Rule one: No matter how good she looks, someone, somewhere is sick of her sh*t !
Rule two: Work like you don't need the money, love like you've never been hurt, and dance like you do when nobody's watching.
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
Someone beat me to the punch--they are the books written by Paul in the New Testament... Romans, Corinthians, etc. Paul has a lot to say about the subject of love & marriage and balances it all with how & why singlehood can be truly a gift from God.
i looked it up and she is 48, which happens to be my age and if modesty permits me to say, i look about 20 years younger than she does! ; ) i don't need a facelift either. it has to be hardliving, is all i can figure. Lord knows she has good genes as far as attractiveness goes!
And she can't lie about her age like most people in show biz because she was the daughter of two very popular stars during the 1950s. Everyone remembers when she was born. What a rat bag!
Maybe the author should read some of the Fredoneverything.net articles on men/women relationships within the US culture.
did you see suzanne somers on Bill O the other week? now she openly admitted to being in her early to mid 50s, can't remember which, but she looked great. granted she may be surgically enhanced but it didn't look obvious and she just looked good.
I wouldn't recommend that unless the person has no interest in American women. Fred's a moaner.
I don't know how she does it, but Suzanne Somers always looks fabulous. Sigh.
From my admitedly fuzzy understanding of the term I can hire an assistant at minimum wage for those times when I need help. If I need help with the lawn I can just go to the Home Depot parking lot in Chamblee and say
Necesito la ayuda para el día - $8 per hour
I wasn't looking for her that night and I didn't order her in a "Personals" ad with all sorts of specified criteria. She just...arrived in my path. Like an angel...
I had prayed before that I would meet the right person...
May be? MAY BE? She's obviously had more plastic surgery time Hillery has lost law office memos
I think all this talk about what men want is really based on definitions of what is "achievement". A mentaly centered woman who knows what she wants in life is far more accomplished than a basket case with a "nice job".
I think it can also be taken back to the divisions between the red areas and the blue "reservations". If a woman is morally relative then there is no certainty for her or any man to properly evaluate a future relationship. I find it interesting that the "what men want" is generally espoused as some specific characteristic. Men are never said to be wanting a mentally ambiguous or morally uncertain woman. Can't build castles in the sky without a firm foundation on the ground.
Piss on 'em. They sound like a buncha dandies.
Get over it, Mo-Do! You lost Michael because you are a NAG HAG!!
Pray for W and Our Troops
My husband and i met while we were each in law school, and got married after we had graduated, passed the bar and had jobs. so, theoretically at least, we are equals. i took the mommy track once we had kids and he outearns me by the power of 4 or 5 by now. i took 2 year maternity leaves with each of our three kids and only work part-time. we will celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary this June. Different men want different things from a relationship. Same with women. Generalizing is stupid.
yeah, well more power to suzanne, she looks light years better than carrie fisher, without LOOKING like a bag who has had plastic surgery. : )
They never cease to amaze me.
Thanks for the pic!
TS
Rule one: No matter how good she looks, someone, somewhere is sick of her sh*t !
Rule two: Work like you don't need the money, love like you've never been hurt, and dance like you do when nobody's watching.
A few years ago, Carrie Fisher was 46. I bet MoDo used Carrie for the quote at both the top and bottom of this article.
She's sure got an easy job, if she can base an entire article on one conversation over drinks at some party...
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