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Gender's chaotic battlefield

By ROBYN E. BLUMNER
Published November 20, 2005

Maureen Dowd's shot across Cupid's bow with her new book, Are Men Necessary?, has the sentries of the gender war lining up for battle.

Dowd suggests that the feminist movement was a flash in the Teflon pan and that the old approach to courtship, regurgitated in the 1996 dating manifesto The Rules, has returned with a vengeance. "Feminism lasted for a nanosecond, but the backlash has lasted 40 years," Dowd declares, pointing to the fact that more women are taking their husband's last name and have lost their taste for going Dutch.

It isn't clear whether Dowd bemoans the revenge of the Mrs. or is tickled that her coy, glam-kitten ways are now dating de rigueur. She seems caught between dreaming of "wearing a gold lame gown cut on the bias" and steaming that, as her mother warned, "It's more a man's world today than ever." But one thing is clear: The 53-year-old Dowd believes that her personal achievements and smarts have kept her single.

Dowd describes an encounter with one "top New York producer" who wanted to ask her out but didn't because she was "too intimidating." Dowd's lament is that men don't want to marry successful, high-powered women because it makes guys feel like "the chick" in the relationship. My guess is that she's not considering the men in the mailroom as her dating pool either. Only "top" Broadway producers and other machers need apply. How fair is that?

Even so, the woman has a point. Some of the promises of legal equality and women's broadening opportunities have not panned out. Nowhere is that truer than for aging career women who are still looking for a life partner. In this sliver of gender politics, men have a distinct advantage.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett's 2002 book, Creating a Life, laid out in stark terms how a sizable number of successful women regrettably found themselves at middle age without a husband and children. For corporate executives who earned at least $100,000, 49 percent of the women but only 10 percent of the men were childless.

The famous quip by Jack Welch says it all. The short, bald former CEO and chairman of General Electric crowed that having money is like standing 6-foot-4 and having a full head of hair. Women of all ages were wildly attracted to him, despite his hairless pate and hobbit height. Yet, you don't hear of wealthy older women having such luck.

When Henry Kissinger, one of your less attractive specimens of manhood, was a bachelor secretary of state, his dating exploits were legendary. Power may be a man's ultimate aphrodisiac, but for Madeleine Albright, Donna Shalala, Janet Reno and Condi Rice, some of the divorced and single women who have occupied Cabinet seats, it's a dud.

Ayn Rand's long affair with her protege Nathaniel Branden ended after Rand found out he had more than his eyes on a young model. She was outraged, thinking that her fierce intellect should have been attraction enough. It wasn't.

I know, it's not fair, but for men at least, the heart wants what the eyes see. That's why I'm a big fan of plastic surgery as an equalizer for women. Men may grow more attractive as they gain money and power. Women remain beguiling through botulism injections and general anesthesia. Dowd calls it the Botox Epoch, the Plastic Revolution and the rise of American narcissism. I say, women get real by going fake.

To be sure, the persistent importance of a woman's physical appearance is not a step forward in gender relations or women's equality, but to suggest, as Dowd seems to, that American women are rejecting feminism and slipping back to pre-Friedan days is plain silly.

Just because some subset of Ivy Leaguers (and probably far fewer than a recent and reviled New York Times article suggests) plan on leaving their jobs to have a family doesn't mean that hearth and home is the new Mensa career track. Women have made huge strides over the last two generations, gains that are not unraveling because America has spawned a group of unambitious women with expensive educations who plan on depending on men financially and would rather spend their days changing diapers, dishing with friends and doing pilates than competing in the world of work. These women are a disappointment to those of us who hoped they would revolutionize business, science and politics. Still, there are plenty of women in the game. The clock isn't moving backward, it's just slowed a bit.

What I think bugs me most about Necessary? is that Dowd doesn't give enough credit to men. I know many husbands who revel in their wives' intellect and professional achievements. These men didn't choose to marry helpmates who would stroke their egos by not outshining them; they chose true partners. Maybe Dowd's enduring singledom is more a function of there being no "I" in team than no eye for her.

[Last modified November 18, 2005, 18:55:02]