Voices
media circus, and several weeks
after one wisely timed repeat performance in a Wall Street Journal
op-ed last month, Patton has returned with a full-length book version of her original advice, Marry
Smart: Advice for Finding the One.
The 11-month turnaround suggests
a rush to capitalize on her brush
with the limelight, and indeed the
quality of the book does seem as
slapdash as could be expected.
Of course, we could have
hoped that Patton’s opus, when
it emerged, would be less repetitive, more polished, and less replete with awkward logical fallacies. My boyfriend, a state school
grad, writes text messages more
finely crafted and coherent than
her latest admonition to seek out
husbands with Ivy League degrees.
But it’s not the clunky prose or the
endless redundancies that doomed
the book from the beginning, and
even a fine-tuned version would
have only succeeded in putting
a prettier face on her flawed advice. The real problem was trying
to turn one page of clichéd sexist
tropes and ugly elitism disguised
as advice into 200+ pages (238,
if we’re counting) of constructive
tips for young women today.
I’m right in the target audience
CLAIRE
FALLON
HUFFINGTON
03.16-23.14
for Susan Patton’s advice. I’m 25,
an alumna of her cherished Princeton, and still not married. During
my single years in New York City,
I spent considerably more time
working and considering my career options than dating or angling
to meet new men. Patton clearly
tries to preemptively extinguish
criticism about the sexist roots of
her advice by repeatedly assuring us that her advice is only for
Women, do we really
want to marry the kind of
guys who will only commit
to a woman so they can
finally have sex with her?”
women who want to have children
and “something resembling a traditional marriage.” Well, I want
both — surprise, I’ll admit that despite having been brainwashed by
feminists! — so... did I find Marry
Smart to be just the no-nonsense
straight talk that I needed to
achieve my true dreams of LeaveIt-to-Beaver-style domestic bliss?
Well, if you define “straight
talk” as “hideous sexist stereotypes that were outdated 20
years ago,” then sure. But I can’t