Two stories have caught my attention in the past two days, and both deal with everyone’s favorite subject: dating! Or rather, I should say the stories are more about the lack of suitable mating options that has resulted from the intersection of two topics we blog about quite often on SM: 1) the growing new economies of India and China; and 2) the messed up sex ratio resulting from female foeticide and infanticide.
Yesterday, PRI’s Marketplace sent a reporter in to the heart of “Parent’s Matchmaker’s Corner” in Shanghai. The corner is basically a trading floor where worried Chinese parents gather to trade biodata on their late-twentysomething children, mostly without the knowledge of said children. The story was set in Shanghai but it might as well have been Delhi, as almost identical market forces are at work. Among the many great insights (some humorous) in the radio story (please listen) are the following:
1) Chinese A-list men date B-list women because they don’t want someone as smart as them. They want a trophy wife.
2) Many Chinese A-list men go abroad to seek their fortune, thus restricting supply.
3) Chinese A-list women get screwed because they are in high demand (since there is an overall shortage of women), but only have B and C-list men to choose from.
4) A-list women throw themselves into work and/or fool around waiting for an A-list man that might never materialize.
5) B and C-list men grow increasingly bitter and frustrated because all the B and C-list women have traded up and the A-list women only want them for their bods.
This chain of events is set into motion for two reasons: 1) there is a skewed sex ratio; and 2) in the “new” economies you have as many or more educated women as men. Again, everything above seems to apply to India as well. You’ll also note that in America reason #2 is already applicable, but what saves us from the same spiral is that we don’t perform sex selection.
Here is another similar story:
It was midnight here in Hanoi, or already 2 a.m. back in Seoul, South Korea. But after a five-hour flight on a recent Sunday, Kim Wan-su was driven straight from the airport to the Lucky Star karaoke bar here, where 23 young Vietnamese women seeking Korean husbands sat waiting in two dimly lighted rooms…More and more South Korean men are finding wives outside of South Korea, where a surplus of bachelors, a lack of marriageable Korean partners and the rising social status of women have combined to shrink the domestic market for the marriage-minded male. Bachelors in China, India and other Asian nations, where the traditional preference for sons has created a disproportionate number of men now fighting over a smaller pool of women, are facing the same problem…
After an initial setback — his first three choices found various reasons to decline his offer — Mr. Kim narrowed his field to a 22-year-old college student and an 18-year-old high school graduate.
“What’s your personality like?” Mr. Kim asked the college student.
“I’m an extrovert,” she said.
The 18-year-old asked why he wanted to marry a Vietnamese woman.
“I have two colleagues who married Vietnamese women,” he said, adding, “The women seem devoted and family-oriented.”
One Korean broker said the 22-year-old, who seemed bright and assertive, would adapt well to South Korea. Another suggested flipping a coin.
“Well, since I’m quiet, I’ll choose the extrovert,” Mr. Kim said finally, adding quickly, “Is it O.K. if I hold her hand now?”… [Link]
I’ve never taken an economics class in my life but the link between these “market forces” and deleterious effect it is having on the social fabric seems interesting to me here. There might be a Nobel Prize in economics for someone willing to tackle it. If you follow the logic you end up with a lot of really smart, un-married, bitter women, and not-so-smart young men who are angry at everyone (as all dateless men are…ummmmm…not that I would know). If these two contingents ever join forces it could mean the end for China and India. I exaggerate greatly, but I’d love to hear your thoughts 🙂
As for me, I’m more than ok being a trophy husband someday. As long as I find an A-list woman willing to trade down.
This reminds me of reading a woman’s blog where she lamented the fact that her Ivy League education was a liability in the dating scene. An A-list woman’s expectations go up; an A-list man’s expectations go down. While the constricted supply of women will make the future interesting – heavily improving the market value of the A-list woman – the attitudes that keep A-list women from being happy with B-list men and A-list men happy with B-list women will not change.
