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
My point is, if any FReepers were listening to Michael Savage last night, and if they wondered what he was talking about when he said "the article quotes some actress I never heard of", that I was providing the name of that actress: Carrie Fisher from Star Wars.
This thread is too long to read!
But MD said the actress was "very beautiful." I suppose so if you go back 20 years ...
Status: Undetermined.
I choose to believe!
\Ducks and runs!!!
Run fast, run far!! ROFL!
Oh, yeah - I know what you mean. Of course, I mentioned my sense of humor. A woman I know was giving me the brush off and said "Bob, I've always thought of you as a brother..." to which I replied, "Well, this is East Tennessee..." It took a couple seconds to sink in...
LOL! -- At least you stayed even in the quick-witted department! Stay with her, she may melt eventually! Women aren't all that much smarter about their chances than guys are (look at all the women who marry wife-beaters and lotharios: How smart are they?), it's just that society caters to them more. You can break that down with humor, enthusiasm, and persistence.
Unless, of course, they're grumpy and unreasonable and don't want to associate with quality men.
I think there is one lesson that has been intentionally prevented through feminism and the PC thoughtcrimes. Its the simple fact that men and women are different with different jobs. Not one better than the other, just different parts of the whole. Now our public schools and universities have become lost in the drivel of men and women are exactly the same.
There are plenty of women who are sweet AND smart.
Most men are too shallow to choose properly, valuing the packaging above the contents.
I get it - it's ALL THE FAULT OF MEN for not choosing the "right" kind of women.
If there were "sweet and smart" women out there I don't think we'd be seeing the increasing number of news articles like this one, or the huge number of posts on it.
You left yourself wide open on this one...hahaha.. Bad experiences with smart woman eh? Read a book or take a class.
Left myself wide open? That would be too obvious. Read a book or take a class? There are an abundance of blowhard primadonnas writing books or teaching. Their advice is hardly worth flushing down the toilet.
Bad experiences with smart women? You bet. Anorexia and bulimia, depression, drug use, sexual promiscuity, sexual perversion, situational ethics, zero mothering skills and massive debt all wrapped up in the cute little package of american professional women. If this situation wasn't prevalent I doubt we'd be seeing the increasing number of articles such as this one, or the HUGE numbers of replies posted to it.
The men I know with the most successful relationships out there are marrying foreign - east european, asian and south american. Maybe it's beacuse these women haven't had the lifelong exposure to fem-nazism. From what I've observed women from these cultures are excellent mommies, completly family oriented, devoted and beautiful. They also don't seem to have the weight problem that most american women have.
I don't know where you spend your time or what crowds you spend time with, but I know numerous women who are sweet, smart (very) and beautiful -- women who take care of themselves, stay informed, and have a healthy self-image. I've met most of them in various churches I've attended in different cities.
I spend my time immersed in the same American culture as most of us here in the US. I don't consider myself to be over-observant or picky. I see what most everybody else sees.
The churchgoing women I've dated were cute, clever and flirty. After a couple of dates they wanted me to join their church or else we couldn't continue dating. It seems they got points for bringing in new members.
The men I know with the most successful relationships out there are marrying foreign - east european, asian and south american. Maybe it's beacuse these women haven't had the lifelong exposure to fem-nazism. From what I've observed women from these cultures are excellent mommies, completely family oriented, devoted and beautiful. They also don't seem to have the weight problem that most american women have.
You're really doing something wrong here.
I'm so glad no one told my wife that women only want to marry up.
Do you mean that just because I'm engaged I should ignore red flags that make it clear the marriage would not work?
There are some things on which one should NOT comprimise!
Not only are you bashing all the women on FR by saying that there are no nice women, but you obviously don't believe in personal responsibility.
Wow. Your reply sounds like you really abhor American Women. Just wondering.......do you date mostly foreignors now?
Most likely that is fortunate for both you and your wife as your remark indicates you seem to be very happy with your marriage.
However, just because women as a rule want to marry up (think of how LaVerne and Shriley's great dream was to marry doctors) doesn't mean that *every* woman will marry up for whatever personal reasons they may have.
Some will fall in love with a man who earns less than they do and marry for love, some will not be able to attract such men and will "settle" for "less." Undoubtedly there will be other individual reasons why individual women marry in contradiction to this general behavioral trend.
It is important to keep in mind that one person's personal anecdote does not render the general trend to be "wrong."
Men don't want to marry competitors. Is there any surprise in that? Would men's marrying subordinates be possible if so many women didn't want to marry superiors, and weren't contented with their own subordinates? If it's true, I'd imagine some of the secretaries would be happy actually marrying their bosses, rather than having the bosses simply expect them to be available for sex on the side.
It's not so bad for the woman who considers herself bright and talented. I think the problem is for the highly competitive, combattive woman who wants to go head-to-head with everyone she meets -- and Dowd probably fits in that category. Even the title about men wanting "Mommy" reflects badly on her. It's not so much that men want Mom. It's that they want a respite at home from eternal competion in the workplace. I'd imagine that some of them are looking for someone very different than "Mom," but Dowd is too stuck and too full of herself to see that.
In that context, it's even funnier when ya listen to women who bitch about who they married!
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