{"id":230718,"date":"2010-01-26T09:00:50","date_gmt":"2010-01-26T14:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/collegecandy.com\/?p=52086"},"modified":"2010-01-26T09:00:50","modified_gmt":"2010-01-26T14:00:50","slug":"bad-advice-women-get-settle-down-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/230718","title":{"rendered":"Bad Advice Women Get: Settle Down. Now."},"content":{"rendered":"
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This will make you happy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Meet Lori Gottlieb. She\u2019s a 40-year-old single mother\u2014she got artificially inseminated because she wanted to have a baby but didn\u2019t have a boyfriend\u2014who has discovered the secret to why more women aren\u2019t married: their standards aren\u2019t low enough.<\/p>\n

No, seriously. Gottlieb recently expanded this 2008 article from the Atlantic<\/a> into a full-length book called Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough<\/em>. Her basic premise? Modern women all have \u201cchecklists\u201d for their potential life partners, and we\u2019re too quick to dismiss guys who don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t worry if this advice sounds ridiculously retro\u2014Gottlieb freely admits that she\u2019s telling women to ignore modern ideas about male\/female relations because, as she says at the beginning of her book\u2019s third chapter, \u201cfeminism has completely f*cked up my love life.\u201d All that talk about \u201cfreedom\u201d and \u201cchoice\u201d\u2014yes, she actually puts those words in quotation marks\u2014is a bunch of hooey because, as opposed to what Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan would have you believe, women really do<\/em> need to get married and have lots of babies in order to be fulfilled: \u201cThe 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,\u201d Gottlieb writes.<\/p>\n

Excuse me for just a minute\u2014AAAARRRRGGGGG!!! 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\u2019s thought process, but I\u2019ll spare all of you and just mention what I think are her most glaring errors:<\/span><\/p>\n

1) How can this lady seriously make a blanket statement like \u201cIf you say you\u2019re not worried [about getting married], either you\u2019re in denial or you\u2019re lying\u201d? 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\u2014especially 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\u2026)<\/p>\n

2) And on that note\u2014do any real women really keep the sort of extensive checklists Gottlieb assume we all have? I\u2019ve got maybe three qualities that I look for in a guy (reasonably good-looking, not dumber than me, good sense of humor)\u2026 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?<\/p>\n

3) Just like that Cosmo article I talked about last week<\/a>, this book makes lowering expectations and learning to be content with what you can get the woman\u2019s burden exclusively. Women have<\/em> to settle, says Gottlieb, but men\u2014even the fat, balding, boring dudes the author is recommending we settle for\u2014can get with whoever they want because all chicks are desperate. Again: so insulting I can barely find the words to describe it.<\/p>\n

4) Maybe the craziest part of all this is that for all her sage wisdom, Gottlieb herself isn\u2019t married. She\u2019s basing her entire philosophy on a hypothetical idea: if<\/em> she had settled, maybe<\/em> she would be happier now because maybe<\/em> 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\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n

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 \u201csettle\u201d for me\u2014and I\u2019m guessing that a guy would feel the same way. Imagine how devastated your boyfriend or fianc\u00e9 would be if he found a copy of this book on your bedside table. I\u2019ve got an idea for a title for your next book, Lori Gottlieb: The Case for Modern-Day Misogyny<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, it\u2019d probably be a bestseller.<\/p>\n

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This will make you happy. Meet Lori Gottlieb. She\u2019s a 40-year-old single mother\u2014she got artificially inseminated because she wanted to have a baby but didn\u2019t have a boyfriend\u2014who has discovered the secret to why more women aren\u2019t married: their standards aren\u2019t low enough. No, seriously. Gottlieb recently expanded this 2008 article from the Atlantic into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4627,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4627"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}