Are you sure you’re not talking about New York?
(Just kidding, sort of.)
Here’s my major sex-and-dating tip: Since, in points 1) to 5), there is nothing that distinguishes categries B and C, let’s combine them into one category. Phew! That was hard to say since I wasn’t brought up in an atmosphere where we talk about these topics freely.
We see this is our line of work all the time. Eventually, an email is sent out to everyone that goes like:
“We are sorry to inform you that Christina/Pam/Elizabeth/etc has decided to take an extended leave of absence to sort out some personal issues. She was a star worker who joined us right out of Havard/Yale/etc. In a matter of just 15 years she rose up the ranks and headed our North American Brokerage business. As one of the few female MD’s she is a role model to all our female employees. We wish her all the best for her future.”
What it really means is: Christina/Pam etc is in her late 30’s and has finally woken up to the fact that no man in the world wants to fuck her. She does have a million or two staked away which will feed her while she is sorting through the baldies and fat-asses who respond to her classifieds.
Marry young, fellow SM’ers, marry young. Money can be made anytime.
M. Nam
seems like china, india, and other asian countries are dealing with a problem that’s taken root here quite some time ago: what to do when the marriage equation gets thrown off? whether by educations, economic power, or demographics, societies have been built around the idea that women need men. now the women in those countries don’t need men in quite the same way… and there’s fewer of them to boot.
you’d think that would reverse some of the sex selection forces at work, but it doesn’t appear to be so. MSNBC reports that young women and girls are being kidnapped for marriage. in addition, populations with too many unmarried males are considered unstable (see same article) because of all the unchecked agression and anger. Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. Den Boer, authors of “Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population,” theorize that “low-status young adult men with little chance of forming families of their own are ‘much more prone to attempt to improve their situation through violent and criminal behavior in a strategy of coalitional aggression.'”
could be a serious problem for india, china, and other male-favoring countries.
Story of my life. ^__^
Though I can’t not pass on this — Abhi and Ennis, you’ve both recently alluded to your “unfortunate” single status. Unless you’re doing the boy-band thing and posing as perpetually available so all us SM regular readers can fantasize (“he’ll read one of my comments, and he’ll know we were meant to be together!”), well… long story short, where does a smart gal like me go to meet smart guys like you (who also like smart gals like me)? ^__^ Where do y’all, you know, congregate?
Do be do be do…
SEPIA DESTINY!
They’re still single because they congregate here, on the web.
(Just kidding. I love you. After all, it’s 1 am and where am I?)
Now I’m picturing the film — one of those slick Karan Johar ones, with cross-shots and fades between the man at his computer and the woman at hers, the camera panning out through the woman’s bedroom window and shooting across the distance to close-up on the man’s laptop screen…
“I feel my life is… incomplete,” the man writes.
The song would be called “E-Mail Soniye.” And the dancing part would be solved by the two sending pictures to each other, which would then come to life and start bhangra-ing… probably in the snow, somewhere.
Can’t promise you SepiaDestiny, but there will be another Chicago meetup in the near future if you’re in striking distance …
I am within striking distance of Chicago. I’ll also be in D.C. during the second week of March — isn’t the D.C. crowd due for a meetup as well? ^__^
I’m going to bed but I’ve got to say: the Mutiny sure gets interesting after 1am.
Asha’s Dad shows up a little tipsy and cussing like a sailor, Blue gets frisky , Atheist fangs get bared (and quickly resheathed), Tamasha’s somnambulating, and the bunker monkeys release post after post after post…
Mutiny After-Hours.
It’s a different energy. I like it.
But I gotta go sleep. Night-night.
Actually, I’m going to bed too. G’night, all. Unless you’re in India right now, and in that case… enjoy your lunch!
