Is College A Poon Nirvana?

Readers have sent me this New York Beta Times article about the skewed sex ratio on college campuses. It turns out there is widespread discrimination against men in favor of admitting women to higher institutions of learning. If I were a knee-jerk liberal, this would be my go-to explanation. Better yet, if I were a culturally cocooned fruitcup leftie elitist of the sort who would write for the NYBTimes, I might explain the dearth of male participation in higher learning this way:

Women on gender-imbalanced campuses are paying a social price for success and, to a degree, are being victimized by men precisely because they have outperformed them, Professor Campbell said. In this way, some colleges mirror retirement communities, where women often find that the reward for outliving their husbands is competing with other widows for the attentions of the few surviving bachelors.

Get that? Women are victimized by men for outperforming them in college admissions. I feel manipulated by this media spin. Somebody call tha police!

The article itself is interesting not for its trenchant analysis, but for the money quotes by some of the coeds [reminder: sexual prime, age: 18 – 21, BMI: 17 – 23].

Jayne Dallas, a senior studying advertising who was seated across the table, grumbled that the population of male undergraduates was even smaller when you looked at it as a dating pool. “Out of that 40 percent [of men on campus], there are maybe 20 percent that we would consider, and out of those 20, 10 have girlfriends, so all the girls are fighting over that other 10 percent,” she said.

I think Ms. Dallas fucked up her math. Or she is really picky. I presume she meant to say 50% of that 40% of men, but confused half of 40 (citing 20%) for half of 40% as a percentage. In fact, she seems to be all over the place confusing percentages with absolute numbers. You can’t expect much from an advertising major. On the other hand, if she really did mean that only 20% of the men on campus would interest her, then the imbalanced sex ratio seems to be doing nothing to curb the natural inborn phenomenon of Hottie Hypergamy. (Non-hottie hypergamy usually resolves itself in buckets of ice cream or soul-crushing strings of one night stands. Do note that a woman’s right to choose ice cream takes precedence over her right to choose a beta.)

The very next sentence by the article’s author is this:

Needless to say, this puts guys in a position to play the field, and tends to mean that even the ones willing to make a commitment come with storied romantic histories. Rachel Sasser, a senior history major at the table, said that before she and her boyfriend started dating, he had “hooked up with a least five of my friends in my sorority — that I know of.”

Hm. Not sure how Alex Williams segued so effortlessly from Jayne Dallas confessing that despite the imbalanced sex ratio she still only finds 20% of the men attractive to “this puts guys in a position to play the field”. Correction Mr. (or Ms.?) Williams: This puts ALPHA MALES in a position to play the field. Betas continue chafing themselves to relief.

Thanks to simple laws of supply and demand, it is often the women who must assert themselves romantically or be left alone on Valentine’s Day, staring down a George Clooney movie over a half-empty pizza box.

“I was talking to a friend at a bar, and this girl just came up out of nowhere, grabbed him by the wrist, spun him around and took him out to the dance floor and started grinding,” said Kelly Lynch, a junior at North Carolina, recalling a recent experience.

This article is useless without a proper analysis of the types of men on campus who are getting blatantly propositioned by women. But the NYBTimes won’t touch that with a ten foot schlong, because it might mean peeking behind the frilly lace at what exactly drives female mating choice. Let me start off the discussion by suggesting that the “10% of guys” who are the recipients of bumpandgrindage are pretty much the same 10% of guys on college campuses without an imbalanced sex ratio. Oh sure, maybe a few extra dudes luck out from a favorable sex ratio, but by and large female hypergamy is as rock solid unalterable as is male attraction to slender hourglass figures and youthful beauty. Which is why you’ll see a bigger increase in the number of voluntarily single women choosing to sit out the dating game when the odds are against them than you would see an increase in the number of hotties slumming it with betas who would normally repulse them. This is not to say the sex ratio has no impact. It does. Just not as much as most would believe. The sex ratio’s biggest impact is how it changes courtship behavior (more women dressing sluttily; more men acting like cads), but courtship behavior is not the same as fucking. The endgame is still “Who is she fucking?”, and by my take, a favorable sex ratio for men doesn’t much change the calculus of women seeking the 10-20% top dogs for fucking. As I’ve written before:

Maxim #101: For most women, five minutes of alpha is worth five years of beta.

