A trending essay published in New York magazine's The Cut argues that women are the wisest, most valuable cultural assets, to make the most of their youth and beauty, and to grow older while still very young. To marry an older man. In doing so, writes 27-year-old author Grazie Sophia Christie, she carves out an easy life and liberates women from the timelines set by men, where their professional and reproductive lives irreconcilably collide. . Yes, there are concessions, she says, such as personal freedom and a fully independent identity. But those are small compared to a life without any adult responsibilities, including the responsibility of being yourself.
The benefit the author derives from her relationship is based on her partner's money.
All of this is framed as rational, perhaps even feminist, advice, a way for women to stop following men's rules and reject the demands of exploitative capitalism, and this choice is the most obviously sensible. The author argues that this is a good choice. It seems perplexing to her that other undergraduates at Harvard weren't busy attracting wealthy or soon-to-be wealthy men (her “high breasts, my Most of the eggs, plausible deniability when it comes to virginity, a blushing ponytail, books in the Harvard Business School library, “Encourage your unfinished journey,” “Why do my female classmates join me?” Considering their intelligence, I couldn't understand why they didn't do it.” But this is nothing more than a reuse of the oldest advice. The idea is that women should form themselves around more powerful men, never grow into independent adults, and find happiness in a perpetual state of prepubescence, submissiveness, and dependence. . These are strange choices for an aspiring writer (one wonders what a girl who doesn't want to grow up and has no idea who she is any more than a man has made her has to write) . And that's bad advice for most humans, at least if what most humans are looking for is a meaningful and happy life.
But this is not an essay about the benefits of a young woman marrying an older man.This is an essay about the benefits of getting married as a younger woman. rich male. Most of the perceived positives, such as paid apartments, paid holidays, and living split between Miami and London, are due to the husband's wealth, not his age. Every 20-year-old in this country may decide to marry a man in his 30s, but that doesn't mean she'll suddenly be granted an eternal vacation.
That's part of what makes structuring this book as an age-gap essay both strange and revealing. The profits the author is getting from her relationship come from her partner's money. But what she renounces is a result of both severe economic inequality and her relative youth. She wrote that her husband “felt too complete and formed” compared to her and her colleagues. In contrast, “When I was 20, I felt lost in the project of becoming my ideal self,” because “adulthood seemed like an exhausting series of obligations.” The idea of having to take responsibility for my own life didn't appeal to me at all. Associating herself with an older man gives her an out and allows her husband, her father, to conform her to his desires and thereby outdoes her job of becoming an adult. It was a skip method. “My husband is not my partner,” she wrote. “He is my mentor, my lover, and only in certain circumstances my friend. I will never forget how he showed me around the first place as if introducing himself. This is the wine you drink, this is where you keep your clothes, this is where we vacation, this is our other language, you speak it, you learn it. , and I did.”
By the way, these are what she says advantage About marriage at an older age.
A basic inability to express the full range of human emotion (“I live in an apartment that he pays rent for, and that limits my freedom to be angry at him.”) There are many drawbacks, such as the understanding that you owe her something (') and the understanding that you owe her something. What he gives materially, he gives back in another form (the most revealing line in the essay is, “When someone feels unappreciated, what it really means is that you are (This may be when she claims, “I owe something to someone.'') It's clear that part of what she paid in exchange for her paid life is a complete lack of self-consciousness, and a tacit agreement not to pursue self-consciousness. “If he betrayed me and I had to move on, I would survive,” she writes. Reconstitute it and stamp it with his initials. ”
Reading Christie's essay reminded me of another essay. It's Joan Didion's essay on self-esteem, in which Didion argues that “character, a willingness to accept responsibility for one's life, is the source of self-worth.” When we lack self-esteem, “we become strangely obsessed with everyone we see, and strangely enough, because we can't maintain our self-image, we accept their false beliefs about us.'' I am determined to live out the concept that I have.'' Self-respect may not make life easier. But it does mean that you can at least fall asleep whenever you “ultimately lie alone in the notoriously uncomfortable bed of your own making.”
A meaningful life requires a degree of self-awareness, the ability to look outside of one's own thoughts. on the inside.
It may feel barbaric to criticize another woman's romantic choices in public, and doing so will inevitably expose you to accusations of jealousy or pettiness. But the stories we tell about marriage, love, partnership, and gender matter, especially when told in major magazines that shape our culture. And women's choices, especially when those choices are shared as universal advice, and especially when they align neatly with resurgent conservative efforts to make women's lives smaller and less independent. To say that is beyond criticism is equally condescending. As labor economist Kathryn Ann Edwards put it in Bloomberg, “marry rich” is essentially a Republican plan for mothers. The model of marriage as a hierarchy with a breadwinner man at the top and a younger, dependent, obedient woman serving the needs of him and his children is not an entirely new or groundbreaking ideal. . It's a model that has kept women confined and miserable for centuries.
It also severely inhibits women's intellectual and personal growth. In her essay for The Cut, Christie seems to believe that an easy life leads to a life liberated by creative endeavors and happiness. But there is little evidence that material wealth and less adversity actually make people happier, let alone more creative. Having basic material needs met seems to be a prerequisite for happiness. But a meaningful life requires a degree of self-awareness, the ability to look outward rather than inward, and the intellectual and experiential layers that come with facing and overcoming challenges.
A good and happy life is not a life where everything is easy. A good and happy life (and here I am borrowing from centuries of philosophers and scholars) is based on the pursuit of meaning and knowledge, deep connections with other people (not just husbands and children) and Characterized by service. It is the kind of rich self-awareness that comes from accepting one's choices, taking responsibility for one's life, and doing the difficult and never-ending work of growing and re-evolving into a fully formed human being. and satisfaction. Delegating everything about your life, from the big decisions to the smallest details, to an authority figure may seem like an easy path for people who can't stand the demands of obligation or the opportunity for freedom. It's a real intellectual and emotional impasse.
And why would a man seek such a marriage, incurring huge debts, when his only job is to provide money? What kind of man wants to mold a lump of raw clay, just to fill the necessary cracks in his life, as the writer threw himself into it? And if the deal is money and guidance in exchange for youth, beauty and flexibility, the young, beautiful, supple party will inevitably grow old and perhaps feel that her backbone is starting to harden. What happens when? What will happen if she has children?
Using youth and beauty as currency means those assets depreciate very quickly. There is an almost endless supply of young, beautiful women, and there are more of them every year. The number of wealthy older men is small, and assuming many of these men, like Christy, want to date and marry submissive 20-something men, the population is narrowed down even more. If youth and beauty are to be exchanged for male resources, then those who have confirmed that there is something else to support that exchange, such as a basic ability to feed oneself, or at least a sense of self. would be better. .
Being a grown woman is difficult. Being an adult is hard, yes. And many women living in our age of unfinished feminism don't have to work tirelessly to barely make ends meet, don't have to manage the needs of children and men and women, and only deal with them once and for all. That's all you need. This may also explain some of social media's appeal to trad wives and stay-at-home mom girlfriends (I think part of that appeal is also just a sexual submission fetish, but that's for another column) is). Leisure fantasies reflect real needs for leisure, and American women could live happier and more freely if time and resources were not so frequently constrained and unfairly distributed. right.
But in reality, the way out of it is not found in submission, and it will never be found in choosing to be embraced by a man who can choose to drop you at any time. It's not an easy life. It's a life of constant anxiety, knowing that your spouse believes your worth is going down while his actual worth is going up. A life where you just let other adults make all your decisions is a stunted life and a very small life, even if you have vacations. Nice.
