Battle of the Sexes: Cheapism & Expectation

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?

Not Ready to Say Goodbye in Long Island City

Still trying to find the next promised land, Miss Cheapist spent a Saturday afternoon with her two male friends, P. and E., hoping to catch up at PS 1’s weekly Warm Up event and see the disco throwback group, Escort, perform. E. had just enrolled in an urban boot camp with the hope that if he woke up at five AM for two weeks, and allowed three women to scream orders at him, he would be shaken from his routine. A better body was only secondary to being rescued from inevitable feelings of ordinariness. Several young professionals had already dropped out of the program, and E. was still hanging on.
With pride, P. announced that after living in the city for over ten years, he was going to leave New York. He came to realize that he could probably continue to maintain his personal artistic projects, earn money being a free-lance web designer, and remain self-employed at home in any other city. So why not move to Oakland, a place where many of their New England educated peers seemed to escape to and thrive? When Miss Cheapist asked what made him finally take the big leap, after talking wistfully about California for years, he responded, “I never really liked New York. My friends were all here, and now they’re gone. It’s just not the same.” Although she had just returned from a vacation in Hawaii, and was seriously reconsidering the value of being a New Yorker, Miss Cheapist believed that he had oversimplified the issues. She had loved the city once, and occasionally could still see its charm. Yes, many of her closest female friends had moved away and found tremendous opportunities elsewhere, but she could still tally up a significant number of acquaintances who lived there and could be counted on for good times. There would always be familiar people and places; yet it was so easy to feel left out of it all.

“Warm-up” is a dance party and beer fest set against the backdrop of pre-war architecture, bad contemporary art, and tribal house music. The three of them moved shoulder to shoulder with crowds of sweaty, enthusiastic outer borough hipsters and their European friends. There were even Black and Latino participants, a surprisingly diverse group so close to Bedford Avenue, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves equally. Quickly the trio became aware that there was something special taking place at P.S. 1, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the exhibit. E., often reluctant to admit that he spent much of the late 80s at the Limelight and other haunts with his Persian elite friends, was the first to comment on the fact that this party was actually fun. It had been a long time since he felt the urge to move with such abandon in a public space. What’s going on here, he kept murmuring. Am I still in New York? Miss Cheapist shared E.’s enthusiasm. They danced with nostalgia, and both of them felt for the first time in a while that they could belong to something, even if it was temporary and somewhat superficial. It was unusual to feel a tone of inclusion in a space intended for people to gather in the name of art and leisure. As trite as it may be to assign so much meaning to a makeshift dancefloor, under fuschia plastic architecture, the group was offered a place for anyone willing to participate.

A scene like this may not have convinced P. to stay longer than the autumn in New York, but it did give Miss Cheapist some hope that she could hold on a bit more.

Class loyalties tested on not-so-deserted island

Recently, Miss Cheapist was fortunate enough to spend time on the island of Molokai, Hawaii. The experience could be summarized as unsettling solitude, unmitigated natural beauty, and a home-stay with a transplanted East Coast couple, whose lifestyle embodied a "back to the land"ethos not recognizable as belonging to the 21^st century. Upon her return to New York, Miss Cheapist was forced to revisit the question: What was the city worth to her?

Unlike other islands in Hawaii, which have been developed into tropical play-lands, Molokai and its residents have fought to maintain a landscape and community preserved in time. Its main road runs less than 50 miles, from east to west, without a traffic light. It is dotted with homes of native Hawaiians, many of whom post hand-made signs protesting La'au Point, a concession made by a local group to allow a developer to build on one area for high-end eco-homes, in return for the protection of many more acres for generations to come. Four years ago, the hot-button topic was fighting the influence of "ice" on local youth and families.

With few hotels, paved roads, or shopping centers, one accustomed to the conveniences and luxuries of an island vacation might become frustrated. Not only could the island be much more pleasurable without blatant hostility toward outsiders and more access to recreation outside of expensive or extreme sports. The native-led moratorium on development also seemedl to undermine the chance of improvement in the island residents' quality of life, and many do struggle with the worst poverty in the state. La'au Point was not exactly an eminent domain story of a Bruce Ratner displacing whole communities to build a stadium, a borough given over increased congestion, noise and obnoxious land-grabbing. These proposed homes will barely leave a carbon footprint on the island, and the money from sales will allow the developer to reopen an old hotel, creating more jobs. The amount of protected land offered in exchange is far larger than any won by a grass-roots movement, and would remain untouched into the future. The resistance from Hawaiian groups highlighted how fiercely a betrayed community will fight to hang on to their last remaining assets, expecting reparations for past injustices. Undeniably native Hawaiians have been subjected to a near-genocide in the process of American colonization of the islands. However, could this conflict stall the growth of today's generation of Hawaiians, perpetuating distrust and knee-jerk reactiveness to any change? Uncertain if she was even entitled to an opinion on these local politics, Miss Cheapist felt her class conscience challenged.

The setting allowed her to spend significant time before a vast and unforgiving sea, reflecting upon her existence. Without the distractions and desires of urban life, she quickly became frightened. Once dwarfed by the high prices and lack of authenticity in the city, she then found herself scared of the dark and unable to grapple with her helplessness in the face of unimaginable natural forces.

The city, she realized, allowed her (and many others, she supposed), to delay a necessary process of self-actualization. With nightlife, shopping, and other opportunities to pursue pleasure and companionship, she never really needed to test her own physical strength and mental acuity. Urbanites tend to believe that because they work hard, play hard, and can withstand the threat of "crime," that they have truly challenged themselves. Yet, in nature, another set of skills were required. In New York, Miss Cheapist could always blame something other than herself; there was always someone richer, more savvy, more fit, and more educated than oneself in the city. Survival meant merely accepting this truth and coping with grace.

After Miss Cheapist came to this revelation, she began to observe the lives of her friends who moved there, the M. family. They were not intimidated by Molokai's remoteness, excited by the opportunity to create a garden, spear-fish with sharks for food, educate their child among people of a different race and culture, and actually integrate themselves into a community. They raised corn and squash. Their newly acquired chickens roamed freely on the property and ate homemade grain. After four years of attending an immersion school, their son was fluent in Hawaiian and considered the island his home.

At the same time, they worked crazy hours at their not-for-profit jobs, fought like any other married couple, and worried about paying their mortgage. Not completely disdainful of the trappings of modern life, Mr. M, had formed an unnatural attachment to his newly acquired iPhone. After a hard days work, he clutched it like a drink, taking in segments of Fox reality shows purchased online. It was clear some things would always be inescapable, regardless of one environment. Perhaps they also paid a price for their isolation.

Ms. M joked to Miss Cheapist that if the end of the world ever came, she could always flee to their home, which was created as its own self-sustaining entity. Mr. M. joked that Miss Cheapist would not survive one day in Molokai, silently condemning her existence to one of a spoiled, city girl dependent on a Candace Bushnell fantasy.

He was probably right, on some level, as the visit was more unsettling than relaxing to her by the end. Upon her return, the city no longer seemed to represent the center of the universe. Miss Cheapist knew there was more out there, and her ambitions leaned in a new direction.

But did she have the courage to pursue it?