I was watching a clip of Dr. Phil last week (it was for research, you judgers!) and it featured some self-professed “spoiled princesses” who, even nearing 30, were funded by their wealthy parents in their quest to get their PhD's in neuroscience and then spend five years in a poor African country tending the ill and conducting research on how to stop certain pandemics. Oh yes, I joke! I do! The Princesses were simply out to find one thing: a man. A husband, and a rich one at that. “No nine-to-fiver driving a Honda, thank you very much,” said one young blonde woman. After all, she’s a Princess! She even wore a tiara with two carats worth of diamonds (actually, she has a whole collection, as I know you do too) and trotted about the city, in all her spray tanned glory, looking for a little fame, a little fortune, and a husband with a not-so-little bank account.
Dr. Phil sent Princess# 1 to work for a day with infamous public relations professional Kelly Cutrone and the whole thing was a pretty standard set-up. Princess walked in with cleavage from here to China, wearing a tiara (I was upset she had no little dog in a little dog purse. That's a Princess fail, right there) and failed miserably at her temporary job. Cutrone was most outraged that she couldn’t fold clothes. Over and over she exclaimed “but she couldn’t fold clothes!” no matter what the topic. I was more worried that Princess# 1 spoke like an 8-year-old, has no discernible intelligence and practically glowed neon with her orange tan. But if not being able to fold clothes is a huge problem to the hard hitting and ultra sensible Cutrone, then perhaps it’s me who’s missing the point.
Once that segment was over, on marched another blonde, big-chested woman who was also no stranger to the makeup chair. Hello, Princess #2! Sitting with her mother, they both defended her lifestyle - again, completely funded by her rich Mom - that focused on her fabulous career; a couple of photos in Playboy (I’m assuming the internet version of it), a spot on The Millionaire Matchmaker (you saw that coming) and TWO mentions in Page 6 of the New York Post. Two, not one! She made the gossip column known as Page 6 twice! Dr. Phil interrupted her to ask if that was a sign of success. Both she and her mother looked at Phil like he had suddenly grown hair. “YES!” both shouted, amazed that the audience didn’t get the significance. Princess #2 jumped in one more time to let us know that it happened twice. Did you get that, America? Twice.
But getting a man was her main ambition in life and he had to be tall and thin and Jewish. She also lamented all we non-Jews were stealing the Jewish men and we need to back off. Up came Cutrone again, who was mad. And you don’t make Kelly Cutrone mad. Every time Cutrone tried to speak, Jewish Princess (her own description) cut her off by telling her that she had no husband so she needed to shut up. When Cutrone told Princess #2 she wasn’t good looking and too fat to land an A list Hollywood type (she didn’t use those actual words but instead mentioned getting plastic surgery and hitting the gym which I think pretty much translates into “not good looking and too fat”) Princess again shouted back that at least she wasn’t twice divorced like Cutrone and that Cutrone had no husband so was not entitled to an opinion. Back and forth it went as Cutrone made her points and Princess kept yapping on about having a husband. At the end of the show, they all agreed to disagree. The Princesses said they weren’t changing and that getting themselves hitched and becoming Mrs. Somebody was the key to happiness.
All silliness aside, these women were for real. And so are many others who believe a successful life for a woman only really counts if she has a husband. Many a woman in this day and age is raised to believe that a wealthy husband is her goal in life. College is fine (but meeting a wealthy male student there is finer) and hitting the right parties, dinners and charity events are less about fun, food and giving back and more about scoring a date with a man with money. And no matter what a woman does with her life, she’s not quite complete and didn’t quite make it, if she wasn’t Mrs. Somebody. Up to 40 years ago, a woman’s marital status could cost her her job and certain rights, and a lack of being Mrs. Somebody lost her invitations to social events and membership in organizations.
This status in 2010 is what some our daughters are still being taught. Ironically, it’s often more prevalent in wealthy communities than in the middle and working classes where women work, take care of children, manage their own (and household) finances and are actually far more equal in their lives than many of the rich and educated women who are expected to take a back seat to their wealthy husband’s life.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for marriage. I'm married and I like it. But if I weren't married by choice, I'm sure I'd like that too. And for those of us who are unmarried, according to many? We failed, somewhat. Somewhere down the line that is our lives, we failed to “snag” or “land ourselves” a husband. Note that we don't accept a man's proposal. No, we must target him, stalk him and go in for the kill; otherwise he'd never ask us to spend our life with him. Heaven forbid a man willingly walks down the aisle. No sir. It's all about predatory women capturing the poor fools and getting the rings on our fingers before he knows what hit him.
For we unmarrieds? We didn’t understand those tricks of Snaggery (all 68 of them! And we didn’t start doing it “RIGHT NOW!”) like the glossy magazines told us to. We spent too much time on our careers and lives instead of focusing on how to “get that man down the aisle”. At least according to all the Princesses out there who inform us that no matter what we do, invent, change or enhance, it doesn’t mean quite as much if we didn’t manage to become Mrs. Somebody along the way. I hope Mother Teresa, Condoleezza Rice, Jane Goodall, Joan of Ark, Susan B. Anthony and Octavia Butler to name a few of the millions of brilliant woman who didn’t need to be Mrs. Somebody to be Someone, took note of their personal failures in this area. Or....not.
Tell Us
Married or single, do you feel that women are still judged on their marital status?