There’s a huge hoo-ha in America about an article published on the business website Forbes.com. It starts off like this: “Guys: a word of advice. Marry pretty women or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Blondes or brunettes. Just, whatever you do, don’t marry a woman with a career.”
The writer, Michael Noer, cites at length a piece in Social Forces, a US research journal, that has apparently found marrying a working woman dramatically ups the risk of having a difficult marriage and that “professional women are more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat, less likely to have children and, if they do have kids, they are more likely to be unhappy about it. Even those with a ‘feminist’ outlook are happier when their husband is the primary breadwinner”.
So that’s nice, especially the incredulous quote marks around the “feminist”. And working your butt off as a cashier at the supermarket doesn’t count, by the way: to qualify as a career woman you apparently need to have been to university, work more than 35 weeks a year outside the home and earn a minimum salary of $30,000 (just under £16,000 — a weirdly low figure, surely?).
Marrying these women is, according to the research Noer quotes, “asking for trouble”. If they abandon their job to raise children “they will be unhappy”. If they make more money than you “they will be unhappy” and “you will be unhappy” too. Husbands of career women are also more likely to fall ill, it appears, and to have dirty houses (again strange, as one of the joys of a double income is that you can afford to hire any number of cleaners).
You can imagine the outcry the article has caused. Women readers aren’t happy and the website has now posted a spirited riposte by one of its female correspondents alongside Noer’s original feature.
What is interesting about all of this is that I suspect Noer’s central point — that working women are trouble and that you’re better off with a docile little breeder or, indeed, a trophy wife — is more widely held by men than you or I might imagine. It’s not a viewpoint they like to trumpet in mixed company, obviously, but I’ve heard it expressed more times than I care to remember in private.
It stems in part from a sweet but inane desire for alpha malehood — me man, me provide, me gain big-eyed gratitude for ace wage-earning skills — and from chronic sexual insecurity. If your nice little wife is safely at home all day, instead of running around the boardroom with men who might — the horror — be somewhat more alpha than you, she’s more likely to admire your manly skills and talents when you come home at night, and not realise what she’s missing.
That’s the theory, anyway. The practice, I have observed over the years, is somewhat different. Men love nothing more than coming home to an ordered house, sleeping children, dinner in the oven and a cocktail waiting on the table, but they don’t necessarily go a whole hog on the conversation that goes with it: “Such a funny thing happened at playgroup”; “The queues in Sainsbury’s were awful today”; “I’ve found that if I purée the broccoli, they don’t really notice they’re eating it”. And so on. Then women are all surprised when men seem not to listen, or to be distracted, or suddenly find themselves “working late”.
Besides, as we all know, the domestic fantasy outlined above is usually only achievable with a vast amount of paid help, which means a double income. Without it the children are still running amok, the dinner’s burnt, the missus has dark circles under her eyes and she’s downed the cocktail in one herself to try to calm her nerves.
She doesn’t want to talk about broccoli either but her brain seems to atrophy more and more with the birth of each child. She wants to watch Newsnight but she’s too tired. How can she be tired, the husband wonders, when she’s at home all day? What does she do? She’s not the one who had to get up at 4am to catch a flight to Zurich. And now he’s feeling frisky but she’s already snoring. Despite what Noer and his “research” might claim, it’s hard to see this scenario as the best advert for marital bliss.
I don’t want to get drawn into the unproductive name calling that passes for debate on the question of working versus stay-at-home women. I’ve been both and I liked both. I prefer working because I can’t imagine not having my own money and because I like being able to pay other people to do the stuff that bores me.
The point, surely, is that women should have the freedom to do exactly what they wish to do with their lives, and that very freedom is only real if it originates from women themselves. If a woman doesn’t want a career at any point, fine. The problem arises when that option is put to her by a man; less an option, actually, than an instruction: “There’s no need for you to work, I can support us both. And isn’t it about time you got pregnant?”.
So I would say this: Girls, a word of advice. Marry handsome men or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Blonds or brunettes. Just, whatever you do, don’t marry a man with a complex. Marry a man who is happy for you to be you, happy whether you do or don’t work. Marry a man who loves you as you are and who doesn’t think taking the rubbish out is beneath him. Marry a man who can put the children to bed when you’re running late and make dinner too without feeling he is the victim of an emasculating conspiracy. Never marry a man who is stupid enough to use feminist as a term of abuse. Don’t marry Michael Noer.
- Nice to see Victoria Beckham cracking a smile for a change, even if she was allegedly tiddly after a night out. One of the mysteries of our age is why Posh, in her wisdom, thinks the “sultry” pout she usually adopts at all times is somehow cool or aesthetically pleasing rather than reminiscent of a teenage goth experimenting with surly facial expressions in the privacy of her bedroom.
Another Posh-related mystery surfaced last week. In the advertisement for the Beckhams’ his-and-hers fragrances, Intimately Beckham, Victoria sports an enormous derriere. Well, enormous in the context of her emaciated frame, at any rate. The new bottom is rather like Barbie’s bosom: you have the feeling that if its owner were actually to try walking with it they’d fall over, helplessly beached until someone came and pulled them up.
What I want to know is: does the J.Lo-style bottom owe its existence to the wonders of digital manipulation or does Posh really own a pair of prosthetic buttocks? There is no way the huge bottom is hers: even implants wouldn’t give the desired silhouette. As far as I am aware, the only places that sell fake bottoms are shops catering to pre-operative transsexuals. I knew Posh liked shopping, but this is ridiculous.
