Perhaps the sight of Julia Roberts biking about Bali isn’t enough to convince you that a high-performance, career-empowered, smart, single, temporarily celibate (gasp!) woman over 30 can too find love, reclaim her libido and live happily ever after. That’s just a celluloid reenactment of one woman’s truth, after all — and, come on, who doesn’t fall in love with Julia Roberts?
Also debuting on Friday was author and professor Caryl Rivers’s fantastic, fact-fortified screed, published by Women’s eNews and entitled “Smart Women Take Heart: Your Love Life Is Fine,” rallying against the false notion of the “marriage penalty” — the myth that the Elizabeth Gilbert types are unhappy, destined for further unhappiness (which of course means never marrying), and themselves entirely to blame for their alleged unhappiness.
“What should smart ambitious women with some measure of career fulfillment do to prove they’re not miserable and sexless?” Rivers asks. “No matter how many times researchers debunk that story with real facts, it refuses to die. Feminism is always the culprit for women’s alleged unhappiness.”
What sets Rivers off is an Camille Paglia-penned op-ed piece blasting those very women for the nationwide “sexual malaise” that’s been spawned by their “priggish” ways; because “ambitious women postpone recreation,” Paglia opines, American office space is now a place where “physicality is suppressed, voices are lowered and gestures curtailed.”
And if you do become lucky enough to snare a mate and pop out a few kids? Then you’re at fault for emasculating America’s menfolk into “cogs in a domestic machine commanded by women.”
Sheesh.
Rivers’s retort to all this is sweeping and gratifying. It’s worth a read in its entirety, but here are the highlights:
Data collected by the United States General Social Survey since 1972 finds no statistical difference in the overall happiness of adult women compared to adult men. (Men’s happiness average clicks in a half-point higher than women’s, a statistical blip that many media outlets have overblown.)
A certain “The smarter the woman, the less likely she’s married” chestnut is based on data collected in 1921.
Men and women with highly rewarding jobs are more likely to report higher levels of sexual satisfaction.
Your office is not a singles’ club… OK, that one’s mine, but seriously, Paglia — since when do we all meet our future mates at work? Since never.
“But don’t expect these facts to spoil the media’s love affair with the notion of a high-achieving woman sacrificing her sex appeal,” Rivers writes. Seriously. Gelato, anyone?
Single women are still feeling the “stigma” of spinsterhood, a new study of middle class, never married, women over the age of 30 has found. In fact, single women between the ages of 25 and 35 reported feeling both highly visible in certain social situations — like, God help us all, bouquet tosses at weddings — and highly invisible when it came to social status, in almost every situation from consideration by political representatives to expectations in office environments.
Despite the fact that 40% of all adults in The United States were single in 2009, it is women who often feel pressure to explain or justify their single status.
Pandagon goes into more detail about the humiliating catch-22 of the bouquet toss,and also explores the potentially harmful situations the pressure to be married can foster. That is: “men can make higher demands on women in exchange for their validation of women. Sometimes a woman’s devalued position in a relationship merely means she does most of the housework and emotional work, and her sexual satisfaction is a secondary concern. But in the worst case scenarios, culturally created female desperation can be used as leverage by domestic abusers to keep their victims in place.”
And here’s another antidote for all the single ladies, all the single ladies — and anybody who loves a great self-published comic: the amazingly funny and philosophic story, “My Every Single Thought” by Corinne Mucha. This comic chronicles the author’s attempt to get over an old relationship, and come to terms with a — yes — saucy new label: Single.
Author (and FOBG) Lori Gottlieb appeared on the Today Show this morning to discuss her — to me, bizarrely — inflammatory book, Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough, which basically urges women to be picky about the important stuff (kindness) and not picky about the not-important stuff (height), and which Lemondrop summarizes rather equitably here. What it’s left in its wake is a lot of women feeling very rankled and defensive about being told they should “settle,” which is not really what Lori is saying. That said, I understand the defensiveness. Women, rightly, do not like to hear, which they often do, over and over, that they are “too picky.” (Yes, picky. About the person you are going to spend your life with. Urr?) Not that there aren’t women (and men) who are indeed “too picky.” But to be told that, or to get that message from our culture, which single women do, over and over, can be insulting, dismissive, unsympathetic. For one thing among many, it puts the dating onus squarely and only on the woman, whereas it’s not like every still-single woman is surrounded by terrific uncomplicated men on bended knee, just waiting for her to get over her thing about bowties or “no lawyers” or whatever. Women who have gone on a million dates with and given a million chances to a million perfectly nice guys who for whatever legitimate reason leave them lukewarm do not want to hear that they are “just being picky.” They are tired. They are trying. Go away. That’s part of my theory, anyway, for why Lori’s message, fairly or not, has left so many women so totally steamed.
I also wonder this: to the degree that men are paying attention to this tempest in a coffee-date, how does this message make you feel? If I may render it in the shorthand of stereotype, it’s basically “give the short bald poor guy a chance.” Do you feel that Lori’s advice, for those who follow it, could spell triumph for the common man? Let us know in comments!