Thanks to the sex ratio, a lot of these college chicks choose to share the cock of a worthy insperminator rather than settle for a beta, no matter how numerically scarce beta penii happens to be. They don’t much like sharing, but they like receiving the tepid seed of a milquetoast puffboy even less.

Naturally, all systems have a breaking point. I would bet that when the sex ratio becomes radically skewed — let’s say 80% women 20% men — you would start to see some strange female behavior. Cats laying down with dogs, women laying down with betas. It’s probably happened before in human prehistory. One evo theory suggests the reason for Euro women’s exemplary beauty stems from a time in the distant past when large numbers of eligible paleobachelors were killed off hunting big prey, leaving the remaining men to choose from among the hordes of lonely women. These men likely chose the hottest babes to pass on their genes, ushering forth the big-eyed neotenous era we have today. As with all good things in life, beauty, too, was born in a crucible of boiling blood. Thanks, God!

Indeed, there are a fair number of Mr. Lonelyhearts on campus. “Even though there’s this huge imbalance between the sexes, it still doesn’t change the fact of guys sitting around, bemoaning their single status,” said Patrick Hooper, a Georgia senior. “It’s the same as high school, but the women are even more enchanting and beautiful.”

Wait a sec. Six women for every four men and yet there remain men who can’t get laid? How could this be? *scratching head, looking skyward and sticking tongue out a little* Nope, I just can’t figure out why there are male students sitting around lonely and single. For those men attending college who think a favorable sex ratio will spare you the need to learn game, I hope you can see the folly of that thinking. At best, a good sex ratio simply means more betas getting taunted by slutty women flashing scads of skin to catch the attention of the few alphas in the room.

“It causes girls to overanalyze everything — text messages, sideways glances, conversations,” said Margaret Cheatham Williams, a junior at North Carolina. “Girls will sit there with their friends for 15 minutes trying to figure out what punctuation to use in a text message.”

Girls have always overanalyzed the laconic conversations of alpha males. The sex ratio doesn’t change that. All it does is make their overanalyzing of the same men tinged with frantic desperation. Sorry betas, your conversations don’t get overanalyzed by women. They get disappeared; sucked into a void of whitenoise. You know, kinda like how you don’t remember a single word a fat chick said to you.

I haven’t written much about sex ratios because I don’t find it to be all that pertinent to a man’s daily life and his odds with women. I’ve noted that on a microcosmic scale a very bad sex ratio can mean a shitty night at the bar fending off armies of Bob Evans, and perhaps on a macro scale a skewed sex ratio will affect a host of social indicators. But for the day to day gaming of chicks, sex ratio isn’t going to have much impact one way or the other, unless it is severe and prolonged. If I had to guess, I’d say a sex ratio that favors men — as we have on a lot of college campuses these days — would mean the following:

• Women acting sluttier.
• Fat women ostracized more than ever.
• Betas taunted by a flesh machine churning out display product they cannot buy.
• Alphas living like harem kings.
• Alphas in general acting more caddish. More drinking, fighting, fornicating, and video gaming.
• Betas in general withdrawing more from social life to seek the sympathetic embrace of their computers or like-minded losers in love.
• Dating replaced by fucking (“hooking up” in the current nomenclature).
• Blowjobs and anal sex increasingly accepted as virginity-sparing sex substitutes.
• Later marriages.
• And finally, a tired rationalization hamster punching in overtime. The female mind has never been so besotted with challenges to her anti-slut barricade!

Bottom line: If you are an alpha male, this is a great time to be a student at State U. If you are a beta male, life sucks as usual. If you are an alpha female, things just got tougher. If you are a beta female, you have a glorious career in HR and a schnerdling husband to look forward to in between bed-pounding nights and tearful morning-afters with the sexily oblivious men who would forever haunt your memories and your heart.

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It’s A Trap!

Reader PA posed the following game-related scenario:

Here is a shit test I have no idea how to answer: when a woman makes a self-deprecating remark about her own looks. This happened to me twice in very recent past, and I just smiled and said nothing, but there probably is a better response.

Those weren’t young hotties you need to nuclear-neg, nor ugly women you kind of feel sorry for. Both were very attractive (for their age), older than me.

