and a woman, your only hope for marriage is brain damage that lessens your intelligence, making you more desirable to men.
Look! Carrie Fisher, a timeless sex symbol for my male counterparts when she played Princess Leia in Star Wars, agrees! The irony, that SHE, of ALL of us, would have dating woes! Here's what Carrie says, quoted in the same article: "I gave up on dating powerful men because they wanted to date women in the service professions. So I decided to date guys in the service professions. But then I found out that kings want to be treated like kings, and consorts want to be treated like kings, too."
See, looking with realism at the facts is frustrating. And the more we show our frustration, the more we're labeled angry feminists or a dozen other such things. Why does it have to be this way?!!
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Random thoughts:
First, see the "source" article: Glass Ceilings at Altar as Well as BoardroomOf course no guy would consider marrying his superior. The more telling question would be "if you were attractted to your boss, would you consider changing jobs in order to pursue dating her?"
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How do divorce rates change among the IQ curve. If 50% of the 100IQ women are getting divorced, but the 40% of the 140IQ women who get married have a substantially higher rate of "successful" (i.e. not-divorced) marriages then maybe it speaks to a more refined selection criteria?
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I can't speak for all men, but I'd love to at least date (and consider relationship with) someone who I found attractive, and compatible, and more accomplished than I am. I'd welcome a private-practice physician, a corporate executive, someone established in politics or whatever else could be imagined.
It's funny, though. I dated an education snob who looked down her nose at my undergrad institution and who challenged me along nearly every frontier of my faith and worldview.
And you know what? I was more attracted to her--in spite of these "challenges"--than anyone else in my entire life.
What does that say? Who knows.
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I wouldn't date Carrie Fisher, though. She's kind of old for me.
Random Carrie Fisher trivia: did you know she was at one time married to Paul Simon??
A bit of a rebuttal from Cathy Young at http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/01/17/feminist_excess_revisited/
On the op-ed page of The New York Times, columnist Maureen Dowd gripes that men are egocentric babies who want submissive women, not equals. Her proof? An alleged trend of powerful men marrying their personal assistants, secretaries, nannies, and the like (illustrated by a couple of movies and a couple of anecdotes) and a couple of recent studies, one of which, from the University of Michigan, shows that men regard a subordinate as a more desirable wife than a boss.
What's that all about? Well, the male college students in the study were shown a photo of a woman and asked to estimate her desirability as a marriage partner on a 1-to-9 scale. When the woman was described as their hypothetical assistant, she got an average rating of 6.4; a co-worker got 4.9 and a supervisor 4.2. (Women gave men an average rating of about 3.1.)
Whatever this tells us about how men interact with women in real life, even in theory the higher-ranking women were hardly rejected. Of course there are men who are still intimidated by female ambition. But there are millions of women who have successful careers and successful marriages. Why not pay a little more attention to those couples, and a little less to the well-worn men-are-pigs theme?
I'm not at all in the 'men are pigs' camp. I obviously have a gender bias, as we all do, but I'm pro-men quite often. I'm just in the ever-striving quest to figure out men and relationships and people in general.
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