Discover more from Close-reading the reruns with Phoebe Maltz Bovy
As some of you may recall, this is, at its core, a blog about reruns. I am also writing a book about female heterosexuality. So what could fuse my preoccupations better than the following passage, from Anna Louie Sussman’s November 11, 2023 NYT op-ed about how tough it is on the dating market for the straight ladies:
[A friend], with whom I went to college, would like nothing more than to be married. She’s beautiful and successful and not, as far as I can tell, overly picky. She has had long-term relationships and cherishes the intimacy and stability they provide. To that end, she keeps a Post-it note on a bulletin board. On it, she has drawn out 10 lines of 10 circles each. Every time she goes on a date with someone new, she fills in a circle. She’s committed to going on at least a hundred dates as she searches for a male partner with whom she can have a family. In two years, she’s filled in nearly half of the circles, and she’s still single.
The oldest story in the world is not the Bible, nor anything on papyrus. No, it is the oral tradition of explaining that your friend possesses (or you, personally, possess) every eligibility quality, yet are, mysteriously, still single. How can it be, when it is objective fact (as though such things could ever be objective fact) that this individual is spouse-worthy?
I have been hearing about (and sometimes, from) the “beautiful and successful”—typically women, but not always—for literally 500 years, and here are the three likeliest possibilities, in no particular order:
-This person is not, in fact, all that “beautiful and successful,” or not in ways that register. They did well on their SATs, they take good care of their cuticles.
-They have some off-putting interpersonal (or odor-related) quality that becomes immediately apparent when you’re actually dealing with them, but that you’d never know on paper.
-They… don’t actually want to get married, but feel they should want this, so they make halfhearted, played-up attempts at ‘solving’ the ‘problem’ of their singledom.
The novelty of the argument is the way it ties together whither-marriage discourse and decline-of-men. Writes Sussman: “Harping on people to get married from high up in the ivory tower fails to engage with the reality on the ground that heterosexual women from many walks of life confront: that is, the state of men today.”
I’m not sure it’s true that these two discourses aren’t mutually aware, but she’s 100% correct that the ‘just get married’ people are ignoring how often people want to but can’t. This could be women-people who can’t find a good man, or man-people who can’t de-velcro themselves from mom’s basement for whichever personal or systemic reasons. The marriage discourse does have an element of kicking people while they’re down.
But there’s also something about the article that’s a bit why-can’t-men-be-more-like-women. Or not even like a woman, but like some fantasy idea of what a woman is like. An expert is quoted as saying that men are “limited in their ability and willingness to be fully emotionally present and available.” I think most straight women find unlimited emotional availability a turnoff, but also that so too would most people, of any gender or sexual orientation. Is it true that in “heterosexual relationships today,” as per this expert, ‘The girls do extra, and the boys do little or nothing’”?
Another expert quoted found that “women in their late 30s reported online ageism,” whatever on earth that phrase means. What is “online ageism” and to whom must instances be “reported”? Some men would rather date someone younger, that is their call, it is not an -ism against which a campaign is possible. Maybe a man is taking advantage of the biological injustice that is finite fertility and its disparate impacts by sex. This unfairness well predates the internet. What are you going to do?
I did get a kick out of the caveat passage: “To be sure, many men are fantastic people and partners, and I’m sure many women are loathsome, creepy or otherwise disrespectful.”
As a woman with inadequacies of all kinds, at last, I feel seen.
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All the clothes, interiors, and cultural politics of TV shows very much not of the moment.
A few years ago, this was me. I went on so many dates in my late thirties, looking for a partner.
I know you are incredulous, and I agree the experts are missing the mark, but I can attest that it's terrible out there. I've read a thousand articles and lived it, and I still don't understand it. I did want to get married. I was neither better nor worse than many of my married peers. Two things stand out to me: 1) met a lot of men who could not commit to anything, including, like, lunch on a Thursday, and 2) I met a lot of men that were not, or would not, actively think about the future.
Once it's a market (the dating market) and a lifestyle option one wants to consume, the whole concept of finding a partner is unmoored from what has been human history forever until, say, 50 years ago. No wonder it becomes difficult. You know that "law" that when you rationally think of, out, and through a natural process that is automatic , such as walking, or blinking, you impair it? It feels the same regarding finding a partner as a project, as one of the objects in one's bucket list.