The Dowd Crowd

This post is intended to help all women, but primarily women under the age of 30.  I cannot emphasize enough how sincere and honest I am about this statement - this post is intended to help you.  It may not seem it at first, but if you can permit yourself an open mind and hear me through you will see that not only is that my intention, but the post itself will actually prove helpful, especially to younger women.

If you don't know Maureen Dowd, don't worry.  It just means you're not old.  But to give you the quick 1-2 on her she is arguably the original "East coast, liberal, feminist woman who lives in New York and pines about socio-romantic topics, as well as politics" type gal (hence referred to as ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP).  Three decades ago she was "hot" and not just physically, but publishing wise as well.  Sure she'd dispense advice on politics and economics, but an edge she had was on relationships with men with a feminist twist.  Men aren't needed.  Who needs men.  Women are the new up and coming leaders, blah blah blah.  She was heralded, many newspapers (remember those things) wanted to publish her and because of her moxie, she sold.

30 years later Maureen Dowd has paved the way for a new generation of "East coast, liberal, feminist women who live in New York and pine about socio-romantic topics, as well as politics" type gals.  Obviously younger than her, they still dispense courtship, dating and romantic advice to younger women through a feminist and liberal lens.  And though they deliver their message through a new media, the message largely remains unchanged.  If anything, it is a more purified and modern version of feminism and leftism.

But I had this nagging thought.  And, as I'm prone to do, I researched it.

Maureen has been dispense advice for all these years.  And her disciples, some not so young, have also been dispensing advice for years.

Since they seem to be experts on dating, romance, men, and courtship, just how successful have they been in their lives in these regards, and therefore, should young women even be listening to them in the first place.

Off the bat I will admit this is not 100% scientific.  This is "what I had to work with."  If you can believe me I was intellectually honest in my research and data mining because I too was curious what the reality was.  In short I was not looking for any one answer, but I genuinely wanted to know if these "experts" who consult, advise, and inform the younger women of today as to how to go about their love lives (not to mention professional lives) know what the hell they're talking about. 

The first step was to get a list of all the "ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP's."  After eliciting my readership for a list, as well as compiling known women that would fall into this category, I came up with the following ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP's:

Virginia Heffernan
Sandra Tsing Loh
Ellen Fein
Elizabeth Gilbert
Maureen Dowd
Emily Bazelon
Lindy West
Amanda Marcotte
Jessica Valenti
Jill Filipovic
Carolyn Hax
Hanna Rosin
Pamela Gwyn Kripke
Liz Jones
Millie Kerr
Lori Gottlieb

Now keep in mind, though the tone of my post thus far sounds hostile, I tried my best to make this list as intellectually honest and scientific as possible.  For example many people would say, "Why is Lori Gottlieb on there?  She came out admitting she was wrong!"

Correct, but for all those years she DID dispense advice as a ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP.  Her epiphany or realization is after the fact.

Or for example I did not put Kate Bolick or Kay Homywitz on the list, despite my readership saying I should, in that they did not write articles that were of the feminist variety ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP's did.

Additionally a lot of my readers just sent me feminists in general.  There was a feminist lawyer, a handful of professors, but none of them were "writers" or "journalists" who opined about dating and men.

In short the list is the most comprehensive list of your stereotypical, left wing, feminist widsom dispensing journalists who for some reason all need to live on the east coast (I will entertain more to add to my database to further improve my research).  They met these criteria and there is no "passion" or "emotion" about it.

The next thing I did was research their profiles to the extent I could to find out the following traits or "variables" about them:

Are they Currently Married?
Have They Ever Been Divorced?
Was their Undergraduate Degree in a Real (STEM) Field?
Do They Have Children?
Their Looks on a Scale of 1-10 (as rated by me)
Do They Have an Advanced Worthless Degree
Are They Employed in "Real Private Sector Work?"
Age

The reason I picked these variables is because I believed these metrics would not only be of interest to younger women (as to measure their success in romantic and courtship life), but they sure as hell are to men.  Ergo, while there may be some debate as to whether young women would find these variables the correct ones to measure success, there is no debate whatsoever these are the variables men definitely look at.

Are they Currently Married?

