Posted on 04/11/2002 11:32:27 AM PDT by Grig
At the opening of The Sweet Smell of Success last month, a successful New York guy I know took me aside for a lecture that was anything but sweet.
He said he had wanted to ask me out on a date when he was between marriages, but nixed the idea because my job made me too intimidating.
Men, he told me, prefer women who seem malleable and overawed. He said I would never find a mate, because if there's one thing men fear, it's a woman who uses her critical faculties. Will she be critical of absolutely everything?
Now comes Time magazine with an equally distressing commentary. The cover story offers the scariest statistics for women since Newsweek declared in 1986 that a 40-year-old woman was more likely to be killed by a terrorist than tie the knot.
Time chronicles the new baby bust -- women who focus too much on their careers suddenly realizing they've squandered their fertility.
Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist, conducted a survey and found that 55% of 35-year-old career women are childless. Between a third and half of 40-year-old professional women are childless. The number of childless women age 40 to 44 has doubled in the past 20 years. And among corporate executives who earn $100,000 or more, she says, 49% of the women did not have children, compared with only 10% of the men.
Hewlett, the author of Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children, observes, yet again, that men have an unfair advantage.
"Nowadays," she says, "the rule of thumb seems to be that the more successful the woman, the less likely it is she will find a husband or bear a child. For men, the reverse is true."
On a 60 Minutes report on the book Sunday, Lesley Stahl talked to two young women who go to Harvard Business School. They agreed that while they are the perfect age to start families, it was not so easy to find the right mates.
Men, apparently, learn early to protect their eggshell egos from high-achieving women.
The girls said they hid the fact that they go to Harvard from guys they meet, because it's the kiss of death. "The H-bomb," they call it.
"As soon as you say Harvard Business School ... that's the end of the conversation," Ani Vartanian said. "As soon as the guys say, 'Oh, I go to Harvard Business School,' all the girls start falling into them."
So the moral of the story is, the more women accomplish, the more they have to sacrifice?
The problem here is not only that women are procrastinating too long; it is that men veer away from "challenging" women because they have an atavistic desire to be the superior force in a relationship.
In the immortal words of Cher: Snap out of it, guys.
Male logic on dating down is bollixed up: Women who seem in awe of you in the beginning won't stay in awe once they get to know you. Women who don't have demanding jobs are not less demanding in relationships; indeed, they may be more demanding. They're saving up all that competitive energy and critical faculty to lavish on you when you get home.
If men would only give up their silly desire for world dominance, the world would be a much finer place.
Look at the Taliban. Look at the Vatican. Now, look at the bonobo.
Bonobos, or pygmy chimpanzees, live in the equatorial rain forests of Congo and have an extraordinarily happy existence.
And why? Because in bonobo society, the females are dominant. Just light dominance, so that it is more like a co-dominance or equality between the sexes.
"They are less obsessed with power and status than their chimpanzee cousins, and more consumed with Eros," The Times' Natalie Angier has written. "Bonobos use sex to appease, to bond, to make up after a fight, to ease tensions, to cement alliances ... Humans generally wait until after a nice meal to make love; bonobos do it beforehand."
The males were happy to give up a little dominance once they realized the deal they were being offered: all those aggressive female primates, after a busy day of dominating their jungle, were primed for sex, not for the withholding of it.
There's no battle of the sexes in bonoboland. And there's no baby bust.
Typical sexist American woman. Please prove me wrong by pointing out some scientific data you researched that indicates that men have "fragile ego's" other then sexist bs. Please don't let me think your one of those typical sexist women who use emotion, not fact, to stereotype men and draw conclusions. Oh, I'm sorry, you and your friends got together and decided. How scientific!
Your sexist mentality has been dully noted.
I'd say that it's THOSE women running AWAY from the truly DIFFICULT. If it's so easy, why aren't they CHOOSING IT?
I was smarter when I worked..at least I think I was:>))
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