Maybe it's the NYC bubble, maybe it's because we work at a young start-up comprised mostly of powerful, progressive women, or maybe it's just our natural optimism, but we were really, truly confused when we read this article on Red & Black, an independent student newspaper from the University of Georgia. The author Amber Estes gives readers a step-by-step guide to attaining the one "thing that is most succesful in securing our futures." A good education? A sense of self-worth? Valuable skills applicable to today's job market? No, it's your MRS. Degree (and she literally calls it that). Estes recommends that girls hop to it because the "clock is ticking" and "a Southern belle is nothing but a pretty face and pearls without a man to eat her cooking and appreciate her cleaning."
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Now, as commenters have pointed out, Estes' article might be satire. Her previous articles deal with finding yourself after college and the importance of academics, but we shared this link around our office with utterances of "...she doesn't...does she?" The problem with Estes' piece, besides the step-by-step, four-year plan to find a man at all costs isn't that it is grossly insulting (it is), but satire is meant to poke fun at a stereotype or conception in an obvious way, and, sadly Estes' attempt fails. The op-ed employs a convincing use of language like "uggos" (to describe who ladies shouldn't be hanging with) and statements like "...You want him to see joint bank accounts in your future, not a joint cab ride home to his place," making the clincher of the piece an overused assumption that girls want marriage over ANYTHING else. Of course, imagining a guy writing this to another male student is literally preposterous; no one has called the male right to education into question for years. There is no humor here — just something that feels degrading and anti-female and with the sad assertion that dudes are just bank accounts, which is anti-male, too.
Bottom line is: If satire was Estes' intention, there is certainly nothing funny about the idea that gals are just around to, "Bake for his frat brothers, encourage him to do well on his tests, and impress his momma like it’s the last round of recruitment." In fact, there is nothing funny about this tired depiction of Southern ladies at all ... but that's just our opinion. (Red & Black)
Photo: Courtesy of Red & Black
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