Solid pro-feminist advice to young women on how to marry smart

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Estevao

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Good article. I remember there’s been a few articles posted recently which attempted to give advice to young women on how to marry smart, but they were widely derided as being misogynist. So I thought it would be good to share an article that is solidly feminist and not misogynist, telling young women how to marry smart.

salon.com/2014/03/11/how_to_actually_marry_smart/

I don’t want to post the whole article as it’s a bit long, here’s the main part
Work your butt off. First in college, then in the work world. Become the man you want to marry — or rather, the woman the man you want to marry will want to marry.
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The microwave is all the lover you need for now. Swing by Walgreens after a long day at the office and pick up a Stouffer’s frozen lasagna. Grab a $9 bottle of white wine while you’re at it. You’ll probably cry into your partially warmed food while watching “Snow Buddies” — those talking pups, so cute! — but one day you will look back at these scenes of early bachelorettehood and smile. This is how you learn to be alone, which you need to do before learning to be together. Sorry, them’s the rules.
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You know that drug dealer who keeps money in his freezer and doesn’t know where to put apostrophes? Date him. Same with the guy who literally has “I’m a mistake” tattooed on his arm. They are terrifically wrong for you, but they are truly lovely people who will enrich your life.
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Start joking about your shriveling ovaries once you turn 26. Collect plants and pretend that they are your offspring. Impulsively adopt a dog — and then immediately return it after realizing that you will be evicted from your rent-controlled apartment. Cry so much about what a horrible person you are and how this is the worst thing you’ve ever done. Self-flagellate about how you can barely take care of yourself, let alone a dog — let alone a child. Compulsively read trend pieces about “kiddults.”
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Throw pity-parties with friends. You’re all single, bitter and hardened to the disappointing world of romance. Get together to drink cocktails, watch “The Notebook” and ***** about men who don’t call. You will go to bed at night alone, but this friendship stuff is great! You just won’t appreciate the profound, lifelong importance of it until later.
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Mr. Good Enough is not good enough. That guy who seems almost perfect but still doesn’t feel right? Trust yourself, dump him and then wallow in sorrow. Call him and leave drunken voicemails about how much you miss him, when the truth is that you’re just afraid to be alone. Constantly remind your friends that you’re a woman who “wanted too much.” When books like “Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough” come out, snark it up online. Privately, weep. Later, you will feel sure that you dodged a bullet and thank yourself for being brave.
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Facebook-marry a friend. You’re both approaching 30, you both feel like you’re going to be alone forever, so announce yourself as married, to each other, on Facebook. Plan to platonically raise kids together if neither of you meets the right person. (Conveniently ignore the fact that she doesn’t even want kids.) Entertain the idea of a male harem. Now you’re just owning this spinster thing. It really doesn’t sound so bad anymore.
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You know that guy friend you weren’t romantically interested in because he was just too nice and available? Suddenly, you’re grown up enough to come to your senses. Marry the **** out of him.
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Good solid advice. I’m rather happy that this kind of advice is being shot at young women not just from this article but from pretty much all sources of media these days, whether direct or indirect, such as solidly feminist music, grammy-winning like Taylor Swift, Macklemore and Lady Gaga. It’s a shame that some woman-hating articles like that Princeton mom one get through, but that’s the price of freedom of speech, I guess. At least it received the opprobrium it deserved. Unlike this article which does not hate women at all.

Discuss.
 
I don’t think the advice is all that great. Particularly the one about dating a drug dealer. I guess it’s supposed to be funny (?) but it’s not really–especially since you could ruin your life that way. The pieces about “Facebook-marrying a friend” and “start joking about your shrinking ovaries” likewise seem intended to be funny/witty but they aren’t. Just kind of dumb and immature.

The only good pieces of advice are the first item (work hard) and the last one (take a second look at the good guy that you never considered before).
Edit to add: Or maybe you were being sarcastic in posting this as an example of a good article. Sorry, sometimes I’m a little slow to catch these things. 🙂
 
Yeah, I’m with EnglishTeacher.

Including my confusion over whether you were being sarcastic or not.
 
Some of this is advice I would give my daughters. While they will date a drug dealer over my dead body, working hard, having pity-parties with friends, and enjoy being single, are huge things. I’m a man, but my wife was taught the “work hard” thing and came into our marriage having traveled the world, contributed to her retirement, having enough money saved to afford having a baby, no debt, a bachelors degree from a private university, and a good job. She was 25. Because of her we were’ve been able to do much more than we would’ve. I had none of those things, will probably never see foreign countries as she did, and have many student loans. I wasn’t taught the way she does, and so I have to try to play catch-up now.

I do, however, look back on some of my bachelor days with nostalgic enjoyment. I remember making a good dinner and sitting down in my clean apartment and watching whatever movie I wanted. I had a cool bachelor pad, and enjoyed being single. I remember hanging out with my single friends and it was a ton of fun. Those are experiences I will never get again, and they’re under-valued when you’re in them.