As it stands right now the majority of the ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP's are not married.  Only 37.5% were married.  I did take some liberty with the younger ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP's where it was clear they weren't, so there is some room for criticism there, but the fact does not change that the majority of them are not married.  It should also be of note not ONE of the ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP's is under 30.  So it's not like these are recent college graduates just getting their careers off the ground.  They're been around for a while and very few are married.

However, in intellectual honesty I do have to state that if you take out the 30 somethings and just focus on the 40+ crowd 55% are married.

Therefore if you are a young woman and your goal is to be married by your 30's there is a less than 38% chance of that happening.  However, if you wait till you're 40's or older, there's only a 45% chance you won't reach that goal, chances akin to "betting on red" in roulette.

Ever Divorced?

Nobody likes divorce.  I think I can safely say that without leftist nit-pickers saying some people do.

Half of theECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP's  have been divorced.

Normally this would not be concern for alarm because "half of all marriages end in divorce."  The problem is that women with college degrees statistically have significantly lower divorce rates.  And all of these women have at least a bachelors.  In other words, they are doing worse than their peer group.  Unless you consider divorce a "success" (which no doubt some of them do), their performance have failed in this regard.

Worthless Undergad

My hatred and loathing of worthless degrees is no secret.  But my passion against these worthless scraps of paper does not change the fact that those who are less intelligent, less rigorous, and just plain lazy pursue easier degrees.  Only 1 woman in the ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP group has a worthwhile undergrad (Sandra Tsing Loh, surprisingly), the rest all have what can be considered worthless degrees (English and Journalism accounting for nearly all of them).  Admittedly there is some selection bias in most of these people are "journalists/writers" but it does not change the fact that at the age of 18 they purposely and knowingly chose cake degrees that avoided math at all costs (it is also interesting to note how many of them "married" into a magazine or a sizable blog)

Do They Have Children?

Good news young ladies.  60% of them do have children!  And remember, about 5 of the ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP's are still in their 30's.  So if you want to have kids there's a good chance that will happen.  But there is a drawback.  Of the women past menopause or at the age where it's too risky to have children (my cut off was 44) one third will go childless throughout their lives.

Single Moms

Only 25% of these women are single moms.  Admittedly some by choice, because many of them subscribe to the philosophy fathers aren't needed (one even saying single mothers are better than married parents for the children).  But it is still good news you only stand a 1 in 4 chance of being a single mom.  However, remember a fair amount of these women were "young" still in their 30's and never married, thereby not allowing them the chance to become single mothers.  If you go to 40+ 44% of them are single mothers.  In short, in order to get divorced and be a single mom you have to live long enough to get married, have kids, and then get divorced.  Though, again, many in this control group would not be against the turkey baster method.

Looks

The average score of a ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP is a surprisingly average 5.39.  Also of note was just how plain and average most of them were.  Nearly half fell in the 4.5-5.5 range.  The high score was an 8.5 and the low score was a 2.75.  Scoring was based on what I found attractive.  Scoring was also not adjusted for age.  If the woman WAS hot in her youth, it didn't matter.  If she was old she got a lower score.  It was my visceral response to what she looks like today.  I also had to search high and low for "real" pictures.  Not glossied up, "glamor shot" pics.  Which I found out that feminists would resort to such fake, patriarchal nonsense that was beneath them.

Advanced Worthless Degrees

A statistic merely to quench my curiosity, 53% of ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP's have advanced degrees.  Naturally all of these advanced degrees were in worthless fields, namely English, Journalism, and Law.

Real Employment

Real employment is defined as genuine economic production that people willingly pay for and is not the consequence of nepotism, cronyism, government financing, or non-profits.  Namely, are you producing something of value or are you in a field that produces something of value.  Again, sample bias skews this statistic as I do not consider blogging or modern day journalism a real profession (let alone for "Slate" or "Salon" or your husband's newspaper), but I did award full and partial points if they had written a book or something that people willingly purchased and seemed to have some genuine economic productive value.  23% of them can be considered "legitimately employed."

Age

The average age of the ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP's was 43.6 years.  30 was the youngest (which was a charitable estimate) and 61 was the oldest.

Other Non-Statistical Observations

Nearly all of these women are employed by/write for Salon, Slate, Huffington Post, and Jezebel.  It suggests to me an oligopoly or cartel wherein the network is tight, the cadre is small, but because of the reach and connections within the blog/journalism/east coast media monopoly they seem larger and more influential than they really are.

