{"id":1578,"date":"2010-02-05T09:32:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-05T13:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/02\/05\/memo-to-women-dont-give-up-your-day-job\/"},"modified":"2010-02-05T09:32:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-05T13:32:00","slug":"memo-to-women-dont-give-up-your-day-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/02\/05\/memo-to-women-dont-give-up-your-day-job\/","title":{"rendered":"Memo to women: Don’t give up your day job"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been reading with something like amusement — and something like horror — excerpts of Lori Gottlieb’s new book. <\/p>\n

“Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough” is a manifesto arguing that uppity, snarky women should get over their pickiness and get themselves hitched.<\/p>\n

She describes this life plan as \u201ctaking the best available option and appreciating it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others have ripped Ms. Gottlieb’s basic premise, pointing out that educated, successful women are actually doing pretty well on the marriage front.<\/p>\n

They’re marrying later, but more of their marriages are lasting.<\/p>\n

My recoil from this book comes because it surfaces at the same time that an epic number of women who “settled” are now doing the walk of shame. <\/p>\n

Jenny Sanford, wife of the South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, is out with a tell-all about her marital experiences. And boy did she ever SETTLE.<\/p>\n

She writes that Gov. Sanford insisted on removing the “faithful”<\/a> part from their wedding vows.<\/p>\n

“In retrospect, I suppose I might have seen this as a sign that Mark wasn’t fully committed to me, and with the benefit of the knowledge I have about Mark now, I could point to this moment as a clear sign of things to come.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Meanwhile, Gayle Haggard is making the rou<\/a>nds, talking about her preacher husband Ted’s forays into gay prostitution and drug abuse.<\/p>\n

She now says his adultery was the “answer to our prayers,” which suggests that she’s taken the art of rationalization to a new level.<\/p>\n

Also slogging through the headlines is Elizabeth Edwards — now separated from her husband — who settled so hard for her cheating husband John that she nearly helped saddle the nation with him.<\/p>\n

More? Who can erase the harrowing image of Silda Spitzer standing next to Eliot at that brutal press conference when he admitted visiting a prostitute?<\/p>\n

And how about Hillary Rodham Clinton? The scoured look on her face when she realized the depths of her husband’s deceptions. <\/p>\n

The unifying theme behind all these women isn’t just that they “settled.” <\/p>\n

It’s that they all had strong, successful independent lives before grabbing their man’s coattails.<\/p>\n

The lesson here is that settling might be the right choice for some women, but at the end of the day…don’t give up your day job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been reading with something like amusement — and something like horror — excerpts of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1578"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}