Not trying to game them or anything, just wanting to keep good relations (work, extended social life) and gina-tingle is how you keep good relations with women. Got a good response?

Ah, the classic passive-aggressive self-deprecation shit test. Be careful, men, this is an advanced form of female game that is subtle enough to trip up even the most battle-worn players. Answer this one wrong and you might be staring down the barrel of a pouty face for weeks to come.

Broadly speaking, there are five more or less effective ways to answer the self-deprecation shit test (SDST):

1. Validate her. “No, you don’t have crows’ feet. You have great skin. You’re gorgeous.”
2. Playfully invalidate her. “Oh yeah, your crows’ feet are HUGE. Like, you have the grand canyon of crows’ feet. A murder of crows has set up shop on your face, pooping and pecking all over you!”
3. Tangentially agree. “Oh, well, life can be tough.”
4. Ignore her. See: PA’s response. Abruptly changing the subject works too.
5. Reframe. “Have you always been this vain?”

The five responses above all have their pros and cons, but some are more pro than con. The validation tactic of number one should be avoided with any woman you have been dating/banging/betrothed to for less than six months. Validation is the easy peasy lemon squeezy cop-out for uncreative betas with fear in their hearts. Remember that the primary purpose of the female shit test is to suss out beta fear of loss. A woman wants to know that if she pushes too far, you would be willing to dump her in 30 seconds no looking back, with or without the heat coming around the corner. Sure, she may not want to be dumped, but she tingles when the threat of a dumping is real. So if you validate a woman her poofy head hamster will rationalize that you are merely placating her to avoid losing out on her golden pussy (or her social approval). This is seriously the way women think. I know, it’s crazy, but you work with what’s put before you. The only scenario in which I would counsel validation as an effective response to the SDST is when the man has established his alpha bonafides with the woman, and they have been together for longer than six months. It is not unusual for a longtime wife, let’s say, to begin harboring doubts about her continued attractiveness to her husband, especially if said husband has recently gotten a promotion and a new fresh-faced secretary to go along with it. In such cases, the SDST is a genuine cry for confidence-boosting flattery. Give it to her, and then followup with a playful buttsmack and a cocky “And let’s keep your ass that way”.

Option two, the playful invalidation, is perfect for women in their prime. The most sexually valuable women (age: 15 – 25, BMI 17 – 23) will toss out SDSTs for one reason only — to test your alpha mettle. They crave the non-standard response, and will light up if you exaggeratedly agree with them. A couple of caveats: One, don’t try this if you haven’t yet mastered the art of spite-free teasing. I’ve seen too many hard-up men look to teasing banter as the holy grail of game, only to fumble during the execution as their years of bitterness bubble to the surface, polluting their body language and subtext with the stink of beta. Two, don’t playfully invalidate a girl who is as bad as, or worse than, her self-deprecating remarks. If a fat chick says “I’m too fat”, then a teasing “Oh yeah, you’re HUGE like well-fed walrus” will crush her soul, no matter how obvious your eyeroll. Unless your intention is to crush her soul. Not that I would condone such a thing. *angel halo*

Option three, tangential agreement, is the courtier’s sophisticated form of withering contempt. Sometimes the deepest cuts are made with the blade sheathed. Just a glint of the ivory handle will deliver the message. If you want to hurt a woman playing these SDST games, this is the way to go. I wouldn’t advise option three if you are trying to get in her pants, unless you suspect she is a masochistic chick who craves the loving ministrations of a straight up asshole. See: Any lawyer chick.

Option four, ignoring her, is a safe bet when you are stuck for words or caught off guard. It won’t wow her, but more importantly it won’t make you sound beta. For most men, that would be an accomplishment. Remember, too, that abruptly changing the subject is a perfectly reasonable ploy to shake off the rattle of an SDST. Abrupt subject changes may strike the male ear as inherently illogical and nefarious, but the female ear hears the world differently. An abrupt subject change is just an excuse for more YAY DRAMA. In fact, it is the prerogative of the alpha male to change subjects. Who else is gonna do it?

