2.08.2010

New York Times: "On College Campuses, a Shortage of Men"

This article is unbelievable. Not the premise, but the way it was written.

The idea of this New York Times piece is that many universities have an overwhelming female majority. OK, sure. It's focused around UNC Chapel Hill, which is about a 60/40 ratio women to men. Got it. 

The idea of the article is that it's essentially slim pickens for girls as many guys are already taken or "aren't datable." It also says that guys get better pick of girls because the girls have less to choose from. I can get behind that. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have a prayer at my girlfriend if it wasn't for her lack of choice. (She would disagree, but that's just her being nice....)

Though I can't really disagree with the premise, some of the lines in this article really bother me. 

Like this one: 

As for a man’s cheating, “that’s a thing that girls let slide, because you have to,” said Emily Kennard, a junior at North Carolina. “If you don’t let it slide, you don’t have a boyfriend.”

Um, excuse me? You've got bigger problems than a lack of boys at your school if you say something like that. 

But that one the writer can at least contribute to a dumb-girl quote. Not this one. 

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. 

That's the writer talking. He doesn't attribute it to anyone. That's just insulting. 

Read the full article, because it's well worth it. While the stats and base ideas are right, everything else in this story is just completely different from my experience at Carolina and, I would argue, different than the experience of my female friends at Carolina. Sure, if you limit your search to fraternities, sororities and their favorite hangouts (Pantana Bobs and Deep End, where the two pictures were taken) you're going to get answers like that. 

But talk to the intelligent girls who don't feel the need to look like a prostitute to get a guy's attention and the reasonably competent men who don't go sleeping around the sorority houses and you'll get a totally different picture. 

Posted via web from Preposterous

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I do disagree, completely! And I'm not being nice, it's the truth. :)