kband: bluprnt 4 rvolution

I'm doomed

This article from the NYT reports on a study claiming men are attracted to women who are less powerful, smart, and gainfully employed. They keep falling for their secretaries and maids and such.

"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. "

The study likes to imagine it's all biological. They say it's because evolution has selected for men who like lesser females so that there's less of a risk of infidelity and they won't have to raise other men's children. Which is dubious at best. I seriously doubt we could find a correlation between powerful women and infidelity. Although it would be an interesting study.

I think a better sociobiological hypothesis would be male's subconscious desires to marry women who would raise offspring well rather than be their partner in crime. I consider this tragic but it seems to be a complete trend in my life that my smart male friends go out with hot dumb girls who don't make them think and might even suck in bed. I call this the "pet girl" scenario. And do the men care? no. Why? because they suck. And they also might be inclined that way biologically.

But that is only part of the picture. To deny there are social influences on a dynamic like this in a society like this would be absurd. American society was/is patriarchal, or at least there are impressions of it still floating around. And feminism was a huge ball buster for so many men. You could totally read this as a backlash. A retreat into cozier times and paradigms. You can see it on TV with all the fat ass dumb ass guys married to hot women who treat them like babies - the Homer scenario.

Also no one mentions that perhaps smarter women are choosing themselves not to marry. Maybe they consider their carreers before having kids. This seems like an obvious omition.

Although in reality, I totally understand it. I just don’t think a pet boy would entertain me for long enough to sustain a long term relationship. I guess it just means I have to date brilliant men....sigh....

Full article in "more"

January 13, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Men Just Want Mommy
By MAUREEN DOWD

ASHINGTON

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."

Posted by bluprnt at January 13, 2005 06:04 PM