The New York Times
January 13, 2005
Men Just Want Mommy
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A few years ago at a White House Correspondents' dinner, I met a very
beautiful actress. Within moments, she blurted out: "I can't believe I'm
46 and not married. Men only want to marry their personal assistants or P.R.
women."
I'd been noticing a trend along these lines, as famous and powerful men took
up with the young women whose job it was to tend to them and care for them in
some way: their secretaries, assistants, nannies, caterers, flight attendants,
researchers and fact-checkers.
Women in staff support are the new sirens because, as a guy I know put it,
they look upon the men they work for as "the moon, the sun and the
stars." It's all about orbiting, serving and salaaming
their Sun Gods.
In all those great Tracy/Hepburn movies more than a half-century ago, it was
the snap and crackle of a romance between equals that was so exciting.
Moviemakers these days seem far more interested in the soothing aura of
romances between unequals.
In James Brooks's "Spanglish,"
Adam Sandler, as a
The same attraction of unequals animated Richard
Curtis's "Love Actually," a 2003 holiday hit. The witty and
sophisticated British prime minister, played by Hugh Grant, falls for the
chubby girl who wheels the tea and scones into his office. A businessman
married to the substantial Emma Thompson falls for his sultry secretary. A
writer falls for his maid, who speaks only Portuguese.
(I wonder if the trend in making maids who don't speak English heroines is
related to the trend of guys who like to watch Kelly Ripa
in the morning with the sound turned off?)
Art is imitating life, turning women who seek equality into selfish
narcissists and objects of rejection, rather than affection.
As John
Schwartz of The New York Times wrote recently,
"Men would rather marry their secretaries than their bosses, and evolution
may be to blame."
A new study by psychology researchers at the
As Dr. Stephanie Brown, the lead author of the study,
summed it up for reporters: "Powerful women are at a disadvantage in the
marriage market because men may prefer to marry less-accomplished women."
Men think that women with important jobs are more likely to cheat on them.
"The hypothesis," Dr. Brown said, "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 in their attraction to men who might work above or below
them. And men did not show a preference when it came to one-night stands.
A second study, which was by researchers at four British universities and
reported last week, suggested that smart men with demanding jobs would rather
have old-fashioned wives, like their mums, than equals. The study found that a
high I.Q. hampers a woman's chance to get married, 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.
So was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax? The more women achieve, the less desirable they are? Women want to be in a
relationship with guys they can seriously talk to - unfortunately, a lot of
those guys want to be in relationships with women they don't have to talk to.
I asked the actress and writer Carrie Fisher, on the East Coast to promote
her novel "The Best Awful," who confirmed that women who challenge
men are in trouble.
"I haven't dated in 12 million years," she said drily. "I gave up on dating powerful men because they
wanted to date women in the service professions. So I decided to date guys in
the service professions. But then I found out that kings want to be treated like
kings, and consorts want to be treated like kings, too."
E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com