A Critique on Bringing home the bacon, but no boyfriend

As more and more professional women enter the workforce, little whispers of dissent have been voiced by the media. I’ve read plenty of reports and articles about powerful, intelligent women and their inability to find a man. When I read an article in Salon’s Broadsheettoday, I expected it to be about a similar report of the evils of successful women and how men fear them.

Tracy Clark-Flory describes aThe New York Times article she found to be an attack against high earning women in the business world. She reports the article gives this advice to educated, single women, “So, either stop that career climb or risk becoming a well-heeled spinster with 12 cats, clothed in Prada.”

After a careful perusal of the original Times article Clark-Flory wrote about, it came apparent to me that the reporter Alex Williams and contributors Ellen Almer, Kristi Ceccarossi and Paula Schwartz don’t make warnings or value judgments. They have simply taken quotes from successful working women and written a compelling story about them.

While the interviews do revolve around women, their incomes and men who are intimidated by the ladies’ buying power, they also are focused on women who are accomplishing their goals and know what they want in a partner.

The article mentions women who date more successful men, older men and men who work towards their own goals. It also brings up the point that women have their own hang-ups when it comes to dating men with smaller bank accounts, like Thrupthi Reddy, who was “miffed” when her date let her pay for their meal, even though she’d been going on and on about how independent she was throughout their conversation.

Even if this article was a warning for women to avoid amassing wealth and prestige, it is still a thought-provoking article and stimulates a much-needed discussion about women, men, and who should be the breadwinner in a relationship. Gender relationships boil down to social conditioning, and in the end, if we don’t face our own inner voices, we’ll never know who we really our. We can ask for equality until we’re blue in the face, but if women fighting for their own rights can’t be honest with their lovers, what’s the point?