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
Who is Will Robinson?
Maureen Dowd's birthday is tomorrow. Happy 53rd MoDo!
That doesnt' sound like a marriage- that sounds like prison. And the whole thing about not asking him where he's been- HAHAHAH!!!!!
Get off it, you arrogant SOB!
I posted in hurry before work, and am clear on the difference between their and there.
I date very frequently and have been engaged 3 times.
"Attraction" is NOT the issue with "smart" women.
I quit when THEIR true agenda shows up.
No need to post my resume, but I assure you intellect is NOT the issue either.
I agree with that post! Check out Cyrano's post at 386.
How'd I get stuck with someone who knows how to string words to-gether so nice-like???
Well I still have one sister available.
The other one (recently divorced) just met one of the world's best police dog trainers and they've gone on a few outings. I could sure use a dog training resource like that!
she put an ad on the local personals website and then chickened out and took it down. Too late, he got her contact info and now they're friends. I think that's kinda neat.
trouble is, that one that's still available, though her heart's in the right place, has suffered a lot of hurt and is mighty stubborn too....she'll need someone really patient. heh heh. Boy she'd be mad if she heard me say it. But she knows it's true and has as much as said so herself.
Honey? Is that you?
ya have to say something like "attention good freeper gals, I'm located in (blah blah) and am interesting in cultivating a lasting friendship" and all that stuff.
;-)
Ya have to relearn to flirt a little ya know.... watch Chad Fairbanks. He does a fair bit of that... ( wink-wink ) Or was I thinking of someone else. general re?
Shaggy eel has some good lines too. heh heh
Man... I think I'd better go get myself a drink...
bttt
bttt
Your hubby sounds like a complete jerk.
Why'd you pick him? Or was it an arranged marriage and you had no choice?
Michael Savage discussed this article on his show this evening. He stated that the article quotes some actress he's never heard of. Hey Michael, Carrie Fisher was Princess Leia in Star Wars.
If I turn into that at 45 - or even at 30, somebody please shoot me.
You are so right. Change locations.
Didn't you hear the gal on Rush who called with this same sort of complaint? she lived in New Jersey. She moved to the midwest and met a guy. We still live on earth here in the midwest. Or at least, a greater percentage of us do. Get out in the wide open spaces where people act like they're supposed to for the most part, instead of living high pressure lives where all their priorities almost *necessarily* get screwed up.
How right you are. I was born in the countryside of the Midwest and all my kin are from backwoods Virginia. People are normal in those places. I am planning to move to the country to provide a better environment for my children but for health reasons and to keep my kids close to their father (for I'm a big fathers' rights advocate) we need to stay near DC, where the kids' father is.
I seem to be the sort of woman who attracts the high rollers and bigshots. The truth is that in my cohort there are fewer men than women available. But I haven't been on the market very long--only three years--so I haven't exactly exhausted the possibilities.
Ah, showing our youth, are we? ;^)
Will Robinson was the youngest boy in the spacefaring "Space Family Robinson" on the old TV show, Lost in Space. The family assigned a big, clunky robot to follow Will around and protect him as they were all wandering around on this lost world on which their spaceship had crashed. Whenever danger loomed, the big, clunky robot's radar antennae would twirl, its vacuum-cleaner-hose arms would thrash the air, and its mechanical voice would blurt out the warning I quoted. It's a kind of pop-cultural reference for Boomers.
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