Filed under: Psychology — posted by Christina @ 6:09 pm
When will he pop the question? Many straight women in long-term committed relationships begin to ask herself — and all of her friends — this question. (Every straight woman, if you believe the hype.) When will he do it? Why hasn’t he yet? What can I do do make this happen? Where should I look in his sock drawer? Um when do I need to stop obsessing?
In Jag Carrao’s HuffPo blog “How To Be Engaged By Christmas,” we read some supposedly fail-proof ways to “get your man to pop the question” — and soon. I could relate to some of it, but other parts so didn’t feel right. It’s totally understandable to want to feel like your relationship is moving forward, it seems pretty manipulative to tweak your normal behavioral patterns to attain a sparkly rock on your left hand. Reading this blog made me wonder: have we really become selfish and retro enough to take this advice, or at least take it seriously?
Look, I have walked away from my fair share of stand-still situations. If you feel you are a hamster on a wheel looking out into the sunset but never quite reaching anything but your own cage, I totally agree that it’s time to bail. However, to say that you should have a ring after nine months of dating seems a little out-of-nowhere to me.
That, and the specific suggestions seem off, too. Like limiting the time you spend with each other, don’t accept his “game playing” (by which this means if he has had a terrible past relationships and has had the bejesus scared out of him … apparently this is by definition a “game”), and pretty much disregard his feelings altogether. By restricting your time together, limiting your feelings and going against your “gut instinct” you are in essence not presenting the real “you” — and isn’t that what relationships are all about?
What ever happened to just being happy? Society has given women this notion that they must get married within a set amount of time or else they are deemed as failures. Nine months, nine days, or nine years … who cares? Setting an oven timer doesn’t make you ready. If you’re going to be able to spend your lives together, you’re going to be able to talk about this. That’s what makes you ready. So when will he ask? Or when will you? If you want to get married in the first place? When the time is right. Hope that for Christmas, you get some better advice.
Writing in today’s WaPo, Jenée Desmond-Harris wonders: “It’s easy to see now that [Barack Obama] was a great catch, but how many of us would have been open to this guy who strayed so far from the black Prince Charming ideal, starting with his very name?” Her exhortation: “[I]f black women are going to defy the statistics, they need to start being more realistic. Holding out for the perfect man, someone who is intellectual but not nerdy—cool but not arrogant—impeccably dressed but not effeminate—not a player but with just the right amount of edge—is useless.” Read the piece, then let us know: just another scolding for the “picky“* among us, or does Desmond-Harris have a point?
* “picky,” as in: about the person with whom you’re going to spend the rest of your life
– I swear I did not know that DePaulo was gonna name-check that same baby-shower “SATC” ep as I linked to in my most recent post. All the same, I will take this opportunity to remind you what great minds do.
– In other tried-but-true cliches (including the use of “tried and true,” shame on me), Geller eloquently discusses how those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. (Translation: She recommends all those entering marriage to read up on its history.)
– If a Mormon can decide to take the Sarandon-Robbins alternate route to happiness, then change is inevitable.
Filed under: News, Psychology — posted by Rose @ 12:32 pm
Last we left our whatevs-to-marriage heroines — authors Bella DePaulo and Jaclyn Geller; the former is running a three-part Q&A with the latter on the Psychology Today blogs — the discussion dwelled on the inequities of wedding registries, “single” v.”married” vocab and the notion that spouses trump friends any day of the week (and, I’m guessing, twice on your anniversary).
1. What’s up with all the wedding presents when — now that folks are marrying later — most spouses-to-be already have two of everything anyway? (Shouldn’t all-Freecycle weddings already be the wave of…right now?)
2. “Matrimaniacs” is the new “bridezillas.” Pass it on.
3. If we are going to reclaim the word “spinster” — Geller notes that it wasn’t always an insult — I vote for “noun: a female DJ.”
There’s much more: linguistics (”I don’t like the “single”/ “married” binary. It implies that any unmarried person is a fragmentary half-self awaiting completion in a spouse”), history (prehistoric prenups!), homosocial poetry!
Cliffhanger: In one of the next installments, Geller tells us what she writes on those medical forms that ask whether we’re single or married. (Perhaps she’ll also tell us how not to feel lame when it asks for “emergency contact” and we have to write in our parents?)
e-mail to a friend in need
Perhaps the sight of Julia Roberts biking about Bali isn’t enough to convince you that a high-performance, career-empowered, smart, single, temporarily celibate (gasp!) woman over 30 can too find love, reclaim her libido and live happily ever after. That’s just a celluloid reenactment of one woman’s truth, after all — and, come on, who doesn’t fall in love with Julia Roberts?
A new book by social scientist Bella DePaulo, PhD, 
, which basically urges women to be picky about the important stuff (kindness) and not picky about the not-important stuff (height), and which Lemondrop summarizes rather equitably 
Writing in today’s 
This
, and already I’ve got 
