Posted on 01/13/2005 4:53:28 AM PST by Jim Noble
A few years ago at a White House Correspondents' dinner, I met a very beautiful actress. Within moments, she blurted out: "I can't believe I'm 46 and not married. Men only want to marry their personal assistants or P.R. women."
I'd been noticing a trend along these lines, as famous and powerful men took up with the young women whose job it was to tend to them and care for them in some way: their secretaries, assistants, nannies, caterers, flight attendants, researchers and fact-checkers.
Women in staff support are the new sirens because, as a guy I know put it, they look upon the men they work for as "the moon, the sun and the stars." It's all about orbiting, serving and salaaming their Sun Gods.
In all those great Tracy/Hepburn movies more than a half-century ago, it was the snap and crackle of a romance between equals that was so exciting. Moviemakers these days seem far more interested in the soothing aura of romances between unequals.
In James Brooks's "Spanglish," Adam Sandler, as a Los Angeles chef, falls for his hot Mexican maid. The maid, who cleans up after Mr. Sandler without being able to speak English, is presented as the ideal woman. The wife, played by Téa Leoni, is repellent: a jangly, yakking, overachieving, overexercised, unfaithful, shallow she-monster who has just lost her job with a commercial design firm. Picture Faye Dunaway in "Network" if she'd had to stay home, or Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction" without the charm.
The same attraction of unequals animated Richard Curtis's "Love Actually," a 2003 holiday hit. The witty and sophisticated British prime minister, played by Hugh Grant, falls for the chubby girl who wheels the tea and scones into his office. A businessman married to the substantial Emma Thompson falls for his sultry secretary. A writer falls for his maid, who speaks only Portuguese.
(I wonder if the trend in making maids who don't speak English heroines is related to the trend of guys who like to watch Kelly Ripa in the morning with the sound turned off?)
Art is imitating life, turning women who seek equality into selfish narcissists and objects of rejection, rather than affection.
As John Schwartz of The New York Times wrote recently, "Men would rather marry their secretaries than their bosses, and evolution may be to blame."
A new study by psychology researchers at the University of Michigan, using college undergraduates, suggests that men going for long-term relationships would rather marry women in subordinate jobs than women who are supervisors.
As Dr. Stephanie Brown, the lead author of the study, summed it up for reporters: "Powerful women are at a disadvantage in the marriage market because men may prefer to marry less-accomplished women." Men think that women with important jobs are more likely to cheat on them.
"The hypothesis," Dr. Brown said, "is that there are evolutionary pressures on males to take steps to minimize the risk of raising offspring that are not their own." Women, by contrast, did not show a marked difference in their attraction to men who might work above or below them. And men did not show a preference when it came to one-night stands.
A second study, which was by researchers at four British universities and reported last week, suggested 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 was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax? The more women achieve, the less desirable they are? Women want to be in a relationship with guys they can seriously talk to - unfortunately, a lot of those guys want to be in relationships with women they don't have to talk to.
I asked the actress and writer Carrie Fisher, on the East Coast to promote her novel "The Best Awful," who confirmed that women who challenge men are in trouble.
"I haven't dated in 12 million years," she said drily. "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."
E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com
Anybody catch that? As though being an "old-fashioned wife" would make a woman unequal to her husband.
Not to mention the fact that she is fat, repulsive and obnoxious. That might have something to do with it.
If a man had that he'd want something else. The grass is ALWAYS greener.
However, intelligent men just want someone who will love him at least as much as she loves herself. Ideally she will love him more. Ideally, he will love her more than he loves himself.
Shalom.
Hmmmm ping
Why do you have this power thing? "Putty in my hands" and so on. It isn't attractive, no moreso than thinking about the lyrics to "Under My Thumb".
Maureen's problem seems to be in hiding behind this "high IQ" theory of mating difficulties. There may be a much simpler explanation. She has a very whiny-sounding voice and sounds like she has unrealistic expectations. Add being a really lousy kisser and estrogen problems, and the answer might be lurking in there somewhere.
That great girl of yours sure has a nice guy.....and now she knows it for sure.
You are dense.....the trick is not to let the guy know it, silly.
I don't have a source, but I have read that women are attracted to men "above" them, but avoid men "below" them. I guess a practical example would be the male executive who would marry a secretary, and a female executive who would not marry a window cleaner.
And you call this a woman-bashing thread?
Here's my advice to women. If we men are so despicable, leave us alone. Have nothing to do with us. Everybody wins.
Sigh.................
LOL! - Good one - Life imitating art.
Case in point:
I've done a 51 year study and the women who are "equals" or "supervisors" insist on attempting emotional castration to assert there position.
The word here is: THEIR.
"If a man had that he'd want something else. The grass is ALWAYS greener."
You are correct, if a man had a great looking wife, doing the housework, happy to see him....he'd want a nice french maid on the side!!!!!
What a blessed man your husband is.
Dan
dunno about the IQ part - it's be hard to have an intelligent conversation with someone with the intellect of, say brittany spears, but a mind like ann coulters can make a dull day interesting.
My lady is highly intelligent - a PHD with a successful career behind her, and the conversation keeps us occupied between bouts of activities.
So true. It follows that if she takes a job or continues her "career" after the children are older, it will be for the benefit of her family and not for purely a selfish SELF-fulfillment reason.
No comment.
Wow. What an uncharacteristically sour note, for you. Bad day?
Dan
And then sometimes there is a package deal that comes along.... ask my man, he'll tell you.
Cheers, CC :)
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