Option five, the reframe, is, as most of you have guessed, my personal favorite. Not only does it expertly shake off an SDST bomb, but it puts her on the defensive and let’s her know you don’t approve of such typical female game-playing. A woman on the defensive, cowering before a stronger and more willful man, is a woman crouched in tingle mode, ready to give birth to a womb-shaking orgasm. Which brings me to…

Maxim #83: Awareness of a woman’s games is a precision-guided weapon in a man’s arsenal of seduction. Slyly revealing your knowledge of a woman’s obstructive game tactics is like catnip to her pussy.

Maxim #83 is so effective simply because the great majority of men are ignorant of women’s game-playing. Insinuating to a woman playing such games that you know the score will help you stand out from the crowd of sauseeege. Having the balls to call out a woman on her games instead of lamenting about it to buddies during the post-pickup debriefing will earn you the admiration of feminists and normal, healthy women alike.

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Fat Craps Give Michelle Obama Flak For Telling Uncomfortable Truth

Why is Michelle Obama catching flak for saying that she’s careful about what she feeds her kids?

“We went to our pediatrician all the time,” Obama said. “I thought my kids were perfect — they are and always will be — but he [the doctor] warned that he was concerned that something was getting off balance.”

“I didn’t see the changes. And that’s also part of the problem, or part of the challenge. It’s often hard to see changes in your own kids when you’re living with them day in and day out,” she added. “But we often simply don’t realize that those kids are our kids, and our kids could be in danger of becoming obese. We always think that only happens to someone else’s kid — and I was in that position.”

Obama said the doctor suggested she first look at her daughters’ body mass index (BMI). The minor changes she subsequently made in their daily habits, Obama said, made all the difference.

Sounds perfectly reasonable. What could possibly offend about a mother making sure her kids don’t pig out on bad food and bloat up into something hideous? Heh. Never underestimate the lengths to which fat shits will waddle away from the truth with their porky sausage fingers stuck in their ears.

Some charge that Obama’s comments may be perceived as a focus on weight and dieting, which sends the wrong message to the public. The first lady should be discussing behavioral change, not weight loss, said Laura Collins Lyster-Mensh, an eating disorder activist and executive director of Families Empowered and Supporting Treatment of Disorder (F.E.A.S.T.).

“We’ve confused health and weight in a way that’s very confusing for children and very confusing for parents,” Lyster-Mensh said. “When we speak publicly about putting our children on a diet, we start to get into weight stigma and confusing the message to families.”

Hey lardulous, weight stigma is a GOOD THING. In fact, many stigmas are good things when they encourage people to feel bad about their wretched conditions and do something to improve themselves. For instance, right now I’m stigmatizing you as a fat, smelly lesbian. Luckily, you can do something about the first two problems.

The focus on obesity, Lyster-Mensh said, turns this into an issue of appearances, which does not bode well for children, especially girls.

Point one: Appearance matters. It is not a social construct that can be willed or legislated away. Cruel human judgment of others based on appearance is an eternal reality of living in this dimension. You may not like it, but reality is never gonna bend to accommodate your tender feelings, so either get with the program and shape up or sink into a silo of snickers bars ticking down the useless remaining years of your fat, foreshortened life. Point two: Never take seriously a woman with a hyphenated multiplicity of surnames.

“There is simply no reason to be pushing children into weight reduction diets and that’s the message parents out there get,” Lyster-Mensh said. “Dieting is a gateway drug to eating disorders for those with a biological predisposition to eating disorders.”

It’s an impressive feat to pack so much self delusion into one quote, but this banshee has managed it. She sounds like the type of nutjob who thinks porn is a gateway drug to serial killing. One thing we do know for sure, though — crashing the buffet table is a gateway drug to ugly cottage cheesy thighs and neck rolls. If you’re going to do gateway drugs, at least stick with the drugs that not only make you feel good, but look good as well.

The president then spoke about what he and the first lady did to balance their daughters’ diet, and the impact “was so significant that the next time we visited our pediatrician he was amazed.”

Even then, critics panned the president for commenting on the weight of Sasha, who is now 8 years old.

A lot of the little Latino kids that live in DC are roly poly beachballs. I’ve seen toddlers who looked like they swallowed a keg. Starch bombs! Early intervention is always best.

Some say parents talking about their daughters’ weight can have a harmful impact on young girls.

What’s more harmful to young girls — a) telling them to watch what they eat so they don’t get fat, or b) sitting idly by as they do get fat? Of the two groups of girls (A and B) which group is more likely to marry well, have healthy children, and generally be happier about their lot in life?