But yeah, Facebook marrying a friend sounds pathetic. Just because you should enjoy your single time and work on yourself is no reason to get stupid and play at being in Jr. High again. I would not be surprised if that scared off good guys, because that sniffs of a bit of immaturity, an overly eager desire to commit, and being inauthentic, IMO.
 
The best advice I could give to a feminist that wants to have a happy marriage … stop being a feminist, be a saint.
 
I’m not a fan of pity parties. Having a girls’ night is fine. But feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to help you. Just make the best of the situation you’re in and strive to be the best person you can be.
 
stephe1987 said:
I’m not a fan of pity parties. Having a girls’ night is fine. But feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to help you. Just make the best of the situation you’re in and strive to be the best person you can be.
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Yup. It’s just as easy to have friends who are joyful and up-beat and encourage you to be that way.
 
How to marry smart:
Fall in love and marry that person.
It doesn’t have to be your guy friend or a drug dealer
Just make sure you actually love him

The end.
 
If this is a joke, I don’t get it. That is pretty much all horrible advice.
 
Solid feminist and Catholic advice for women on marrying smart: Don’t, it distracts from the important things in life.

ducks behind a wall
 
Gotta agree with a previous poster. Is this meant to be a joke or some sort of parody of how a feminist’s life, marriage-wise will go?
 
Drama, heartbreaks, & stuff make money.
This is not advice, it’s their personal testimony of their experience in generations after the fallout of the sexual revolution. Many of the culture honors this because it’s the story they hear the most. We can sing the child’s song, “Three Blind Mice” to explain why the young get trapped into this.

The blackhole that this issue is missing is how the men are intwined into this. Under traditional roles, men were asked to lead in gentalmen fashion. In this new erra post sexual revolution, men are enslaved to pornography and unable to have personal relationships. Further, those who reach out to have relationships out of images find themselves unable to lead, provide, or thrive with women thereby enslaving them deeper into pornography. The culture takes away all of mens responsability of new life and then punishes men for children in new ways like making men pay more money for children and at the same time decreasing the time they are allowed to see children.

It is an incomplete picture to look at what one gender is doing without looking at the other gender.
 
Joie_de_Vivre said:
Solid feminist and Catholic advice for women on marrying smart: Don’t, it distracts from the important things in life.

ducks behind a wall
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hay! this fox hole is taken :eek::cool::p:D

'never married, over 50, and all my kids had four feet! :D:p
 
Allegra said:
If this is a joke, I don’t get it. That is pretty much all horrible advice.
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R_C said:
What sort of nonsense is this? Is it a joke?
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No, I believe this article is being 100% serious in the advice it offers. And like I said, it’s a good thing that this advice doesn’t come from any hatred of women at all, such as that princeton mom article, or the article about the guy telling women not to go to college. Because THIS article has the feminist stamp of approval™, it must be 100% well-meaning, not reflective of any hatred of women or femininity at all. And this is the information that women are being fed, either directly from these kinds of articles on the blogosphere, or indirectly like music from the top, grammy-winning artists like Lady Gaga, Macklemore and Taylor Swift. Good, because we wouldn’t want young women getting any bad, non-feminist advice now would we?
 
Estevao said:
No, I believe this article is being 100% serious in the advice it offers. And like I said, it’s a good thing that this advice doesn’t come from any hatred of women at all, such as that princeton mom article, or the article about the guy telling women not to go to college. Because THIS article has the feminist stamp of approval™, it must be 100% well-meaning, not reflective of any hatred of women or femininity at all. And this is the information that women are being fed, either directly from these kinds of articles on the blogosphere, or indirectly like music from the top, grammy-winning artists like Lady Gaga, Macklemore and Taylor Swift. Good, because we wouldn’t want young women getting any bad, non-feminist advice now would we?
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  1. This article is written in the snarky, sarcastic tone that is so popular with women’s magazines and media these days. This is not 100% literal, it is mixing good advice with hyperbole to make a general point.
  2. It doesn’t seem that you know the first thing about feminism. If you did, you would know better than to group them all together.
  3. Taylor Swift is a very devout and public catholic.
  4. I’m pretty sure you don’t care about points 1-3, you just wanted to vent some of your anger towards women.
 
BlueEyedLady said:
  1. This article is written in the snarky, sarcastic tone that is so popular with women’s magazines and media these days. This is not 100% literal, it is mixing good advice with hyperbole to make a general point.
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Well they aren’t very good at it because their general point is really unclear.
 
Er… is it really that hard to understand?

The way I take it, she’s saying “be open to making mistakes. Embrace them and learn from them.” She’s just saying it poetically, that’s all.
 
BlueEyedLady said:
  1. This article is written in the snarky, sarcastic tone that is so popular with women’s magazines and media these days. This is not 100% literal, it is mixing good advice with hyperbole to make a general point.
  2. It doesn’t seem that you know the first thing about feminism. If you did, you would know better than to group them all together.
  3. Taylor Swift is a very devout and public catholic.
  4. I’m pretty sure you don’t care about points 1-3, you just wanted to vent some of your anger towards women.
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👍
 
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