All over the greater diaspora, Aunties bemoan that desi children are picky. How will they ever be satisfied? How will they ever settle down and start popping out the requisite grandkids?
Aunties can sleep better at night now that SCIENCE is on the job. Examining peoples’ behavior in online dating settings (which is equivalent to looking at biodata), they’ve noticed a few clear patterns:
Men are easy – they are generally interested in hotness above all. 
Women are choosier, but it turns out their preferences are fungible. This is good news for aunties because it gives them a metric with which to translate different suitor’s attributes to a common scale, allowing them to rank apples and oranges. They can tell, for example, whether an average woman (in this study) is likely to prefer the not quite as handsome, shorter i-banker or the more gorgeous, slightly taller, high school English teacher.
What is this common scale? Money. According to these researchers, women will forgive men’s flaws if (gasp) they earn more.
Consider looks. A guy can compensate for ordinary looks with more moola, which tells us what he has to reveal in his biodata if he wants to be a playa:
Suppose you’re an ordinary-looking guy whose online picture is ranked around the median in attractiveness… And suppose you’d like to be as successful with women as a guy whose picture is ranked in the top tenth. Then you’d need to make $143,000 more than him. If your picture is ranked in the bottom tenth, you’d need to make $186,000 more than him. [Link]
Cash also acts like elevator shoes for our shorter brothers:
… a 5-foot-0 guy would need to make $325,000 more than a 6-foot-0 man to be as successful in the online dating market. [Link]
Race matters too. Generally speaking, men were more willing to date somebody of a different race than women, with the exception of Asian women who preferred White men over others. (3/4ths of Asian-white marriages have Asian women and white men [Link] )
For equal success with an Asian woman, an African-American needs no additional income; a white man needs $24,000 less than average; a Hispanic man needs $28,000 more than average. [Link]
It’s not clear whether brown women act like their other Asian counterparts – any thoughts?
Lastly, if you want to get around these sorts of hurdles, skip the biodata and move straight to cha:
… people who are terribly picky in choosing partners online will relax their standards if they spend just three or minutes talking to someone at a speed dating session. [Link]
There you go. Now that science has helped Aunties, maybe it will come up for a way for the rest of us to be able to evade them. Oh yeah, it’s called caller ID 
In case you’re interested, here is the academic paper in question
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Related posts: Speed kills (part 1), Speed kills (part 2)
leaving a country to start off fresh with little money and having faith in her husband to make thing’s all right, while sticking by him through all of the BS.
Not to be cynical, but what other choice did women of that generation really have? If women today are less willing to do these things, it’s partly because they do have alternatives available to them.
I wonder: does “anything” include feigning homosexuality, as US states finally start to extend civil rights to gay couples?
Because what a friggin awesome sitcom/awkward romantic comedy that would make…
Was it this blog that first pointed out “Angry Asian Man” to me? There is a very explicit de-sexualization of the Asian male in the American media. Asian-Indian’s dont suffer from it as much but for everyone east of India, its very much true.
I’m sorry but I laughed out loud when I read this. What does this mean exactly? WHO doesn’t “make women” like they used to? Weren’t we raised by these women who knew how to behave “like women should?”
What is the SATC attitude? To be able to financially support yourself and not want to get married right away? Is that wrong? The show is juvenile but don’t skew what it’s about.
Damn! I have to deal with the kids for a minute and look what happens! Beware the Amazons:
No, seriously though (since you asked)… I tend to like men who love their jobs, who are happy, creative, intense and tall (sorry, can’t help it – and no one would have believed me if I didn’t have something superficial in there, right?). I don’t know about other women, or comparing height / handsomeness / salary. Money has never been a factor for me, and it’s not because I make bank, either.
Can I throw it out there that chemistry is a huge factor? A guy might look great on paper, to your family, and in photos, but if there’s no chemistry, there’s nothing.
Neal, I don’t know about this in the matter of citizenship, but I know of two guys who were considering pretending that they are in a relationship to get cheap family housing from my university. Don’t know if they followed through with that. Also know some people (desi and non-desi) who were happy to pretend to be in a heterosexual relationship to get family housing, but balked at the idea of pretending to be in a homosexual relationship.
In defense of “Sex and the City”, the show does eventually require the characters to make tough choices, and not just about shoes, either!
One of the characters, for example, marries a man who makes much less money than she does, and moves to Brooklyn with him, where she helps him care for his ailing mother. Another characters faces miscarriage and childlessness, and a third has cancer.
I find Segolene Royal rather attractive.
Are married people allowed to post on this thread?:-)
In the online dating world even below average-looking women need to set standards incredibly high to avoid being inundated with messages from every guy who stumbles upon her profile. Hence, when the woman who seeks a 6’5 blue-eyed investment banker on match.com is relegated to something more human like speed-dating, the chances for guys like me are much higher.
HurryDate et al are self-selecting and highly unrealistic models for what actually goes on in real life. They went with education as a proxy for intelligent, because they couldn’t use the third party raters to sort profiles by humor or wit, but just because you haven’t built a sensor for something doesn’t mean it’s not an important factor in your experiment. I’d like to see an income versus height study that controls for other factors, like overlapping professional interest or education.
Exactly why this would make such a great film. Unwilling ABCD gay guy reluctantly agrees to be set up by an Aunty who knows a very nice prospect just arrived from India. He finds an ambitious young straight man who sadly bombed his entrance exam because he had to tend to his aged grandmother, but is willing to do whatever it takes to make it in Amreeka. There’s the inevitable love triangle between the American dude, the citizenship-seeker, and a pretty young Indian woman he knew back home (the gay American-born dude sticks with this since arranged marriages are Completely Irresistible to NRIs in Hindi movies).
