Does Every Man Really Think His Wife is Out of His League?
And if not, why are so many "how we met" stories about women reluctantly agreeing to tolerate a less attractive man who won't leave her alone?
Earlier, I reviewed Phoebe Maltz Bovy’s amazing book, The Last Straight Woman. While there are several really interesting themes in Phoebe’s book—primarily the shocking fact that straight women are A.) exclusively attracted to men, B.) cannot easily rid their lives of men without being very lonely (and perhaps a bit horny), there was another theme I did not cover in my review: pushing back against a culture that insists that men are ga-ga for women—especially their bodies—while women just sort of…tolerate men and find men’s bodies vaguely gross and clownish.
I had always noticed this (and it always bugged me) but I never really identified it until I read Phoebe’s work. Like the false assumption that all women receive much more male attention than they want, or that women don’t actually enjoy sex for anything other than emotional intimacy, there is an insidious belief that a woman’s attraction to a man (especially physical attraction) either doesn’t exist at all, or isn’t factored into her relationships. A man dates a woman when he thinks she’s hot, a woman dates a man when she finally gets worn down enough to put up with him, or if she needs a free meal. Or so they say.
In particular, Phoebe highlights something I previously referred to as a “land acknowledgement for wife guys” where every wedding announcement between a straight couple includes some obligatory line about how the woman was way out of the man’s league, and her desire for him was limited to “eventually came around to it after he refused to go away.” One cited wedding announcement in her book even included a man claiming that his wife “did not know” they were dating at first, and he proceeded to date her, apparently without her knowledge, until she reluctantly came around.
We are supposed to look at the state of marriage and take it at face value that the only man a woman can expect to marry is someone far beneath her in attractiveness who she deigns to tolerate, and that the only woman a man would ever consider marrying is one far more attractive than he is. Assuming that’s true, what a sad state of affairs!
I guess the one problem is I don’t think this is true. I think everyone is lying.
