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
What are "the service professions"???? How belittling.
I guess if you play a princess in a movie, then men must bow to you always.
Hard to find. And she won't look where they can be found. She won't look anywhere probably because she doesn't seem to think anything's wrong with her.
Maybe she just never me the right guy.
I'm impressed. Do you know what I'm thinking?
Shalom.
I disagree. I would take character over any 'goods' - and I would expect him to do the same. If not, that would be a 'character flaw' IMO. The 'goods' I found in him when searching for character first are just the frosting on the cake.
Shalom
I can recommend a good psychoanalyst to Dowd -my own ! But you're right - she doesn't think anything is wrong with her. It's always someone else's fault - Bush, the Repubs, men, society - but never hers.
I think her emptiness is finally catching up with her, though.
Maybe she's been looking in all the wrong places.
Liz, a sweet woman would have men wrapped around her finger so easily, whether he's tired or not! You strike me as a very wise woman!
I agree to a great extent with your assessment. However, I also think that some other factors enter into it, to wit:
1. The prestige of having a successful professional wife affects some men. One when my then-husband and I were at a dinner with other researchers, someone asked, "And where did you obtain your PhD, Dr. Capriole?" After a long pause to control his humiliation, my ex explained that I was a housewife and had never actually finished my PhD program. There was a hideous silence as the group, male and female alike, contemplated this horror. Since then I have had quite a few high-flying men in the Washington area regard me as an embarrassment because I do not write a column in a major newspaper, control a corporation, teach at a major university, have an appointed position in the government, or hold a research chair at NIH.
2. No question about it, if there are two six-figure incomes instead of one, life is easier.
3. Some men, seeking a second wife, recall how their first, stay-at-home wife became somewhat dull when all she had to talk about was the kids. They are looking for someone who is going to remain interesting.
There was a girl we knew in college (something of a control freak) who had a list which had about 37 or 38 criteria which her man of dreams had to meet. These were down to social and financial categories. I believe it may have included what kind of car (choice among 3 or 4 luxury models).
Where do you look? Just out of curiosity?
RUSH is reading this right now. WOOOHOO!
Maybe it hits home...
Sounds like Dowd needs new batteries.
Maybe he should have found her a babysitter once in a while... life taking care of kids 24/7 DOES make a person feel dull. It takes understanding both ways.
Sounds like Dowd needs new batteries.
where did all the pictures go?
Dowd projects....she missed her boat.
and there's the key...
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