Is this really a skewed sex ratio problem? It exists in the west as well, but to a lesser degree. This is
a) a biological problem, if you want to have kids older men and younger women isn’t a problem but the opposite is b) Male upbringing, as somone who grew up in Scandinavia I’m shocked to see that most american men are a bunch of babies, and the asians are the worst of them all. They can’t cook, do the laundry or satisfy a woman. Mothers have spoiled them since birth and if you’re not an A-list man there is quite frankly no use of you.
Women used to marry “up” and men “down” more consistently in the US and UK too, till this generation. There was actually a review of a book about this at NYT that argued that as women’s careers have started to be taken more seriously, more marriages are among “equals” rather than the boss marrying secretary sort of marriage that was more standard a generation or two ago – and the argument was that this has actually hurt social mobility in the US as class boundaries weren’t crossed as much as before through sex and marriage. I’m not sure this is very convincing, though, most marriages have always been and will still be with relative social class “equals,” but the difference today, and eternally, I suppose, is that “A-list men” can choose both from A-list and all list women, while A-list women are unlikely to look “down,” Sex and the City’s Miranda notwithstanding.
Lady Astor once said: “I married beneath myself. All women do.”
I suppose a lot of men have similar delusions, only more like: “I married beneath myself. All men should.” ;-P
HAHA!! ‘smart’ people are so enamored of their own ‘smart’ness as a measure of their worth, they go out of their way to shout it out to all – ah – the world of the alpha-*male’s shouting “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?” to the objects of their desire. singletons of the world deserve the giant grand goat (3G) in the sky.
abhi,
“but what saves us from the same spiral is that we don’t perform sex selection.”
Are you INSANE? Have you ever seen who the U.S. INS admits for H1-Bs and the like?? It’s NOT 50-50 male-female. I’m not saying the sex selection is on purpose, but it happens through correlation with various other factors (willing to leave families and travel abroad alone).
abhi,
fyi – ‘insane’ is hyperbole, not a personal attack
But that “sex-selection” is self correcting because most of those dudes don’t find American-born wives. They have to go back or elsewhere to find a mate. Thus it doesn’t greatly impact the chain of events I list above.
In TEXAS! (deep in the heart of) 😉
Good one! I like how you link it to the end of India and China. Perhaps someone could let Bush know he should probably therefore not worry too much about them
Is it just me or are at least some men going through similar issues. I mean, over time after quite a hits (and misses and some errors), I have started getting convinced all the smart intellectual independent ladies are already taken. Most of the women I meet seem cool, and initially I am excited but after talking to them for sometime it’s usually the same old story – either they dont do much except shop and party or else they dont shop and party at all. A revelation – all the great women in the desi and ABD circles are either taken and/or married.
come to india. there’s intelligent women coming out of the bunghole.
Hmm, did I say I am unable to meet women or is it just something you wanted to read? Maybe it wont occur to you that courting every random lady might not be something everyone likes to do. Or maybe you dont see the differentiation between courting someone you want to court and courting someone for the sake of courting!
Hehe ardy i totally agree with ya. Though in india ive had more misses than hits..but recently ive met a kudi with a head on her shoulders that i can hold a long enough convo with
Mohinder Suresh,
Does she have a helix tattooed anywhere on her body? Any… special abilities?
P.S. Stop showing Sylar around.
Abhi, there’s sex selection happening in the U.S., too, just on a smaller level. Come over to the Bay – almost all the desi-language newspapers have ads for sex selection 😛
Honestly, I think A-list women intimidate men, especially desi men, especially in the U.S. And Jangiah is right – you can find any number of brilliant (and really attractive) women in India. I see 1st and 2nd gen men going back to India to find a wife way more often than I see desi women doing the same. Maybe it’s different expectations/assumptions about desis from the des, and in my opinion, oftentimes some really fucked gender politics. Either way, A-list women get screwed (not literally, unfortunately). This all reminds me of the Desi Dilemmas episode from last year 🙂
Wow, this topic is depressing!
Do not under estimate the power of the Sepia Mutiny Meetups. I’m not saying WHO, but I am just sayin’ it works. Just sayin’!
