Independent Women Can Bet on Being On Their Own

My parents were in Flatbush for shabbos, which they usually try avoiding at all costs. But they had very close friends’ son’s aufruf…and my mom (and I) had made the shidduch. So, there they were when a good friend of my grandmother approached my mother in shul to tell her that she has a friend with a son she thought would be good for me. Apparently, she mentioned my name to his mother who said, “Oh, he already went out with her. He really liked her a lot but she’s a militant vegetarian, and that wasn’t for him. So he said no.”
It took me a while to remember who this guy was and I went out with a total of how many shidduched guys--three, perhaps four? Then it dawned on me. He was the guy who told me that when he comes home late from law school hungry, he can’t just reach into the fridge and prepare himself something to eat because his mother makes food ahead of time and if she opens a container with food for Wednesday on Wednesday and it’s missing a portion, she’ll be upset. Instead of solving this by, say, making his own food for his own 20-something self, he tells his mother he’s hungry and she prepares a dinner for him. He also told me that his sisters are really accomplished--they can already cook like his mother and they’re only in high school! Needless to say, I didn’t go out with him again.
My 16 year-old brother teases me often that no one’s ever going to want to marry me because I won’t cook meat or chicken. I usually respond that I’m not looking for a son; I’m interested in marrying an independent man who won’t need me to wipe his tushy, pick his laundry off the floor, or cook for him.
As for me being referred to as a “militant vegetarian,” I was a bit upset. How stuck in his own little world does a guy need to be not to notice that a vegetarian who suggests a non-dairy restaurant (on a first date) because he’s the hungrier one is probably not all that militant? And besides, I’m way too laid back to concern myself with what other people eat. And I only preached how gross the process from birth to feed house to slaughterhouse is once at a table--and I was out with my family who were bugging me about not enjoying the delicious, amazing Prime Grill steaks they were all eating. As a matter of fact, I’m only a vegetarian because when I look at meat the voices in my head that usually sing me songs when I walk start up a chorus of “moos” and when I look at chicken I hear “baaawk, baaawk” and subsequently get very nauseated. If I cared so much about being a “militant vegetarian,” I’d get rid of my suede skirts and leather bags and shoes. It’s pretty obvious from meeting me that I’m no militant when it comes to saving animals.
Hence, my theory: Shidduch Boy was afraid he’d have to do something for himself if he were to marry me (namely, cook).
Maureen Dowd’s op-ed for the January 13th New York Times is called, “Men Just Want Mommy.” In it, she writes, “as Dr. Stephanie Brown, the lead author of the study, summed it up for reporters: ‘Powerful women are at a disadvantage in the marriage market because men may prefer to marry less-accomplished women.’” Unless, of course, like Shidduch Boy, you consider accomplishments to mean cooking abilities.
Dowd’s article was interesting--but nothing I didn’t already know. I mean, doesn’t everyone know that “a high I.Q. hampers a woman’s chance to get married?” Weren’t we all already in the know that “women who challenge men are in trouble?”
A beautiful, educated, genius of a girl I know never went on more than one date with any of the guys she was set up with except for the one she ended up marrying. Apparently, guys were not that interested in a girl who was intelligent, intellectual, and enjoyed conversations. (And if you’re thinking it was her looks, I can guarantee you that with her soft brown curls, humonganoid brown eyes, and beautiful body that that wasn’t the issue.)
I cannot imagine that there are no men out there who like girls who challenge them intellectually, or who talk to men with no less assertiveness than they talk to women with, or who don’t plan on cooking for them. As a matter of fact, I’m certain of it. But then…I am still unmarried.