Author: Hillary – Columbia

I can’t speak for every school, of course, but at Columbia, it’s hard out there for a single girl. According to statistics I made up just now, approximately half the guys at this place are gay, thirty percent of them are in long-term relationships, and the remaining twenty are generally kinda weird. (Many in a cute way, but some in a… not so cute way.) The fact that there’s an all-girls’ college right across the street doesn’t help matters.

With all that in mind, I’m certainly open to hearing tips on how to successfully snag a dude. So when I saw an article on marieclaire.com called “How to Date Like a Man,” I was intrigued.

The piece starts out pretty innocuously: “When you walk into a place, act like you know where the hell you’re going, even if you don’t. Everyone will wonder who you are and why you’re there, but they’ll never think you’re useless and confused,” writes Erin Dailey in her first paragraph. Okay, so far, so sensible. Looking confident and carefree is definitely more attractive than looking frightened and meek. It’s a little irksome that Dailey genders confidence as a masculine trait, but whatevs, I won’t fight it.

After that, though, things start to get a little iffy. Dailey tells women that once they’ve found a hottie, they should “look him straight in the eye and think, You should be attached to my lips by now; why aren’t you? Trust me, he’ll read your thoughts like they’re projected above your head on a wide-screen.”

Hm… I don’t know about this one. It seems like if you’re giving a guy a crazy, unblinking stare, he’s most likely going to think, What’s up with Captain Bug Eyes? and back away slowly. That sample thought—“You should be attached to my lips by now”—and the title of this section of the article, “Eye Your Prey,” also give this piece of advice a seriously creepy vibe. Dailey sounds like she’s decided to make Samantha Jones her personal man-handling guru, which makes her suggestions seriously suspect.

And things just go downhill from here. Dailey’s next bit of wisdom is to “fake interest” in whatever the dude is talking about, since “no one cares about what anyone else has to say. They just don’t.” Ouch, man. Why bother chatting up a guy if you have to feign enthusiasm for whatever he’s talking about? How could you form a relationship with someone you find totally boring? This just sounds mean.

Finally, Dailey tells us what to do after we have sex with the dude (because you should have sex with him immediately, since “that’s pretty much all they want from you until they get to know you.” And presumably letting him get to know you is like, too time-consuming or something?): “Never exchange all your information. This is so incredibly important. Give him your name. Give him a fake cell number. In this age of the Internet, anyone can find you if they want to.”

See, if you do give him your real cell number, “he will call you.” But… isn’t that the point? How are the two of you going to go out on another date if he can’t get in touch with you? I’m not the only one who thinks this sounds totally bizarre, right?

Maybe this article is actually supposed to be brilliant satire, and I’m too dense to recognize it. Maybe the title is just a little misleading; if it were changed to “How to Date Like a Douchebag,” or maybe “How to Score a One-Night Stand,” these tips would make a lot more sense. As advice for the date-seeking woman, though, Dailey’s piece falls flat. It’s also kind of offensive to guys, since in her eyes, “dating like a dude” means acting like a total a**hole. Thanks but no thanks, Marie Claire.

This will make you happy.

Meet Lori Gottlieb. She’s a 40-year-old single mother—she got artificially inseminated because she wanted to have a baby but didn’t have a boyfriend—who has discovered the secret to why more women aren’t married: their standards aren’t low enough.

No, seriously. Gottlieb recently expanded this 2008 article from the Atlantic into a full-length book called Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough. Her basic premise? Modern women all have “checklists” for their potential life partners, and we’re too quick to dismiss guys who don’t necessarily satisfy all of those requirements. So in order to avoid being single and, therefore, miserable in our 40s, women in their 20s like you and me should forget searching for Mr. Right and, instead, make do with Mr. Good Enough.

Don’t worry if this advice sounds ridiculously retro—Gottlieb freely admits that she’s telling women to ignore modern ideas about male/female relations because, as she says at the beginning of her book’s third chapter, “feminism has completely f*cked up my love life.” All that talk about “freedom” and “choice”—yes, she actually puts those words in quotation marks—is a bunch of hooey because, as opposed to what Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan would have you believe, women really do need to get married and have lots of babies in order to be fulfilled: “The truth was, every one of my single friends wanted to be married, but none of us would admit how badly we craved it for fear of sounding weak or needy or, God forbid, antifeminist,” Gottlieb writes.

Excuse me for just a minute—AAAARRRRGGGGG!!! This crap is so ludicrous that I can only express my anger in capital letters and multiple exclamation points. I can immediately think of about fifty things that are totally wrong with Gottlieb’s thought process, but I’ll spare all of you and just mention what I think are her most glaring errors:

1) How can this lady seriously make a blanket statement like “If you say you’re not worried [about getting married], either you’re in denial or you’re lying”? How can she possibly believe that every single woman on the face of the Earth must, without exception, ultimately aspire to be a wife and mother? Her most basic assumption is incredibly insulting—especially to girls our age, who are in a better position than any women before us to really do whatever we want with our lives. (That is, unless your dream is to be a print journalist…)

2) And on that note—do any real women really keep the sort of extensive checklists Gottlieb assume we all have? I’ve got maybe three qualities that I look for in a guy (reasonably good-looking, not dumber than me, good sense of humor)… and I might even be able to let two of them slide if a dude was funny enough. Gottlieb hews closely to the age-old stereotype that women are uniformly demanding, stubborn, and delusional. What year is it, again?

3) Just like that Cosmo article I talked about last week, this book makes lowering expectations and learning to be content with what you can get the woman’s burden exclusively. Women have to settle, says Gottlieb, but men—even the fat, balding, boring dudes the author is recommending we settle for—can get with whoever they want because all chicks are desperate. Again: so insulting I can barely find the words to describe it.

4) Maybe the craziest part of all this is that for all her sage wisdom, Gottlieb herself isn’t married. She’s basing her entire philosophy on a hypothetical idea: if she had settled, maybe she would be happier now because maybe she would be in a dull but stable relationship. Gottlieb is talking about marriage like she understands it intimately, but how much of an authority can she really be? Would you ask someone allergic to dogs for tips on how to train your Weimaraner? Yeah, didn’t think so.

The bottom line: I would never want to be in a relationship with someone if I found out that we were only together because he had decided to “settle” for me—and I’m guessing that a guy would feel the same way. Imagine how devastated your boyfriend or fiancé would be if he found a copy of this book on your bedside table. I’ve got an idea for a title for your next book, Lori Gottlieb: The Case for Modern-Day Misogyny.

Unfortunately, it’d probably be a bestseller.