I totally agree with Camille…
Screw all this. I’m throwing in the proverbial dating towel and going to find my future Sugar Daddy on this site.
chunky,
“This reminds me of reading a woman’s blog where she lamented the fact that her Ivy League education was a liability in the dating scene. An A-list woman’s expectations go up; an A-list man’s expectations go down. While the constricted supply of women will make the future interesting – heavily improving the market value of the A-list woman – the attitudes that keep A-list women from being happy with B-list men and A-list men happy with B-list women will not change.”
I think that situation leads to scenes like the one in Desi O.C. where it’s the girl who asks the guy “what do you do.. where did you study..” The guy rarely cares about such things of the girl, and hence finds it a bit abominable that she should show interest in such metrics. Most guys tend to be vague in answering, especially so if they are highly successful. Answers like “Oh, finance” and “Boston” are frequent substitutions for “Managing Director pulling in $5 mil a year” and “Harvard”. Anyone who has to ask questions that dance around the unspoken central question “what class do you belong to” is either suffering from Asperger’s and has the inability to discern class from mannerisms or is so completely of a different a class that they don’t have a clue what to hone in on.
i agree with samjay and camille. the factors behind this phenomenon include a third : that [most] men are so socially conditioned that they cannot possibly deal with – gasp! – the possibility that their women can and are smarter than them. conversely, most women cannot think of marrying a man who doesn’t meet her standards in the categories that ‘count’ – education, money etc. the soundest [and saddest] advice one of my guy friends gave me was, ‘when you go on a date, 2 + 2 = 3.’ perpetual student that i am, my mom lamented that no man will want to marry me. no whining here, but the obvious origin of this ‘problem’ is the fact that both women and men are unable to break free from their social conditioning and just accept their partners’ qualities without qualifying them for their gender. frankly, i’d rather be with a lesser educated, lower-income man, than a rich, educated ass. or maybe i’m just bullshitting you all. who the hell knows….
Doesn’t that have to do, in part, with the fact that there are many more desi men in the country once you count FOBs, and then desi men way outnumber desi women? A number of my ABD friends and family have now dated and/or married fairly recent immigrants. Furthermore, although I don’t have numbers, anecdotally, many more of my desi female friends have married non-desis than my desi male friends.
I’m not saying that sexism doesn’t play a part, but even if all desi men were totally egalitarian, I think you’d still find that the supply of desi men would outstrip demand in the country (from both desi and non-desi women).
Camille,
“Wow, this topic is depressing!”
I believe SM is in a clandestine agreement with Big Pharma. The poverty-porn articles from India don’t help any. Won’t you try these happy pills shows you them from my palm, c’mon Camille, they’re good for you, let’s go see Mr. Happy Cloud dancing in the sky.
I think this has something to do with preconceived expectations and control.
In a general sort of way: US/UK women don’t go looking for husbands in India as much because they fear they will be expected to submit control of their lives. Similarly, Indian men hesitate to get married to women based in the US/UK because they are afraid these women will wrench control out of their hands.
Stereotypes, and the harm they can do!
As usual academia has something to say about this
The paper analyses to what extent the timing of the very first date of American adolescents in the 1960s correlated with their physical stature and cognitive ability. Using an event history approach, it was found that intelligence and a weight slightly above the average raised the odds of arranging a first rendezvous, whereas the effect of height was gender-specific. Tallness improved chances among boys, whereas girls whose height was slightly below the average had the highest odds. The fact that the estimated associations are remarkably similar to those observed in the
literature on fertility and wages suggests that these attributes are selection criteria in situations of social interaction already among adolescents.
