So I'm lying in bed last night reading the Atlantic, an article with the "nothing but readers!" title of, Marry Him! The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough. I had not heard of the writer, Lori Gottlieb, but always enjoy Caitlin Flanagan's flashpoint pieces for the magazine, even when I think she's dead wrong. Gottlieb's piece was another fish entirely. It was not the writing that was prosaic, but the ideas, trotting out characters from Friends and Sex in the City to prove that women can't have it all, and that she, Gottlieb, is here to tell us, to settle! Not that she has! She can't! But the married women she knows say things to her like, "You're so lucky, you don't have to have sex with someone you don't want to."
Yea, sure they do.
Upon finishing the piece, and realizing I had not felt the need to vent such spleen since I'd read a few of the teeth-gnashingly self-indulgent essays in The Bitch in the House (translation: everything I do is right, everything my husband does it wrong, and he will pay), I found myself firing off an email to Sandra Tsing Loh, an old friend with whom I recently time in Portland, and a contributor to the Atlantic.
I'm sorry, was there some snafu wherein this story for cosmopolitan wound up in the atlantic? forget her long tired trawl through popular culture; if that's the best she can do, that's the best she can do. but her assertions and conclusions manage to be both banal and self-congratulatory (To wit: "Nor is it that I'm unable to accept reality and make significant compromises because that's what grown-ups do (I can and have -- I had a baby of my own).") Certainly, she has her "sisters" in wanting to shit-spray this line of reasoning over the rest of us and on all men, so we'll appreciate how very very hard their positions are, when nearly every situation cited is of the woman's own making.
Example "Marry Him!" graph:
"I should be with some guy with a vast vocabulary who is very smart," said Heather, a 30-year-old laywer turned journalist. Instead, she's dating an actor who didn't finish college. "My boyfriend is fun, he's smart, but he hasn't gone through years of school. He wanted to pursue acting. And you can tell--he doesn't have that background, and it never once bothered me. But for everyone else, [his lack of education] is what they see."
Feel like kicking Heather in the pants? Please, get behind me. Anyway, as I continued my rant:
While Gottlieb had some cogent phrases, including, "Unless you meet the man of your dreams (who, by the way, doesn't exist, precisely because you dreamed him up) [italics hers], she comes off as having no authority, maybe because, gee, she's not married. Never has been.
Sandra made some politic points as to why the magazine might run Gottlieb, and somewhere within the emails, used the phrase "woman's slot," which was so disgusting and hilarious, we made sure to keep inserting it every chance we got. But my point was: you read the Atlantic, you read Virginia Postrel and Sandra, women who always disinter and intepret more than you think a subject can reasonably possess, and you think, hot damn, these are some smart chicks. And then you read Gottlieb, who wades in some shallow and frankly at this point polluted waters, and who cannot make her case.
Trust me, I told a good friend and well-known LA author earlier today; I was completely prepared to see the logic in the "marry him!" argument; I am, after all, happily married. But Gottlieb did not wage a persuasive campaign; she trafficked in delusion when younger (e.g, figured she'd have a baby via artifical insemination and "find [her] soul mate later," 'cuz, you know, a woman with a kid by some other guy who doesn't pay child support OR show up every other Sunday to toss around a ball is a big draw for any dude), and now, puts what she thinks is a new twist on the trickeries women are told they need to use in order to bag men.
"Well, it doesn't sound like "Twelve Ways to Strengthen Your Love Muscle," my friend said, when I repeated my Cosmo comparision. I told him, just read it. His take:
I read the Atlantic article and I find it annoying because she doesn't attribute any fault at not getting Mr Right to women -- other than their pursuit of excellence. The whole idea of settling implies giving up on the ideal -- but she never discusses whether or not the ideal is flawed. She blames herself for not settling as well, as it would have been the preferable option had she known then what she knows now. It's like she's hooked into the unmentionable word - settling - and decided it's got a nice hook to be counterintuitively for it.
it's hogwash by a woman who can't decide if she should loathe herself for not listening to her mother (who either settled or realized she'd settled and settled for that), or for listening to her mother's discontent and forever pursuing the unattainable.
He did make the suggestion that Amy Alkon to write the "Don't Marry Him!" rejoinder.
Here's mine: How about women of Gottlieb's ilk stepping up to the plate? Try not setting traps for guys. They know, by the way, you're doing this; they put up with it. But they don't like it. And while they might think it's sweet, for a time, that you're building this imaginary castle into which, should you be able to amplify what you like about him and amputate the rest, he will nicely fit, they really are not keen in the long-run to be thought of projects. So knock it off. It's that, or continue to nod sympathetically when your aging girlfriends wonder aloud, "Can I really spend my life with someone who's allergic to dogs?"
I figured I should probably skip that one. Thanks for reading so I don't have to.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten | February 20, 2008 at 12:19 AM
Ick! Gottlieb fawns cloyingly over her "miracle" of a child, yet thinks that any adult who watches sports or ever has bad breath is some kind of loser. She strikes me as a shallow, unkind woman with a notion of love befitting a 14 year-old girl (ie when she talks about sit-com characters as if they were real people). I pity the children of these vain, stupid mothers who ruthlessly idealize their unwitting whelps, using them as ego accessories, while refusing to have any kind of compassionate engagement with the rest of the species.
