Flabbergasted. At first, when I heard about what you wrote in the Princetonean, I thought, “That has to be a joke. No woman with half of a brain and any sense of self-esteem would say those stupid things.”
Seeing no reference to The Onion, I grew angry.
There are so many things wrong with what you wrote. I’m not even sure where to begin since I’m overwhelmed with the stupidity of it all, but I’ll take a stab at pointing it out.
Regarding finding a man:
Simply put, there is a very limited population of men who are as smart or smarter than we are. And I say again — you will never again be surrounded by this concentration of men who are worthy of you.
You can meet interesting people anywhere in the world at any point in time. To say that you really will only meet eligible men in college is completely ridiculous. And what one woman considers to be eligible, another considers to be a total jerk. A salary and education do not a good man make. It’s the content of his character, how he treats other people, that makes a man good. How many Ivy League educated men have gone to jail, cheat on their wives, or are otherwise not ethical or moral? Enough to make your theory ridiculous.
Men regularly marry women who are younger, less intelligent, less educated. It’s amazing how forgiving men can be about a woman’s lack of erudition, if she is exceptionally pretty.
Men want women who are dumber than they are? They forgive the stupidity if you are pretty?? Are you insane? Men who marry bimbos don’t make quality husbands. They are fools.
Another thing, men who go to college, Ivy League or not, are not necessarily smart. They are able to fill out Scantrons and pass classes, but that doesn’t make them intelligent. Some full blown idiots have graduated from universities and that includes the Ivy League, in fact one of them was President of the United States for a time.
My older son had the good judgment and great fortune to marry a classmate of his, but he could have married anyone. My younger son is a junior and the universe of women he can marry is limitless.
Anyone can marry anyone! OK, I take that back, if you are gay you can’t marry anyone, but you see my point.
Here is another truth that you know, but nobody is talking about. As freshman women, you have four classes of men to choose from. Every year, you lose the men in the senior class, and you become older than the class of incoming freshman men. So, by the time you are a senior, you basically have only the men in your own class to choose from, and frankly, they now have four classes of women to choose from. Maybe you should have been a little nicer to these guys when you were freshmen?
Why are you pitting women against each other like getting married is some sort of competition? You are perpetuating the myth that if a woman isn’t married by a certain age, she’s shit out of luck and might as well give up. Also, your message is basically telling young women if you aren’t married at all you are a lesser person. Would you seriously tell your daughters that if you had any? That’s fucked up. No, I’m not pardoning my French on that sentiment.
Do you really want to feed into the fears of women who are already struggling with their identity in a sexist world? I know this may come as a shock to you, but there are millions of women who are single, past the age of 25, and completely happy. There are also women over the age of 35 who date and marry younger men.
What advice you should be giving Princeton women is none. Relationship advice is total bunk. What works for you doesn’t work for everyone and that’s the honest truth.
Wait, you know what you should be telling women? There is someone out there for everyone. Funny how you never went there.