The Plight of Middle Aged Women

Written by my father, Michael, to a female columnist at the Arizona Daily Star:



You know, evolution answers everything. I realized that when I was pretending to be a lawyer but instead read books on physics, the historical Jesus, and evolution. Richard Dawkins.

I'm generally referring to your column on the woman at the meat company that wouldn't give her the deal unless she had a man. I was mad, too. But it is the way of the world, the way we were designed. And say as much as you want to contradict stereotypes, they are most always true. Men do eat meat. Women don't, at least not as much.

But that's not the point here. If you start with the premise that our genes made it this far because they were the ones that imbued us with wanting to survive and reproduce them, it all falls into place. Take your indignant meat eater, for example.

She says women without husbands have less status in this society. Untrue. Unattractive women have less status. And it is they who usually have husbands. Because their genes told them to. So to speak.

Men have milliions of sperm; women very few eggs. And those they have are precious. When they use one, i.e., get pregnant, they can't use another one for a long time, not to mention the time and care it takes for them to raise the child they get from such pairing. But men can be spreading sperm all that time with as many women who will have them, with little or no investment, particularly if they don't give a damn about the babies they may be producing. It is to their genetic benefit to impregnate as many women as they can. As to women, it is to their genetic benefit to find a man with resources (i.e, a hard worker, smart, or talented) and one who has a heart. As another prerequisite, she'd like one with good genetic markers, i.e., handsome. But that can't be the first requirement. Not with a little baby to take care of for at least a few years.

But men have fewer, or different, restrictions. They basicially just want to find someone who will have sex with them. There are funny experiments on other animals and how the male of the species will have sex with anything that even resembles a female, whether it's made of cardboard or not. But at best, men only want someone with good genetic markers, i.e., pretty. Because those indicate a fertile, healthy sex partner.

Now to specifics. You're pretty. No matter how else that statement affects you, as an insult, that you're also a person with talents and an IQ, that I'm a pig, you still like to hear it. Because, like it or not, it's the source of a woman's power in this society. Not that the other stuff doesn't count. My son is sick of the beautiful airheads that go to ASU, god love him. He wants someone who will challenge him intellectually and question him as an equal. And any sane man wants to marry a girl like that, to cover his back, to be in the same foxhole with him through life hopefully. But she has to be good-looking. Just the way the genes made us.

And this is why most men want younger women, they're more fertile. And why younger women like older guys: they've proven they can make money, acquire resources, take care of them and their offspring.

I'm in the UA library right now. I have no job because the Citizen won't hire me. But I'm reminded of two things. I have no interest in these beautiful girls who are my daughters' age. They look eleven to me. But Meghan says she gets hit on by old men like me all the time. Fuckers. But I have to admit I'm different. Me and my long-suffering friend Sam Daniels. I want a girl my age. Most men don't.

The other thing is a movie my then wife made me see called Romy and Michelle. On the way to the reunion they got into a fight over who was the cute one. Jesus. Back then I thought it would be just the other way around. But that's genes for you.

And you, Anne, have spent your life having men let you cut in line in front of them or cops giving you warnings instead of tickets. It goes with the territory, even though these guys have no expectation of having sex with you. That one even Dawkins can't figure out I bet.

But the woman with the meat. She either was never very pretty or she'd already have a guy and just laugh at the phone call instead of calling the paper, or she wasn't that good-looking now. But that doesn't mean it's not sad. She's being a mom to the kids that no doubt were abandoned by the asshole who had them. Maybe not, but probably. Men are assholes. I'm one; I should know. It's like being one of the nice vampires. You still have this urge to suck somebody's blood and you hate yourself for feeling that way.

I doubt you read this so I won't proofread. But I love your columns. Only ones in either paper that aren't just expanded public service announcements. -Mike Morrison