A friend once told Miss Cheapist that in finding a man she had to choose between two types: one who made a great deal of money and was emotionally unavailable, and one who made less money, but was more generous with his time and feelings. In the mid-1990s, it seemed that there were indeed these two types of guys: investment bankers who seemed often were first to offer free rounds of drinks and at the same time justified their binge drinking and strip-club addictions to an intense work life. The other group consisted of men dedicated to art and social justice, who had to actually work out their character flaws and pursue sensitive pastimes like yoga and listening. But did sensitivity make a man more reliable?
At that moment, in her early 20s, this friend’s binary of manhood made sense. Realistically, how could one expect a male partner to really embody all desired virtues? After all, Miss Cheapist heard repeated warnings to young women in this post-feminist era that it was impossible to have it all. However, in light of recent facts and anecdotes, she has come to question this idea that women must limit their expectations, in the face of a cheapness of will from the opposite sex. Even when she could accept that women couldn’t have it all, and men couldn’t be all that, she still had to figure out if it was because men were cheap in their motivation, or if they just lacked the ability.
The New York Times recently published an article about successful career women who feared showing off that they made tons of money when dating, for fear that they would scare off men. In the same article, the writer reiterated the latest trend that young women are graduating from high school, and attending college and graduate school in greater numbers than young men. In effect, various sources have implied that there is an impeding crisis in this country; attributed to education, parenting, and even a shared cultural ethos around masculinity.
Many of Miss Cheapist’s female friends have already accepted this reality. They make more money than their partners, choosing to maintain slightly predictable office jobs or going to graduate school to make more money. Meanwhile their partners or husbands are able to maintain free-lance jobs or pursue their artistic passions, often not lucratively. Free from bitterness, women like N. actually prefer that their partners are able to follow their dreams and have passions. N. never wanted to be blamed for robbing a man of the opportunity to find himself (as if all of us have that luxury), and at the same time, believed she could leverage her permissiveness by expecting his domesticity. N.’s criteria for a man was: must be emaciated and hot (in a Diesel model way), artsy, able to complete house chores and, possibly stay at home with the children. She believed that these qualities were actually possible to find in a man, and she had no problem with the role reversal, so long as he fulfilled the role adequately. Somehow she had the fantasy that male pride was not an issue.
Miss Cheapist initially bought into this notion that men would embrace this role, probably because those female friends were wildly successful, and she also heard of men who made sacrifices in an effort to build a nest egg and at the same time, made themselves emotionally available. But slowly she began to realize many men were not interested in taking any responsibility whatsoever, whether it be making enough money to raise a family, or making sure the trash was taken out. It didn’t matter what their occupation--many men did not feel they had to work as hard as women, and scorned conformity as oppressive, but still felt entitled to an upper middle class lifestyle. Miss Cheapist began to hear more stories like those in the New York Times--men who were intimidated by women who made more, but yet weren’t willing to subject themselves to the banality of a desk job or confined to a classroom so that they could be on “equal” footing.
And in the midst of this changing social tide, Miss Cheapist recalled the axiom of her favorite college professor who declared, “Feminism should not eliminate male responsibility!” Did male responsibility become a thing of the past? She was starting to suspect it was a myth to begin with, and for a second, she felt bad that men had such limited options in choosing their identity—"provider," "Mr. Fix-It," "deadbeat," "effeminate." Still, given the history of patriarchy and presence of sexism even today, Miss Cheapist did not want to compromise her expectations for men. Who could she blame? She too wished to pursue her dreams, escape responsibility and travel the Indian subcontinent, live simply on a tropical island. Yet her cheapness in imagination prevented her from envisioning what life would be like without a sense of duty, the predictable routines of being employed, and an unshakeable commitment to martyrdom. Was this characteristic of what society expected of women, or a burden she chose to bear on her own?
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