BlogWatch: Dating Tips For Dowd

The reaction to Maureen Dowd discussing the disturbing strategy of men and women dating keep rolling in.

Amanda Marcotte chimes in:

Generalizing what men want from what men-who-speed-date want is a bad idea, it seems to me. There’s an urgency and shopper’s mentality to speed dating that seems like it would only be attractive to a subset of people, and it’s quite possible that subset is especially likely to have a checklist of attributes that would include, “Smart, but not too smart.”*

*I don’t know why Dowd’s whining, anyway, since that description seems to fit her to a T. If this study is right, she should be raking ‘em in left and right.

Zing! Good one, Amanda.

Tracy Clark-Flory left a video response on Broadsheet that you can find here. The Broadsheet readers left three pages of comments on Dowd and dating. Their verdict:

Equal opportunity sexism is alive and kicking!

Christine Whelan shows up again, this time on National Review Online. She delivers some bad news:

Maureen Dowd is full of bad news for smart, successful women looking for love.

She’s not the only one who predicts grim love prospects smart women: Forbes.com published an article titled “Don't Marry a Career Woman,” warning that women who make more than $30,000 per year, work 35 hours a week or more outside the home or have a university-level (or higher) education are less likely to ever marry more likely to get divorced.

But, surprise! Reading her book will help you out.

I created an acronym for these smart, single young women: SWANS: Strong Women Achievers, No Spouse. SWANS are powerful, driven professionals who flock to urban areas and high-status jobs.

All my research led to a recent book, Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women, and because of my research, I became increasingly confident in my good fortune as one of the SWANS.

She then talks about meeting the dream of her life, which leads to her triumph:

This very smart man and I were married on June 16, just a few weeks shy of my 30th birthday. I’m living proof of my good-news message: Smart men do marry smart women, a little bit later in life. And gentlemen do prefer brains.

So there, Maureen. Just go back in time to your late twenties, read Whelan's book, and snag a man.