“One of the things I’ve noticed is that a lot of girls develop an eating disorder because they don’t want criticism from their parents,” said Jeanne Sager, a reporter who blogs on parenting Web site babble.com, and who, herself, suffered from an eating disorder.

Congratulations, lawyers, you’ve been supplanted! “Reporters” are the new filth of the universe. Their rancid wrongheaded ideology has so warped their thinking that the institution of journalism is now neck deep in the choking pigshit of postmodern platitudes and perpetual lies.

“As a public figure, I think Mrs. Obama wanted people to be able to relate to her experiences and I’m sure she was unaware… that some of those messages could be taken in an unhealthy way,” Lyster-Mensh said. “I am not a critic of the Obamas’ approach to healthy behavior with their kids. I am concerned about weight-based language because it’s demonstrably, scientifically not helpful.”

“Weight-based language”. It just gets better and better. If you scold your kid for getting an F in algebra, is that “merit-based language”? What about breaking and entering? “Law-based language”? Pissing in your face? “Manners-based language”? Looks to me like Michelle Obama is being a good mother, and that’s what really chafes your dingelberried hippo hide.

Now, Michelle, hon, babe. You need to apply your good sense to your own super supple backside. That purple SOTU dress was not flattering. Double wide? 100% true.

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Plausible Deniability

Most horny women will never come right out and ask for sex from their lovers. You will not often hear “Let’s fuck NOW!” or “Do you want to bang?” from your girlfriend, or from many women you are dating throughout your lifetime. A few raunchy broads of questionable virtue will take the initiative dominatrix-style, and you will be pleased by their efforts, but all in all most normal men prefer the coyness of women who relinquish themselves to sex instead of demand it. Truth is, ladies, we find it adorable.

A woman’s need to feel physically desired is stronger than her need for food and shelter on the Vajlovian hierarchy of values. Thus, women tend to avoid outright asking for sex, even when explosively horny, because it sidesteps entirely their prime directive to passively arouse the male to action. But oh how their tingles itch for relief! And so women have devised a complicated system of sexual hints and innuendo that would make a French aristocrat blush with envy. I continue coming across numerous examples of just such scandalous whisperings from the women I meet in my life.

• The Human Meow. This is where a woman will make cute animal noises, similar to bird chirps or meows, to indicate her desire for sex. They will often sound like “Mmm? MmmMMMmmm?” with upturned eyebrows, as if waiting for you to clue in. Naturally, all systems women use to communicate their wish for sex must adhere to the first rule to maintain plausible deniability. So if you call a woman out on her human meows she will deny with the sort of ingenious excuses that so seamlessly blend reality and fantasy. To wit: “If you want sex baby, you could just say so instead of meowing like a hungry cat.” Her: “I was asking if you’d like to make us some green tea!”
• The Telepathic Sex Stare. Half-lidded, lips imperceptibly parted, you wonder if she’s doing an end run around your consciousness and making a direct connection with your hindbrain. Women rarely win staring contests, except when they want sex. Or when they’re accusing you of cheating.
• The Symbolic Suggestion. When a woman suggests “Let’s have the red wine instead of beer” or “Let’s move to the bedroom, it’s sunnier in there” or “Let’s light the candles to save electricity”, it means “Let’s have sex”. “Let’s flush the toilet after a leaving behind a giant deuce” does NOT mean “Let’s have sex”. Learned that the hard way.
• The Unprompted Shoe Removal. Here’s an important tip, gentlemen. When you have brought a girl back to your place or you have gone to hers, pay close attention to how soon she removes her shoes. If she takes hers off quickly upon settling in, you have good chance for intimacy.
• The “Wow, I could use a backrub” Bonk Over The Head. This one is obvious. When she starts rubbing her neck and complaining about her hard day at work, it is NOT your cue to give her an extended backrub that hurts your hands. It IS, however, your cue to give her a two second shoulder grasp, followed immediately by a cupping of her tits from behind. Note: Longtime married men should take into consideration that the wife would really prefer the backrub to sex. Sorry, hubbies. Shoulda listened to me.
• The Aunt Jemima Channeling. Pancakes are no fun without Aunt Jemima’s. “Do you know what would really go great with this new king-sized bed we just bought?” Don’t wait for an answer. She’s not giving it.
• The Snake Hiss. When you come up behind her to scratch her head or briefly rub her shoulder, she’ll inhale an exaggerated hissing sound of pleasure — SSSSSSssssssss — that means she wants more. A lot more.
• The Campbell’s Soup Song. Give your woman a kiss. After the kiss, if she’s still leaning forward with half-closed eyes and saying something like “Mm mm mm, that was good” you can translate that as “Mm mm mm, I need a deep sea drilling.”
• And finally, one of my personal favorites: The “I’m Horny” State of the Union Address. When a girl is superhorny and she just doesn’t have the patience for subtler means of communicating her arousal, she will sometimes stare blankly into space and announce, unceremoniously and without untoward inflection to no one in particular, “I’m horny”. She will say this with a hint of exasperation even, but she will never say it to you directly, even if you are standing one foot in front of her. In that case, she will turn her head 90 degrees to the left and declare her horniness to an invisible audience of psychotherapists. Under no circumstance should you respond “You are?” This will kill her horniness faster than a weeping beta with a microchub. Don’t grab her right away either. Wait a minute to grant her a plenury indulgence from her brazen suggestiveness, and then pounce. Skip foreplay. You’ll discover upon first grasp an angry swollen river of passion already swallowing your kayak whole.

