More than one of my friends have emailed me links to this article, wondering what I, a person who writes a lot of gobbledegook about female empowerment and 21st Century feminism, think about this Lori Gottlieb woman and her ideas about settling for Mr. Eh, instead of Mr. Fantastic. I've chosen not to write any posts about the article, despite the fact that, apparently, over 600 other blogs HAVE posted about it. I didn't want to write about it because I didn't want to dignify it.
I think it's one of the stupidest buckets of horse manure I've ever read. I actually wondered, during my initial perusal, whether it was meant as satire. I mean, no woman-- or man, for that matter-- really thinks that marrying a person about whom you can muster little more than indifference is preferable to being single. Right? Right? No man or woman is really so desperate to procreate, in this age of population explosions, war and pestilence, that he or she would sentence him or herself to a lifetime of boredom, mediocre fucking, bickering and other low-level irritations. Would they?
I'll concede that I personally am probably a little more singlehood-friendly than a lot of my friends are. No matter what my mother says, I ain't giving up the freedoms of being single just because it would be nice to have someone around upon whom I could depend when my car is in need or repair, either. Yes, I get lonely. But I've been single and I've been paired up. There are good and bad aspects to both scenarios. But nothing about singlehood is so bad that I'd jump into a meringue dress for the first dude who knew his way around a clogged kitchen disposer. And nothing about couplehood is so enticing that holding out for an honest-to-god Mr. Fantastic seems unreasonable. Mind you, my idea of Mr. Fantastic may be atypical, as he is certainly NOT a Mr. Perfect, nor does he really have much in common with any fairy-tale heroes. All I'm looking for is a person a) who can keep me in steady supply of orgasms (it should be clear by now that I'm decidedly committed to returning the favor(s)), b) who can keep up with me in a conversation without making me stop to define my word choice every 20 seconds and c) who isn't a totally insecure, combative and/or clingy dickhead (hey, it wouldn't actually break my heart if he was, you know, kind). It's ultimately not the tallest of orders.
So, essentially, I didn't really want to write about the article because I thought it represented nothing more than either the deranged and misguided rantings of one really fucking hard-up chick, or it was one big fat joke designed to provoke 600 bloggers into making a spectable of it, land Ms. Gottlieb a book-and-movie deal, and fill my email box with shocked-and-appalled commentary from my friends.
But, unfortunately, plenty of folks are giving it creedence. Creedence enough to actually land Ms. Gottlieb that book-and-movie deal, and not because people think the idea of "settling" is hilarious (as I do). I'm still having an awfully difficult time taking it seriously, though. Luckily for me, Chelsea G. has come to the rescue with a handy and thoughtful rebuttal. I strongly suggest you all read it, as she efficiently unpacks most of Gottlieb's bafflingly stupid assumptions.
Chelsea does miss one of Gottlieb's assumptions, though. She doesn't really say anything about the way Gottlieb seems to be suggesting that the actual value of a woman depreciates with every passing day. Sure, as we approach menopause, we become less reproductively viable. Our bodies become less sexually appealing, yes, absolutely. That's a given. But I find the notion that I'm only marriage material (read: worthy of being loved) so long as my uterus represents potential babies to be rather dehumanizing. This is not, perhaps, a tremendously ground-breaking sentiment, but there you have it.
Blech. So, there. I've done my feminist-blogger duty. I've acknowledged that damn article. Quite frankly, I feel a little sullied by the implied legitimacy that my giving you a link to it bestows.
Can I please go back to thinking it's a joke now? Ha ha ha. "Settling." Hil-AAAYYRR-ious! That Lori Gottlieb. Such a little prankster monkey!
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