Before the Pick-Me, There was the Cool Girl

Part 2 of “The Men Who Sabotage Women's Fertility"

When I wrote The Men Who Sabotage Women’s Fertility, an article about the “stalemate” relationships where the woman wants marriage and the man repeatedly says it’s going to happen “soon” for multiple years, only to immediately marry the next woman he dates, I was not expecting the reaction I got. I mean, I knew I’d get a reaction (I even gave my paid subscribers a heads-up the night before, scared that some of them would jump ship.) What I didn’t expect was that I would gain upwards of 300 new paid subscribers and generate countless heated discussions on Twitter. To all those people: thank you! I hope you stick around and enjoy what’s coming!

The reaction was diverse. Countless women saw their own former relationships depicted, and even some men came forward to say they were former “sunk cost boyfriends” and wanted to share their side of the story (to their credit, they were very civil and willing to chat- I’m interviewing several of them for a future article!)

Of course, it should go without saying that I wasn’t talking about people who are happily in long-term unmarried partnerships. The whole point of the sunk cost boyfriend phenomenon is that one person (or perhaps both people, for different reasons!) is unhappy with the arrangement.

Anyway, the stalemate relationship sounds like an easy thing to avoid: simply tell a man you want marriage and kids right away. And then if he fails to make good on that, tell him to make it happen within the next six months (or year, two years, whatever) or you’re gone. Some men chimed in to say that this strategy worked for them, and they’re now married. But most women said they shied away from doing this, because they had been told by men and by other women that this was demanding and “high maintenance.” And I don’t blame them, because other men added to the discussion by asserting that any woman who sets such an ultimatum is selfishly focusing on the marriage, not the man.

It was mostly women aged 30-40 who expressed concern about an ultimatum being “demanding,” and that’s no surprise. It all starts with a 1990s-2000s phenomenon, fresh from the pages of Cosmo and the romcom golden age: The Cool Girl.

I was a teenager in the 2000s. There were many things that scared me—such as Saddam Hussein harnessing the power of killer bees and acid rain to attack our local mall—but realistically, a big one was the fear of being seen as “high maintenance.” This was the worst thing you could be if you were a young woman living in this time period, other than not-hot (at that point you might as well be a piece of upholstery.)

What was so terrifying about being high maintenance was that being hot would not save you. In fact, many hot girls were painfully high maintenance. Men interviewed in Cosmo would talk about how they’d prefer a “low maintenance 7” over a “high maintenance 9” (narrator: the man in question was, in fact, a 4.) Movies would star “low maintenance” leads who were not as hot (or at least, not as polished and dressed up) as their high maintenance rivals. The high maintenance girl was cosmopolitan, glossy, and prim. She demanded expensive dinners and gifts. She wore heels and got her hair done. She didn’t like sports. She sent food back at restaurants if they brought her the wrong thing. She voiced her preferences. She wanted a big wedding. She wanted a wedding at all. The low maintenance girl was beachy and sporty. She wore T-shirts and jeans. She didn’t wear makeup—her skin was just perfect naturally. She knew how to kick back with a cold beer and curse at a football game. She never thought about marriage. She was easily impressed. Most importantly, the low maintenance girl made no demands. She was effortlessly desired; she didn’t have to make demands. She was independent, but in a way that was thoroughly unthreatening to men: she was guaranteed not to bother them.