A female acquaintance of mine once told me that, as a woman, it’s beneficial for me to be an English major. Why? Apparently, it’s a softer, more “spiritual” major—better for finding a husband and raising children.
I don’t understand. Yes, eventually I’d like to have a family. Eventually. But I didn’t choose my major to be a better wife and mother. I had always envisioned myself as a successful journalist and author, and I write for a couple of national publications any given semester. I plan on continuing this path even after I start a family. But between this, and hearing multiple male relatives/friends communicate a preference for women in less “competitive” fields, I began to question whether gender roles have actually changed.
It’s these kinds of musings that probably brought about Suzanne Venker’s now-viral Fox News editorial, “The war on men.” Venker, who advocates for traditional gender roles, argues that feminism is to blame for the demise of relationships and successful marriages. To her, feminism is the true “war on men.” “Women aren’t women anymore,” she writes.
“So if men today are slackers, and if they’re retreating from marriage en masse, women should look in the mirror and ask themselves what role they’ve played to bring about this transformation,” she concludes.
I searched the web for statistics and studies to support her claim that feminism is destroying relationships. While I couldn’t find any data on the matter, I did find a series of pieces echoing similar sentiments—men don’t want to be with women who are career-driven and successful.
Stephanie Chin wrote in Forbes about an experience she had with her friend at the bar. Her friend turned off a potential match because he was intimidated by her success as an investment banker. And when Chin conducted an informal survey of men earning +$75,000, she found that they overwhelmingly preferred “nurturing, maternal” women over competitive, successful ones.
Yahoo Shine published another article that’s a bit more blunt: a how-to that teaches us to turn off the “aggression” before dates so that we can soften into the warm, fuzzy, feminine creatures men adore.
Unfortunately, I can’t write a post proving or disproving Venker’s claims on a general scale. But I would like to interject some, ehem, logic into her argument. First of all, I want to point out that Venker is, indeed, a career woman. And married. In fact, she has published and co-published three successful books about the importance of dedicating our lives to our families. She believes that, for the most part, we must quit our jobs to be good mothers. I’m loving the hypocrisy. On her website, she lists herself as, “Author. Speaker. Wife. Mother.” If the most important thing for a woman is to be a wife and mother, then why do they come last in her four-word bio?
But the question I want to answer is this: how should we apply this information?
It’s simple. Let’s say you wanted to be with a man who really, desperately only wanted to be with a woman who was very endowed on top. And you’re not. You have two options: get implants, altering your body and putting foreign materials into your system. Or you could find the man who loves you the way you are, who’s not so shallow. A few women would get the implants. That’s fine. But this anecdote applies to Venker’s point that we need to make ourselves more vulnerable in order to find a marriageable man.
We shouldn’t have to change ourselves for a “marriageable” man. We should be able to do what makes us happy (you know, without hurting anyone), and then find someone to share that happiness with. A man who can’t accept you for who you are isn’t marriageable at all.
And besides stating the obvious—that making ourselves dependent on our husbands is a dangerous proposition with such high divorce rates—why is the onus put on us to change? Why can’t the men she’s referring to in her article just grow up?
Venker writes that the media never blames women for the diminution of successful relationships. I’d like to know where she’s been living. I’m guessing Venus.
We take the blame for everything. We’re expected to “have it all” and look pretty doing it. We’re judged on our clothes, our weight and our appearance, and the media is at least partly to blame. If our spouses cheat, it’s because we didn’t keep them satisfied in the bedroom (if I see one more article espousing this nonsense, I might just stop reading altogether). If we gain weight, we expect our boyfriends will just leave us, because we need to stay thin.
A good woman knows how to bake. Start your daughter off with that easy-bake oven, you know, the one in the commercials. A good woman is a princess, desperately waiting for her Disney prince. A good woman would never dare leave her house without that Maybelline lipstick, without that Mac mascara, without that Clinique blush. Without them, no man would ever look at her. Have you ever seen a model without makeup?
We are the female CEO in half the romantic comedies, who “needs” to learn to “let go” in order to fall in love. We are the girl with braces working in the beauty magazine world, who is finally lucky enough to stumble upon a man because, who are we kidding, a woman with grown-up braces? We are the Harvard lawyer who can’t see love knocking at her front door, in the form of a bartender, because she’s too absorbed in her own success.
I’m really sorry. I never realized this was my fault. I apologize to all the women out there who want a man but will never have one because our ancestors wanted us to have other options, and I chose to uphold those standards. I’m sorry I decided to stop bending because I started to feel my torso break— after all, it’s not a man’s job to meet me halfway. Don’t even think about it.
This is not a Venker-hating piece, nor is it a man-hating piece. This is a woman-loving piece. Do what you do, that’s what makes you beautiful. We are equals, we have options, and we will all eventually find the truly marriageable men if we want marriage. And to all the men out there Venker refers to in her piece: I’m especially sorry that you now have so few women to choose from, now that we are no longer default housewives. It’s mutual: we don’t want you either.
I’ll also take the blame for that.