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Is John Mayer Reading My Blog?

On January 21st, I wrote the following in this post:

Tiger Woods may not be a model citizen, but neither does he have an emotional or psychological problem. […] If Woods has a problem, it’s that he got married. Big mistake, chief.

On January 28th, John Mayer said the following in an interview with the UK paper The Independent:

“Tiger Woods’ problems come from him being married. The end,” Mayer said to the U.K.’s The Independent newspaper. “If Tiger Woods was single and he texted a girl and said ‘I wanna wear your ass like a hat’, why would that ever hit the news?”

There’s no date when the actual interview took place, but I bet John Mayer is a CH reader. Welcome aboard John. Good to see you heeding my advice and staying far away from marriage. I admit I laughed a little when you squeezed out the last drops of Jennifer Aniston’s precious years, and then played Lucy moving the football with the engagement ring. Stay single.

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One Key To Marital Success: Have Fewer Options

A dozen readers have emailed me these two articles about the state of American women and their marriage prospects. One even breathlessly asked if this “disproves the CH worldview”. Leaving aside for the moment the oddity of terming a keen grasp of reality as approximating something close to a “worldview”, I had a curious look at the articles. Both articles were written by women (*cough* lesbians *cough*) who don’t much like the recent cultural trend imploring American women to mind the wall and settle for Mr. Good Enough before it’s too late.

Want to Be Happily Married? Go to College.
New research shows women with degrees are luckier in love.

[…] “Marriage rates in the U.S. for college-educated women have risen enormously since the 1950s,” Stevenson said. “In 1950, less than three quarters of white college-educated women went on to marry by age 40 [compared with 90 percent of high-school graduates]. But today, 86 percent marry by age 40, compared with 88 percent of high-school grads.”

Another way of stating this is that by age 40, it continues to be the case in 2010 that more high school-educated women than college-educated women get married. The problem with this study’s conclusions are twofold. One, very few women were attending college in the 1950s. When a huge rate increase is experienced, as in the case of women attending college in the 1950s versus 2010, you run into problems with outlier bias. That small cohort of women going to college in 1950 may have been disproportionately lesbian or ugly or socially maladroit. Trendsetters normally have something odd about them which sets them apart from conventional society, as would be similarly the case for those trailblazing emo dudes who first stormed the vaj walls of formerly female-only colleges like Vassar.

Two, “marriage by age 40” is a poor metric. By age 40, most women’s shelf lives have expired. Thus, all you are measuring is a bunch of overeducated women who delayed marriage to men they truly desired and were forced to settle for a schlump once their looks began the cruel fade in earnest.

Of course, expectations have changed dramatically in the last half century. “In the 1950s, a lot of women thought they needed to marry right away,” Coontz said. “Real wages were rising so quickly that men in their 20s could afford to marry early. But they didn’t want a woman who was their equal; they wanted a woman who looked up to the man. Men needed and wanted someone who knew less.” In fact, she said, research published by sociologist Mirra Komarovsky in 1946 documented that 40 percent of college women admitted to playing dumb on dates. “These days, few women feel the need to play down their intelligence or achievements,” Coontz said.

