So I have a friend who, sometimes, I like to call the male version of me - definitely ambitious, vivacious, intellegient, and has a passion for movies and music that trumps my own (so does yours A-rod). He wrote a blog on Monday to start some discussion and it has truly intrigued me as well. I repeat that blog below and would love to hear your thoughts. Now it’s a lot of reading and requires some thought, but I know you are all up to the task cuz its a very interesting article.
Magazine Matters - Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough
Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough - The Atlantic
By Lori Gottlieb
Lori Gottlieb is a graduate of Stanford Medical School, a New York Times best selling author, a contributor to NPR, who has written for The New York Times, Time, and The Atlantic. Her career is a runaway success, yet at 40, she’s still single. She wrote, what amounts to an open letter to young, smart, career minded woman, in the March issue of Atlantic, begging them to settle for "Mr. Good Enough." It’s a very funny/sad article that made me at once ecstatic to be a man and sad for my female friends for whom this article was written.
Many of those friends, mostly twnetysomethings, have gotten their hands on the article and have been talking about it fervently. I would be interested in hearing their thoughts and I hope they take a moment to respond to this post with their feelings about the article. I did talk to one of my married friends who is in her early 30’s and without even reading the article she agreed 100 percent that women should settle. This is a non-issue for me because I’ll never have to settle. If I don’t find the women of my dreams (a 20 something with a bright future and a palpable sexual energy) in the next 15 years, I’ll still have another 15 years to keep looking and never diminish my ability to start a family. Women on the other hand, only have a short window to procreate.
Is this fair? Yes. Men are born with just enough genetic code to exist, while women are born with the complete catalogue of the human genetic code. Therefore women are the greater sex. They have the power to create life with the help of just a few cells. Men need an entire woman to pass on their genes. Once science figures out how to manufacture sperm in the lab, the arguments for keeping men around will hold less and less weight. Men start wars, die sooner, are stupider, and most of us go bald. The advantages we do have are that we get more attractive as we age and our sperm works well into our 70’s. So I don’t feel bad that you have to have all your children by 37.
Read the article and let’s have a discussion.