Supporting this is the sheer number of what I would consider "faux awards" these women received.  Everyone seemed to have multiple awards from multiple organizations, most of which I've never heard of.  After reading enough profiles you didn't "get the impression," you outright knew these were nothing but a bunch of "pat yourself on the back participation trophies."  The impression of this segment of American media I was left with was that it was nothing more than a house of cards.  All "yea for us we're all winners" akin to the minimalist art community.  In other words any kind of media presence they have is largely fabricated, but necessary to market their writing/product.

Non-profit employment was rife.  Again, suggesting the free market where people willingly part with their dollars was not the driving force or purpose behind their employment, but rather charity or politics in the form of a non-profit benefactor.

The Question I Have for Young Women

Now, let's summarize all the ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP's into one imaginary "cumulative, average woman."

The average ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP is:

• a 44 year old woman
• who is unlikely to be married
• likely to be divorced
• likely to have children
• with a good chance she will be a single mother
• doesn't have a real degree or a real profession
• but went to school for 6 years on average for it anyway
• and is very average looking coming in at a 5.4

Do you REALLY want to become that?

I don't care what they write.  I don't care what they say.  And I don't care how sweet it may sound to your young, naive, gullible and VERY INEXPERIENCED ears.

Do you really want to be a divorced, middle aged woman with a hobby that you desperately try to pawn off as a career?

Look, while it may be cool, even intellectually stimulating, even "empowering" to think of men as the enemy, to think of men as "oppressors," or to use words fabricated in academia like "patriarchy" or "male normative," all you are doing in the long run is merely alienating yourself from the other half of the population to have some false sense of pride in your youth.  The other half that (despite what the ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP's would say) can and most likely WILL play a vital role to your future happiness.

What you have to do is THINK INDEPENDENTLY and not let the ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP's indoctrination ruin your life by transforming you into one of them.  Realize there is nothing wrong with liking men, or wanting to have children, or wanting a husband, or (GASP) wanting to be a housewife or stay-at-home mom. Additionally, there's nothing wrong with being beautiful or feminine or the epitome of female.  There's nothing wrong with dresses, there's nothing wrong with heels, there's nothing wrong with long hair and (GASP!) there's nothing wrong finding joy in pleasing your husband/boyfriend/man. This isn't to say you HAVE to be a stay at home mom and CAN'T pursue a degree in accounting, but in listening to the utter hogwash and tripe that is perpetrated by the ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP's of the world you ignore your natural and biological programming to become the best thing you ever can be - a woman!

The Male's Perspective

Finally, if the argument for enjoying being feminine, being beautiful, and being a woman isn't enough, you better do what your ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP counterparts didn't and that is one very important thing:

Think of the men.

If there is ONE criticism I have of ALL women's writing (ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP's or not) it's not an emotional one, it's a mathematical one.  If two people are going to date, court, get married, etc., why is 100% of the attention and strategy on the woman?  Why is the man or what the man wants never given any consideration?

The problem with ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP's approach to men and courtship is that it's myopic (look it up).  They are only focused on themselves.  But in ignoring what mathematically adds up to 50% of an equation, you are GUARANTEED to fail miserably at solving it.  If you want a successful relationship with a man then you (GASP!) HAVE TO CONSIDER WHAT THE MAN WANTS!

So ask yourself, what man wants a:

44 year old woman
whose been divorced
has somebody else's kids
doesn't have a real job
has student debt from her worthless masters
is only a 5.4
and has a lippy feminist attitude to boot?

Are you kidding?  Not one man wants that!  Not one!  And the only reason a man might settle for that is because he IS SETTLING and can't get any better.

A man who is accomplished, interesting, independent, successful, confident and in shape will NEVER marry, court, date, let alone give the time of day to such a woman.  The type of man you want would NEVER even entertain a ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP.

You may find that offensive.  You may find that rude.  You may find it disagreeable, but all of that is trumped by the fact it is true.

It's up to you whether you want to:

accept the truth, act accordingly and consequently stand a better chance at a successful love life

or

continuing listening to the ECLFWWLINYAPASRTAWAP's, in which case you're likely to become one.

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