and more
A normative theory on match-making that could be applied to the dating market is the algorithm developed by Gale & Shapley (1962): every boy proposes to his favourite girl who then evaluates all the proposals she received and refuses all proposals – if any – with the exception of that by the most suitable candidate to whom she says ‘maybe’. In the next stage, boys who have been rejected propose to the second girl on their list and so on, as long as there are still acceptable candidates. In the end, when no boy wants to propose to another girl anymore, girls accept the
proposal by the last candidate to whom they answered ‘maybe’ before. It can be shown that this algorithm, which is probably not at odds with anecdotal evidence, tends to favour the preferences of boys, even though in some situations girls may have an incentive to cheat in order to receive proposals from boys they like better and who would not have proposed to them otherwise (Bergstrom & Manning, 1983).
http://journals.cambridge.org/production/action/cjoGetFulltext?fulltextid=344259
Heres another one on gifts
http://www.jstor.org/view/10577408/ap050033/05a00060/0
Self-enhancing gifts delay female initiation of relationship dissolution.. and love-expressing gifts hasten male initiation of break up.
Well, then I hope it’s a really sexy goat.
Ennis, can you invite them all to the Chicago meetup???? *__^
I’d check Census on that Ennis- I’m pretty sure in the desis in the 18-35 range there are more women then men.
Really? I was referring to all desis, not ABDs alone. I would think that FOBs would skew male and that ABDs would be close to even, but perhaps I’m wrong.
what nonsense. If you are entrepreneur type or some one interested in getting a PHD and pursuing other research etc the older you are the harder it is. or simply put some one Just doesn\’t see Marriage and Babies as happiness. I dont ever want to raise a kid, and I\’ve found out its better to impregnate some one else\’s wife and let them take care of the kid. Ever wonder why Karan is a good name in the vogue now.
I believe you’re right on green angel. although yeah, this may not be true in all cases, but for the most part, I totally agree with you.
You, know, with fruitflies, this all works out. I think the situation with skewed sex-ratios and no change in values is getting scary in Asia.
bj
Plus if you GET impregnated and then divorced you’re royally screwed either way. We live in dangerous times.
I thought we were going to stop using the term FOBs? No? Was that just me?
Wow. A-list people, B-list. this is the most classist discussion i’ve ever encountered. and on a left leaning blog of all places. rush limbaugh never speaks like this.
hell is other people indeed. good luck with the social climbing.
RE: sic semper tyrannis
heheheh i havent had a chance to find out yet ;)…but when i do i will let u know.
Manju, these terms are quoted from the radio story. They are not terms that I made up. Besides, I think you’d consider anything left of Dick Cheney as “left-leaning.”
Any fool who marries down gets exactly what he deserves. Soul-sucking conversation, dumb progeny and never ending supply of Z grade Bollywood. I am of course referring to fictitious acquaintances of mine.
Yessir. I keeps it cool and collected even after 8 Bourbons.
LOL Shodan! I, err, tend to agree. At the risk of nitpicking, should we assume that “A-list” or “B-list” or questions of status in the marriage market are limited to intelligence? What about social class and looks, don’t they all combine in the person of the Desirable Candidate, and isn’t class the most important variable in the desi marriage market?
It seems that men in general are just more willing – and able – to cast a wider net for mates than women are, anywhere. Whether in terms of age, parts of the world, class, whatever. That’s a big factor in skewing the economics of mating.
Blue, You’d better come down to H-town, TX and then you’ll meet dream guys like Abhi (and me ^__^ )
Well, gender equality can be a bitch, innit? 😀
In any case, why are we NOT questioning the assumption that an A-list woman MUST have an A-list man? Isn’t that somewhat sexist (that a man must make the same order of money blah blah and a man’s worth is solely determined by his money)?
My point is that in a truly equal society, where women are equally successful as men (a great thing), women must also be as willing to date ‘down’ as men have for centuries. It’s just one of the facts of life to accept and swallow.
Inspite of all the amazing perspectives I get from feminist thought, this kinda BS is what put me off sometimes. When you have more rights (and are more empowered), you have more choices to make, and some of those choices may not be the most pleasant. Deal with it.