Maybe I missed the goldmine of statistical inference, but where is the countervailing research showing that “these days, few women feel the need to play down their intelligence or achievements”? Some of these people write as if they haven’t been on a date in ten years. I can tell you that, yes, educated women continue to play down their educational credentials, if not directly then indirectly by avoiding talking about them in favor of interrogating the man about his credentials. This is the case even when their credentials and accomplishments pale in comparison to mine. It is the nature of women to want to look up to a stronger man.

The new research has more good news for college grads. Stevenson said the data indicate that modern college-educated women are more likely than other groups of women to be married at age 40, are less likely to divorce, and are more likely to describe their marriages as “happy” (no matter what their income) compared with other women.

Options means instability. At 40, a woman has fewer options in the mating market, and so she is less likely to be tempted to leave a marriage for a better prospect, or even a different prospect. It is no surprise then, that divorce rates are lower for couples who got married later in life. If you want marital success (I hesitate to call it happiness) then the key is to limit your options. The human rationalization hamster, punch drunk on fermented sour grapes, will then rev up and provide all the excuses you need for maintaining the illusion of marital accord. It’s funny how quickly a lack of choice can render a less than stellar life situation immediately and palpably bearable. “Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be”.

The marriages of well-educated women tend to be more stable because the brides are usually older as well as wiser, Stevenson said.

And uglier.

“When a man with only a high school degree marries by age 20, there’s a 49 percent chance that he will be divorced within 10 years,” she said. “Compare that with the man who gets married in his mid-30s who has a college degree. Ninety percent will still be married 10 years later.”

Time for a game-approved reframe! “When a man with only a high school degree marries a coed hottie by age 20, there’s a 49 percent chance that he will be divorced within ten years, because his sperm and her eggs are itching to dive back into the sampler platter before their windows of opportunity close. Compare that with the college-educated man who gets married in his mid-30s to a mangy cougar on the prowl. Ninety percent will still be married ten years later, because no one else will have them.”

See how illuminating the social sciences can be?

College-educated couples are also more likely to marry for companionship and love and compatibility rather than for financial security.

Translation: College-educated women who delay marriage no longer bring the goods to the table to snag an alpha suitor. College-educated men who marry one of these older college-educated women for lack of options have willed themselves to believe compatibility is an acceptable substitute for hot and sexy babealicious looks.

“For women, financial stability used to be the most important reason for marriage,” she said. “Today, educated women are a lot less concerned about how much their husband earns,” she said, and more interested in whether “he is willing to share child care and housework.”

Keep telling yourself that, sister. To all the men reading this: For the unholy love of the great biomechanical machine in the sky, do not ever allow yourself to listen to women and become a kitchen bitch. That’s a one way ticket to marital oblivion.

Over the last half century, more women and men have been putting off marriage, and the group of women who have never been married at age 40 has grown over time.

This to me seems the most relevant factor in discussions of marriage and divorce rates.

But even among this group, Stevenson said, college grads who want to get married eventually have an advantage because they are  “twice as likely to marry in the next 10 years” as unmarried 40-year-olds with just a high-school degree.

If a beta chump is forced to settle for a past-prime 40 year old woman, it makes sense he would at least find an employed woman who isn’t going to suck him dry with her paint huffing habit. And let’s face it, most of the women in the “unmarried 40-year-old with just a high school degree” group are likely single moms towing around a broodclan of bratty snotnosed ingrates. College-educated spinsters at least have had the decency to refrain from blasting out their wombs with the multiple spawn of past lovers and foisting the product on the schmoes she’s resigned herself to dating.

The data also point to significant racial differences. While white women with college degrees are slightly less likely to marry than their less-educated sisters, a different scenario emerges among African-American women. Today, 70 percent of black college-educated women marry by age 40, compared with 53 percent of those who never finished high school. In the 1950s, black college-educated women were much less likely to marry than those with less education. “What all this tells me is that our perceptions lag behind the reality of our time,” Stevenson said. “College-educated women have been closing the gap very steadily.”

