Maureen Dowd: Get the message?

By Sara Catania
Urgent message to readers from Maureen Dowd in “What’s a Modern Girl to Do?” via The New York Times Magazine, Oct 30:
Some men are intimidated by accomplished and successful women; Maureen Dowd is an accomplished and successful woman who intimidates men; Some women like to dress up in frilly, retro outfits and play hard to get; Maureen Dowd likes to dress up in fishnet stockings and snakeskin pumps and say sarcastic things; Some men don’t marry women who say sarcastic things; Maureen Dowd is not married; Some men like it when a very rich and successful actress/singer/superstar dresses up in a maid costume; Some of Maureen Dowd’s relatives have worked as maids; Some men marry significantly younger women who aren’t very bright; Maureen Dowd is very bright and not young and has been noticing a trend in which famous and powerful men seek out partners whose job it is to take care of them; It is not Maureen Dowd’s job to take care of men; Some actresses exercise by practicing pole dancing; Feminists are earnest and tedious and wear Birkenstocks; Some reporters at the New York Times agree with Maureen Dowd; Fish may not need bicycles, but fishnets complement a zebra-print bar stool nicely.

Urgent message number one to Maureen Dowd, via The New York Times Sunday Styles, Weddings/Celebrations, Oct. 30:
Some men are getting married to age-appropriate women who are educationally and professionally accomplished.
Examples: David Nathanson, 36, MBA Stanford, investment manager married Anne Pincus, 33, magna cum laude Amherst College, cum laude, Harvard Law School, chief counsel for the Asia-Pacific region for AC Neilson; Robert Carter, 43, design manager and master’s degree candidate in construction management married Elizabeth Bauza, 41, magna cum laude Georgetown University Law Center, senior associate at a New York-based law firm; Lee Akst, 32, summa cum laude Yale Medical School, fellow in otolaryngology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston married Jodi Wilkoff, 30, magna cum laude Northwestern University, partner in an educational consultancy in New York; Jeffrey Gettleman, 34, master of philosophy Oxford University, New York Times reporter, married Courtenay Morris, 32, University of Michigan Law School, assistant deputy public defender; Ronald Wilcox, 37, doctorate in business administration, Washington University in St. Louis, associate professor of business administration married Shannon Indoe, 32, doctorate in veterinary medicine, Cornell, biosafety specialist; Dejean Pantic, 40, M.B.A. University of Baltimore, senior accountant and financial analyst, married Kyle Bartlett, 33, Ph.D., music composition, University of Pennsylvania, composer and founder of a new-music ensemble. Adam Dixon, 28, cum laude Georgetown, vice president J.P. Morgan, to Rebecca Brock, 28, cum laude Vanderbilt, media buyer for media communications company.
Urgent message number two to Maureen Dowd, via The New York Times Sunday Styles, Oct. 30, page one below the fold:
Mary Gaitskill, a finalist for the National Book Award, writes stories and novels that, according to the article, explore “sexual abjection in squalid worlds from which there are few exits”; As a young woman she ran away from home and worked various jobs, including as a stripper; Gaitskill got deep into her writing and had looked forward to living out her days in solitude; At age 44 Gaitskill met a man (neither famous nor rich nor as accomplished as she) who liked her; After a brief while she decided she liked him too; They are together still; Mary Gaitskill seems content; Call Mary Gaitskill!