The one thing I never want to settle for is this kind of cultural dumbness, and it's a shame the Atlantic did.
Posted by: Hillary | February 20, 2008 at 07:29 AM
At the risk of starting yet another sentence with "My shrink says"...
My shrink says that women who settle, without exception, end up hating the man. Same goes for those who marry projects and feel their man would be nothing without their crafts(wo)manship. In his words: "Why not cut to the chase and just hate him from the start?"
The article sounds like a load of crap to me.
Posted by: Jackie Danicki | February 20, 2008 at 11:24 PM
icky. That author is just icky. Self loathing, whiny, insecure and shallow with a major whiff of desperation thrown in for good measure. (waaa "I'm the only single mom at the playgroup but the other mommies would never trade places with me even if they don't seem so happy")
On reading this article my immediate thought was, "sure glad I don't have to hang out with you (or your equally shallow friends) ever." I prefer to spend my time with the three dimensional people who actually like and respect one another. What a sad, sad woman.
Posted by: Lizzy caston | February 21, 2008 at 04:52 PM
I don't see her so much as sad -- I actually thought some of the writing was pretty funny (not that sad people can't write funny) -- as mad, though in my opinion, at the wrong people. I think she's mad at herself, an anger she's swaddled against by her support system, and the larger support systems that give us shows like Oprah, where, after a wife found a video of her husband's bachelor party, at which there was a dancer who momentarily sat on his lap, spent the next year making her contrite husband's life hell, to the point where he was made to sit onstage and be told, over and over and over, what an inconsiderate shitbag he was for doing this to her. The guy was so beaten, he's saying, "I'm sorry," and Oprah says, "That's not enough. You have to treat your wife to a day at a spa." Cue female audience going, yay! "As well as six of her friends!" Bigger yay! "And champagne," whereupon the audience has the equivalent of a group orgasm. Whenever someone starts telling me all the great things Oprah does, I rememeber of this scene [note: one of the two episodes of Oprah I recall watching, the other being, James Frey], and think, and what about all the rot?
Posted by: nancy | February 21, 2008 at 08:31 PM
Thank you - I thought I was the only one who thought this article was crap. Hilarious crap, but crap none the less. Loved the part about women so desperate to marry that they married gay men (and why in 2008 would a gay man marry some desperate crazy woman? I'm not sure I believe that at all).
On reading this, as a practical and Midwestern type, I wasn't sure if this whole miserable-settling-spinster routine was a Manhattan thing (like they watched so much Sex in the City that they decided it was real life) or just another planetary thing. The whole deal reminded me way too much of freshman year in the girls' dorm, sitting around and listening to pimply kids who had never had a date before declaim that they would NEVER consider dating a guy unless he met their arbitrary criteria. The criteria were as profound as "he must be between 2 and 5 inches taller than I, he must wear boxers and never briefs, I'd prefer that he be blond and have an earring...." Even at 16 I knew that was insanity.
BTW, I have a relation who married a guy based on his meeting her arbitrary criteria - namely must be taller and physically stronger. With nothing else in common you can imagine how that is going ("hate" might be one word that fits).
Posted by: MJ | February 22, 2008 at 09:05 AM
MJ's comment may be the most cogent, funny and smart blog comment I've ever received. Thanks. My feelings exactly (just better written).
Posted by: nancy | February 22, 2008 at 10:04 AM
I am a 39-year-old never-married woman. I am chubby. My hair is half gray. I make less than $40,000 a year. I am moody. In my younger days, I was slutty. I have issues with both of my parents. I am much hairier than women really should be.
Now all you happily married people, just try putting yourself in my position, and tell me that Lori Gottlieb's assertions weren't spot-on.
Posted by: Sally | August 15, 2008 at 07:07 PM
Well, I'm 35, hairy, chubby, going gray and moody too. I've been married for two years to a guy I have been dating since I was in my early twenties and we are very happy. No, Gottlieb is not spot on. She is a ridiculous perfectionist. If women are going to criticize men for being too superficial on the dating scene, they have to look at their own behavior. And seriously...having a kid through artificial insemination?? That's hardly appealing to any single guy.
Posted by: ally72 | September 05, 2008 at 07:59 PM
Uh... I think you missed my point. I have zero chance of ever finding someone, let's be honest. What I found very accurate about her article was that she admitted this. Everyone goes on and on about how we'll all find someone someday. Well, not all of us do. And the other assertion is that you can be single and happy. Perhaps that's true for a very lucky small group of those with sky high self esteem. The rest of us spend way too much time wondering what the hell was so bad about us that nobody, but nobody, would have us.
Posted by: Sally | September 29, 2008 at 07:29 PM
Sally, have you considered:
1. Losing weight (free)
2. Coloring your hair (about $5.99)
3. Making more money
4. Waxing ($65, full-leg)
5. Moving on from any parental issues
6. Taking a walk outside and looking up at the sky rather than spending your next 39 years wondering what's wrong with you
For less than $100, you can have a new life and get some exercise to boot. Enjoy.
Posted by: Nancy Rommelmann | February 16, 2009 at 01:59 PM