Gee, funny that they left this part out until the very end of the article. So college-educated white women — you know, the type of woman who reads articles in Slate and Newsweek — are less likely to marry than uneducated white women, and that the biggest reason for the change in overall marriage rates of college-educated women is the rapid increase in marital rates of educated black women. I think there’s a story here.

So if you’re looking for another reason to encourage a young woman to get her college degree, add this one to the list: chances are, you’ll be luckier in love.

Not quite, unless by “luckier in love” she means “luckier despite love”.

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The Hurt Locker Vs. Avatar

Perceptive readers should be able to figure out which of these two movies I would give a Best Picture Oscar to. It would be a sweet jab in Cameron’s eye if his ex-wife won for her much better movie Hurt Locker. Avatard, despite its billion dollar plus haul, is a typical bloated CGI-fest with stilted crappy dialogue, a cliched plot, 2D acting, and a stale retread late 60s noble savage ideology masking a wish fulfillment for the world to turn into dinner parties featuring Sidney Poitier as the guest of honor. The Hurt Locker, by contrast, cost a lot less to make and was infinitely more gripping. I wonder if Cameron could see the irony in making a technologically wiz-bang movie that extolled the virtue of living nobly amongst the roots of a giant tree.

Ways that Avatar sucked:

1. $500 million to make and you couldn’t find a decent writer? Fo real? Throw me a few thou and I’ll spice up that dialogue so fast it’ll have moms covering their children’s ears and Roger Ebert jizzing in his pants with giddy excitement. Cameron has said he didn’t want to “alienate” his audience with tricky intellectual dialogue. If he’s right, then that says nothing good about the taste of the modern movie-going audience. We are morphing into a land of lowest common denominator retards. Hollywood’s current mission to make blockbusters as accessible as possible to all the riff raff across the globe isn’t helping matters either. Perhaps a little paleocon isolationism would do wonders for Hollywood’s artistic quality. If he’s wrong, then it says something about James Cameron — namely, that as a true blue nerd, he has a tin ear for good writing and doesn’t much give a shit either. Who could blame him when people are throwing money at his dreck?
2. The “white man bad, white American military man badder” theme has been done to death, Cameron old boy. It’s not any more ingenious or convincing when told through the use of computer generated blue faces. Have you looked in a mirror lately? When you do, do you get depressed that you were even born? Guilt is such a useless emotion, but it’s downright caustic when the guiltridden attempt to foist their purile emotions onto everyone else.
3. The supposed visual and creative brilliance of the N’avi and their home planet is overblown. The creatures are touched up extras from Jurassic Park and the airborn islands are straight outta various sci-fi lore and Dungeons and Dragons. The plants are neon. Yay. A great sign that a visual artist is creatively bankrupt is when he starts slapping on extra legs to all his creatures.
4. Cameron loves the hyperrealism of his expensive CGI, so why can’t he see that there is no way in hell a bunch of half naked warriors riding flesh and blood winged creatures armed with bows and arows are going to defeat heavily armored gunships? I like an underdog story as much as the next guy, but at least throw a bone to those of us who are working hard to suspend our disbelief.
5. People in the SWPL audience for this movie actually clapped appreciatively after the “preemptively fight terror with terror” line was delivered by the scarfaced badguy sergeant — quite possibly the stupidest and lamest line of dialogue I have heard in a movie since “I’m king of the world!”.

So why is Avatar making so much money? Well, it isn’t all bad. Visually, it is a sight. The CGI is such that I was able to enjoy the world onscreen without getting pulled out of it by any obvious-looking flaws in the rendering. The technology is now advanced enough to avoid the uncanny valley. The pacing and editing are good. Cameron, if nothing else, has a solid feel for action and storytelling, no matter how bad the source material. This is the guy who after all gave the world one of the greatest movies of all time — Terminator. (First of the series, only.) The slasher flic cum industrial atmosphere in Terminator was perfection.

You can’t discount marketing hype either. Avatar was marketed to death and that’s sometimes all it takes to get the money machine rolling for a subpar movie that otherwise might not have made that much. It’s similar to the game concept of preselection. A bunch of dudes hear about how great this movie is going to be, and they want to ride. Although from what I understand, adjusted for inflation Avatar’s box office is not as impressive as it sounds.

So here’s to Oscar success for The Hurt Locker and District 9, two movies superior in almost every way to Avatar.

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