I'm not sure how this diary will do in relation to all the Plamegate, Reid, and other such diaries out there, which are arguably more urgent. But I like to think the question that this deals with -- the waning of feminism in contemporary culture -- is just as important, if slightly less urgent.
MoDo -- Maureen Dowd, that is -- has a new article in this week's NY Times Magazine, entitled "What's a Modern Girl to Do?" One would have hoped that this was the kind of self-reflective question that MoDo might have asked herself before publishing various hatchet jobs on the ambitious career women married to Democratic candidates. The situation that MoDo laments here -- the recent, gradual shift of modern, middle-class women's aspirations from careers and workplace equality to marriage and the domestic sphere -- is one that she is partially responsible for celebrating, having denounced those women who appear just a bit too emancipated for her taste.
More on the flip.
So it's something of a surprise (or is it, really?) to see her make an about-face here, wringing her hands about the encroachment of older attitudes and approaches upon all facets of contemporary women's experience: whether in dating, the workplace, or in marriage, women, states Dowd, are increasingly abandoning what were seen as advances in the 1970s and 1980s -- workplace equality, the right to be respected for being an intelligent, driven career woman -- in favor of a "Stepford Wife" mentality more reminiscent of the 1950s.
Dowd touches upon a number of these issues, in particular, the increasing tendency of contemporary women -- again, according to her -- to use the old approaches when it comes to attracting men, dating them, and establishing relationships. Central to the negotiation of these issues is the concept of "girl money:"
In those faraway, long-ago days of feminism, there was talk about equal pay for equal work. Now there's talk about "girl money."
A friend of mine in her 30's says it is a term she hears bandied about the New York dating scene. She also notes a shift in the type of gifts given at wedding showers around town, a reversion to 50's-style offerings: soup ladles and those frilly little aprons from Anthropologie and vintage stores are being unwrapped along with see-through nighties and push-up bras.
"What I find most disturbing about the 1950's-ification and retrogression of women's lives is that it has seeped into the corporate and social culture, where it can do real damage," she complains. "Otherwise intelligent men, who know women still earn less than men as a rule, say things like: 'I'll get the check. You only have girl money."'
Of course especially disturbing [snark] from my standpoint (as a single male) is the sleight of hand that surrounds this little ritual of the dating scene:
After Googling and Bikramming to get ready for a first dinner date, a modern girl will end the evening with the Offering, an insincere bid to help pay the check. "They make like they are heading into their bag after a meal, but it is a dodge," Marc Santora, a 30-year-old Metro reporter for The Times, says. "They know you will stop them before a credit card can be drawn. If you don't, they hold it against you."
One of my girlfriends, a TV producer in New York, told me much the same thing: "If you offer, and they accept, then it's over."
Jurassic feminists shudder at the retro implication of a quid profiterole. But it doesn't matter if the woman is making as much money as the man, or more, she expects him to pay, both to prove her desirability and as a way of signaling romance - something that's more confusing in a dating culture rife with casual hookups and group activities.
I mean, c'mon! It's hard enough for an enlightened, non-trogdolyte male such as myself [ahem] to navigate the world of dating, let alone having to deal with this weird thing about paying -- but then being told we don't have to pay -- but if we agree not to play, it's curtains for that date. So riddle me this: if I pay for the dinner, but out of a sense of fairness, the woman asks to pay for the drinks after, am I shooting myself in the foot?
But this isn't about me. Much more disturbing for all those involved is the bit that follows from this:
John Schwartz of The New York Times made the trend official in 2004 when he reported: "Men would rather marry their secretaries than their bosses, and evolution may be to blame." A study by psychology researchers at the University of Michigan, using college undergraduates, suggested that men going for long-term relationships would rather marry women in subordinate jobs than women who are supervisors. Men think that women with important jobs are more likely to cheat on them. There it is, right in the DNA: women get penalized by insecure men for being too independent.
"The hypothesis," Dr. Stephanie Brown, the lead author of the study, theorized, "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 between their attraction to men who might work above them and their attraction to men who might work below them.
[. . .]
A 2005 report by researchers at four British universities indicated that a high I.Q. hampers a woman's chance to marry, 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.
On a "60 Minutes" report on the Hewlett book, Lesley Stahl talked to two young women who went to Harvard Business School. They agreed that while they were the perfect age to start families, they didn't find it easy to meet the right mates.
Men, apparently, learn early to protect their eggshell egos from high-achieving women. The girls said they hid the fact that they went to Harvard from guys they met because it was the kiss of death. "The H-bomb," they dubbed it. "As soon as you say Harvard Business School . . . that's the end of the conversation," Ani Vartanian said. "As soon as the guys say, 'Oh, I go to Harvard Business School,' all the girls start falling into them."
I don't imagine many women on this site are surprised by this set of attitudes, though they are arguably more prevalent in the corporate world than in the academic one I inhabit; no one can get through seven years of grad school, reading Irigary, Laura Mulvey, bell hooks, or other feminist writers without having some of it rub off. But the fact remains: you hear it said everywhere from the NY Times to NPR's "Car Talk" (where a woman phoned in complaining that her date found her Mercedes "threatening") that women who rise higher than men in their respective careers are penalized for it in the romantic sphere.
What I severly dislike is MoDo's move from all this handwringing -- which makes her seem feminist -- to the citing of scientific findings (which makes her seem objective), "demonstrating" the inherent gender roles of men and women. We are told that after the "unnatural" role reversal of the 1970s and 1980s, where women explored new possibilities, they are slowly snapping back to their "natural" proclivities, like an elastic band that's being released.
What is utterly neglected here is what Susan Faludi refers to in her book Backlash: the constant, insistent, and unrelenting cultural assault in the media, Hollywood, MTV and elsewhere upon the figure of the emancipated woman. Women are made to feel that they can't be sexual without conforming to certain standards of physique and self-display. They are told that feminism itself is a dated, totalitarian outgrowth of grumpy, humorlous she-males who haven't bought new clothes since 1982. They are shown in movie after movie that the male protagonist is the central figure in the movie, in relation to which they can at the very most be a spunky sidekick with attitude. They are assaulted by other women, who embrace the term "post-feminist" as a means of saying feminism is so very five-minutes-ago.
And beyond all that, they are told in article after article -- by professional women such as MoDo, among others -- that they should be watching their biological clock and tending to their nesting instinct.
So why is all this important? Because the unstated elephant in the corner is that all this is not some weird phenomenon for which no one in particular is responsible -- like a kind of invisible hand -- but specifically attributable to the efforts (the constant, unrelenting efforts) of conservative think tanks, talking heads, politicians and others to make all this seem natural, God-given.
Whenever I start hearing the words "biologically innate" I get suspicious. Is it just that MoDo is more credulous than I, or does she have a self-hating agenda as an emancipated woman?