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
Excuse my ignorance - what are the Pauline epistles ?
And...power, wealth, and High IQ WITHOUT love do not make you happy. Apparently, someone forgot to teach Ms. Dowd this lesson in college.
Sure those aren't epistemological categories instead?
Shalom.
Amen.
Mo Dowd - - on her way to becoming Helen Thomas if she doesn't change her attitude/ways/life/thought pattern.....
Bingo. And you're right. It's not a gender issue. And the Women's Movement was originally created because of men who behaved like jack$$es. However, their solution was to learn to be jack$$es also, which was stupid to the nth degree.
Shalom.
I think she's right. MOST men just want a MOMMY. Someone WIFE to cook, clean and take care of them.
Is this a new idea?
No, it's an old one that the feminists rejected.
To have a good marriage a woman does not have to be subservient. Wherever did you get that idea? My late husband and I had a wonderful marriage for 33 years until his untimely death from cancer. I was never subservient, and we married when I was 18 and he was 23.
And they don't support any model of a man who sits around doing nothing.
A man should marry a woman who works her ass off so he can sit with the elders.
The point of the phrase you focused in on is that part of the reward for being a good woman is that your man will also be rewarded.
If you love him, that will motivate you.
Shalom.
She looks very controlling in that photo. A B12 shot probably wouldn't hurt either.
Heh, yeah, I saw that. You just never know where a Moro Islamic Liberation Front is going to pop up. In fact, just the other day, I was at the grocery store in the produce aisle, when suddenly... a Moro Islamic Liberation Front, right there in front of me. They can be anywhere, I tell you, anywhere.
Works for me man. Now who here runs a place willing to produce, drop ship and deal with ordering of the T-Shirts?
Very good!
I posted this before going for minor surgery, now I'm back and 203 replies!
Every single "men are afraid of strong women" article, every nauseating one of them, uses feminist ju-jitsu to take something good about men (open to a wide spectrum of partners, not restricted in love interest to riches, fame, careeer prospects, etc) and turn that sterling male characteristic into something bad (aftraid of strong women).
All of the prototype MoDo clones that she and her sick sisters write about, on the other hand, are searching for men in the tiniest of tiny social strata-smarter than they are, richer than they are, more career-oriented than they are, and, most importantly, more powerful than they are.
IOW, they're looking for Daddy.
Only, after you are a partner-track lawyer worth 1-5M you are 35 years old, and the few comparable males (and they are very, very few) have already had the wisdom to marry someone who could focus on them and not on themselves.
Having a caring wife is probably the greatest fast-track career enhancer that exists. Fast-track women will never have that.
I have much more to say, but I'm still a little woozy from my visit to the surgicenter this AM.
It is an embarrasment that MoDo gets ink, even in the NYT.
Mo-nobody wants you. Get over it.
I agree completely. I just get really annoyed at the bitter men railing against women on FR. I don't think one will find too many voracious, selfish women running around here. : )
I am a SAHM, raising three NON-feminist girls.(and a boy, who will be the death of me!) They are SMART, but I am doing my best to see they aren't selfish along with it.
LOL!
The NOT could be HOT with different clothes and a smile and a toss of her head, don't you think? Of course, I am a woman and I don't know what you guys find hot, but she could look more attractive.
I wondered what in the blue hell this tripe was until I saw who wrote it...Dowdy. No wonder why it made no sense.
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