Is Maureen Dowd Necessary?

(Apologies to someone or other, who already had that title a year ago, but a very different review follows.)

Maureen Dowd, in Are Men Necessary, and some columns like “Should Hillary Pretend to be a Flight Attendant,” proposes the theory that men avoid women who are as smart or ambitious as they are. Quoting a Slate article, Dowd seems to believe “They preferred women whom they rated as smarter — but only up to a point ... It turns out that men avoided women whom they perceived to be smarter than themselves. The same held true for measures of career ambition — a woman could be ambitious, just not more ambitious than the man considering her for a date.”

There are other reasons to believe that men avoid women who are smarter or more ambitious. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that only 5% of women with PhDs will get married after completing their doctorate.

I’m an over-educated, ambitious woman; I’m quite smart according to conventional intelligence assessments. And I’m single.

But I believe Dowd and the Slate study have it wrong. The study in the Slate article was odd. It looked only at seemingly quantifiable statistics but asked the daters to rank the opposite sex based on intelligence, looks and ambition. It had NO assessment of actual intelligence or ambition, only looks. (They had someone outside the study rank the looks of the participants. If any quantifiable intelligence testing or ambition ranking happened, the authors never mentioned it.) The participants ranked the potential partners after a 4-minute conversation. In other words, this isn't real intelligence, it is whether someone has an aura of intelligence. Same with ambition.

People of quality don’t date on quantifiable data. We date on how someone feels, their energy, their ability to engage, connect, and develop an interplay and interconnection. Men, at least men of quality, would never say “oh, her IQ is 5 points higher than mine—I’m not interested.” Please! Same with ambition. No man of quality is going to say “well, her dream job is .387% more prestigious than my dream job. Next.” But they will notice a woman who is focused primarily on that. Anyone who is able to convince someone else of 'being intelligent" in a four minute conversation, is probably focused on that. In my experience, real intelligence isn't about using big words that impress, intimidate and don't communicate (although I can deconstruct heteronormative, hegemonic paradigms with superlative if superfluous alacrity).

Maureen Dowd is in the top half a percent of most influential people in the country, and she is trying to prove she is in the top quarter of a percent. She proves herself all the time. She clutches. Her energy has tighter, narrower waves that feel constricted.

Until 2005, very few men found me attractive, and until 2005, I would have bought right into Dowd’s theory. But in 2005, I quit a power job that made me miserable. By 2006, I had as many dates, vanilla and otherwise, that a gal could wish for. I’m not stupider or less ambitious than I was in 2005; in fact, if anything, I’m a smidgen more successful because I stopped making a compromise that made me deeply unhappy. But my energy shifted.

I used to go through life saying “I can do it myself. I don’t need your help.” I clawed my way, not to the top, but to spitting distance from the top. But all I wanted was to reach the top because my life disappointed my soul and I desperately needed a change. I clung to any hope that would transform my life.

Once I quit a job I hated, which I viewed entirely as a stepping stone to a job that I would hate less, I stopped clutching as much. My energy became less tight, less closed, more welcoming and reciprocal. When I proved myself at work, all the time, I also proved myself in the rest of my life. I couldn’t turn that off.

Few of us, of any gender, are interested in lovers, friends, or even work colleagues, who spend sizeable amounts of time proving themselves. It isn’t a warm dynamic.

As I shifted my relationship to work, more men became interested in me, which made me more confident, which meant more men became interested in me. In the last year, I’ve become as picky in my private life as I am in my job. No one would look at me and say “wow—I bet she has multiple men interested in her.” I’m plump, don’t wear too much make-up and spend little energy on my appearance. I mean, my hair is clean, but sunscreen is the only facial product I use religiously.

But I am happy. My energy is good, and that strong energy has room to give and room to accept. I can listen to men and be interested in them. Granted, I won't see them again if they aren't also interested in me, but I no longer demand to be the center of attention.

Now, this does not mean I don’t support women’s achievement at whatever they desire. And there is an unfair result of sexism—it is harder for women to achieve the same level that men achieve with the same effort. That unfair playing field makes it more likely that women will clutch and fight to achieve their dreams. But women need to realize they have far more control over their destinies than the Maureen Dowds of the world give us credit for. We can very much affect how we are perceived by making a life where we are happy and content. And it does little good to blame the individual men we date for the unfair playing field.