When Being Yourself Doesn't Get You A Man, Be Someone Else

Men all like one kind of woman — soft, cuddly, girly, pink and oh-so-feminine! They want to be needed, have their egos stoked, feel in charge, be in charge and look at exotic, well-made-up creatures who flirt and bat their eyelashes and don't challenge them intellectually and are incapable or passive/submissive. Thus, us hard-charging ladies need to better strike that balance between being intelligent, capable human beings and being girly-girls so that we can find husbands. Or so says the Daily Mail's Anna Pasternak, whose journey to feminine self-discovery started in her closet, passed through a few Botox injections and some psychobabbly life coach claptrap, and ended with her out to dinner with a male friend who already liked and appreciated her company. Sounds like fun!

Anna's husband left her three years ago with her higher salary and their 5-year-old daughter because, she thinks, she made more money than him. Two subsequent dates with whiners that complained about her not being "feminine" enough and too "in-control," she found herself crying at the dinner table and decided she needed to be a different kind of woman. Did she get actual post-divorce therapy? It doesn't sound like it, because if her accounting of the end of her marriage is true, she keeps dating the same exact asshole. Her ex-husband was intimidated by not being a high earner, so she's going out with a series of men who are intimidated that she's not a 25-year-old opinionless bimbo with no self-control. Does she stop to consider that the problem might not be that she's not feminine enough (or that it won't be solved by putting on a little make-up), but that the problem is with the men she's with and their outdated ideas of what is attractive in a woman?

My dad and I had a little conversation this weekend — he is, after all, married to my mom with whom I have a lot in common. He'd read a little drunkenly miserable blog post of mine in which I'd worried that being single at 30 was reflective of some fundamental problem with me and not the various issues of the idiots I spent my twenties dating. My dad told me (as dads are wont to do) that my single status doesn't mean that there's a goddamn thing wrong with me — and that my exes obviously all had problems in their own ways. He added that if there's anything wrong with me, it's that I keep choosing to get into relationships with idiots who can't deal with me being strong and independent, and that it's far better to end up strong and independent and still myself than to try to hide me under a bunch of frou-frou pink girly bullshit to get a man to stick around for a while and find out in 10 years that I lost myself and couldn't hold onto him either.

Anna, my dad is available for sympathetic, platonic drinks whenever you want. But, for free, he suggests you take a second look at that male friend who liked you when you were make-up-less, Botox-free and stressed out.

Fast Track To Femininity: Why Competing With Men Has Left Women Out Of Touch With Their Feminine Side [Daily Mail]

Send an email to Megan Carpentier, the author of this post, at askalobbyist@gmail.com.

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