"They said that maybe you should get some therapy..."
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
Got that right.
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Sorry, Mo-but we can stop right here. If the argument was that men were taking up with older women, I might buy the "Mommy" bill of goods. This is just silly.
Dowd should be embarrassed by this article, but I doubt she is.
"They said that maybe you should get some therapy..."
Example: They have millions of suggestions as to how you should spend your money, so that you'll be acceptable. (not talking about spending it on them, just how to "improve your image.)
Say "Hi" to my ex next time you run into her!
I know a few of these unmarried women of influence and I can tell you it's not their job that's the problem.I don't know many men who want to marry a woman who is cold and abrasive.I would marry a woman who is warm compassionate and sexy even if she was the president of The United States.Maybe the unmarried ladies should remove the chip on their shoulder if they want to marry a man.
Complimentary differences. Each fills in deficiencies in the other, forming a perfect whole. But two yins need an awfully weird looking third-party yang to make up the whole...unless one of the yins decides to turn upside down and be a yang, after all. ;)
btt
Geez, some people are slow! We women have known this for YEARS! DUH! Most men never grow up anyway.
you nailed it.
And become......what? All "mature", like Maureen Dowd?
Abrasive, like rdcorso was talking about?
Dismissive, like you?
Concurring bump. She's not bad, really -- it's that wet-cat look in her eyes that signals to every male she meets, "DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!!!"
Good for you! : )
Hope it lasts forever.
I had my fifteenth anniversary last week. Hubby says it seems like forever. I can't figure out if that is good or bad. Heehehee
Maureen Dowd is a dunderhead!
As for me, if I come off as abrasive, I guess that comes from a hubby that is thankless and has taken me for granted for so many years I've come to resent it. I'd serve him breakfast in bed (he didn't even have to ask!) until he started YELLING at me for getting him up late, while I've heard his alarm go off at least three times before I came up with breakfast! I could tell more, but I think you get it.
Washington D.C., which is infamous for breeding self-obsessed careeraholics people of both sexes.
They are only a tiny, tiny percentage of the population. Go for normal guys, you'll have better luck.
I'm sure that's true. Most regular guys aren't interested in my type, though.
Yup, I get it. Sounds like a problem at the office that he doesn't want to talk about because you'll think he's "losing" the war. The office-political war, that is. Just a WAG.
Good luck.
Tea Leoni used to play sweethearts, but since Jurassic Park III she's been specializing in portraying women like Maureen Dowd.
That may be the modern demand, but women have always earned money in one way or another. We already covered the "virtuous woman" of Proverbs (leaving aside the slander of Jewish men in the discussion.) Women in colonial days did all kinds of things to make money (one favorite activity for older women was to run a "dame school," to teach reading & ciphering to the neighborhood kids so they could go to school.) Farm women in the early 20th century had a whole host of enterprises run from the farm (like raising chickens and selling the eggs, or selling milk - before the health laws put them out of business.)
The difference is that women earned money largely while at home, not as a detriment to their family responsibilities, but as a complement to them.
Good points!
Suzanne Somers does look good, but she did have plastic surgery, and her hair is feminine. Carrie Fisher's hair looks butch.
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