The movie could be called “Suitable Boy”. I mean it’s been done to death in the States, but the, uhm, “unique” Bollywood dance numbers would be worth the price of admission alone.
@neale and kurma:
and will we have the wet sari song in desh or pardesh? once we resolve this, the movie is ready to be made.
oops, sorry neal with no e.
As a non-Desi male, I have perused many online-dating sites and I have noticed that the overwhelming majority of women explicitly indicate that they don’t want to date or meet Indian/East-Indian/South Asian men. From Yahoo personals to Interracial.com, there is a serious aversion towards East-Indians. At first I thought perhaps it was due to the confusion with Indians and Arabs/Muslims, but I came across women who would be willing to date Middle-Eastern/Arab men and even East-Asian men, but invariably no love for Indians. Perhaps it’s has to do with a combination of so many desperate males from India(literally stationed in India not diaspora) that barrage women with messages of love and looking for green-card status and/or the crippling pressures(having to live with your in-laws) and standards Indian males face from their families and how difficult it is for any woman, let alone a non-Indian woman, to enter into that union. Because Indians tend to have everything else, economic and educational success.
for #5… this is post #65…we have 1hr 41 mins to post 35 more comments.
I don’t know if there have been any empirical surveys on this, but I’m willing to bet that Indians (esp. in the Desh, but also some outside it) look at online dating in a very different way than Westerners. How many Americans search OkCupid or Match.com or whatever looking for a probable, suitable marriage partner?
Wait I don’t know about OKCupid but I’ve lost track of how many married or seriously dating people I know that met on Match.com and went on it to specifically look for a LTR. Are you implying thats not the case?
sriram (#5) and i have a bet.. since i’ve accepted the challenge..
we need more than 100 (for me to win).. then he owes me firehook bakery when i visit dc.. or i owe him the flying biscuit in atl..
right mr. vegas?
and i think rupa said it best..
Wow Robert, looks like you’ve done alot of forensic trawling and research!
Just stopping in for a second – I’ve appended a link to the research paper in question. It’s a heavy econ geek piece, so it’s not for everybody, but I wanted the original source material to be available just in case people had questions about where it came from.
p.s. Sriram, I don’t see it. I think we’re going to fall short 😉
Maybe they never will? We all have a little hunter-gatherer inside us I reckon.
Gotta try that next time I go out.
“Do you have a little hunter-gatherer in you? Would you like to?”
Don’t y’all know what a gentlemen’s bet is? That said, dearest Pea, Firehook is on me the next time you come up, regardless.
oh come on now.. we have 4.5 more hours 🙂 i think we can do it..
this is why sriram is a true rockstar.
I think everything boils down this.
By the way, I am amazed at how much people have been largely in agreement here. Most of you seem to think that
(a) Men and women look for very different things (b) Women are pickier than men (c) Their partner’s earning potential is more important to women than to men (d) That money makes up for perceived deficiencies in other areas where women might have preferences.
AmorAurum Vincit Omnia?I meant to say “boils down to this”
Nice =/ It’s guys who think like you that make it so difficult for Indians girls to find down-to-earth nice guys who don’t harbor a pre-conceived notion about “Indian American girls”
I’m actually surprised by the women on here who agree that girls are more interested in a guy with regards to how much money he makes. For me it’s not the money–but the ambition and drive that’s attractive. A guy could be pulling in $30,000 a year but if he’s got passion behind the work he does–that’s whats HOT.
For me it’s not the money–but the ambition and drive that’s attractive.
That’s why I said women are attracted to success. Ambition and drive generally equate to a potential for success.
Ennis wrote:
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blockquote>By the way, I am amazed at how much people have been largely in agreement here. Most of you seem to think that (b) Women are pickier than men
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blockquote>
I disagree with this. I think men are just as picky–they’re just picky about the physical attributes.
You know, I always listen to women go on about how men are so superficial, because we prefer very very attractive stereotypically attractive ladies over a less conventionally sexy woman who has ‘depth’, ‘intellect’, and ‘personality’. So what does that make women who prefer an average looking dolt with money to a smart guy who struggles for cash? Seven times out of ten, faced with the choice, girls go for the rich dolt.
The great taboo of this debate — women are as superficial as men. Except it’s greenbacks, not barebacks and bare backsides, that they’re superficial for.
Now ladies, I await your arrows to block out the sun, but I shall fight you in the shade.
Judging from the number of friends I have that met their husband/long-term significant other through those portals, quite a bit I’d guess.
Success as in.. financial success?
Success as in.. financial success?
There’s another kind? 😉
Jokes aside, however…doesn’t success of a different sort eventually lead to financial success in some way?
We are living in a material world, and I am a material girl…
I disagree. It’s more about a man being good with what he’s got, be it money and/or size.
I agree with hema’s and rupa’s comments. One of my cousin’s running a marriage buraeu in India for many years and here are some of his observations on the latest trend in his business. Some of it was surprising to me, especially the last point. – The number of eligigle girls for marriage is relatively a lot less than what it used to be, most probably becuase of lots of abortions of female fetuses in the late 70’s and early 80s. – There’s been a tremendous change in the amount of say a girl gets in the match making process. Lot of families are now “listening” to what the girl has to say. – Many of the younger women in major indian cities are getting jobs with decent pay, thanks to the outsourcing phenomenon. So really the “provider” criteria isn’t as important anymore. – Lots of parents supposedly like the fact that the “majority” of the girl’s “salary” is coming back to the house, so they are in no immediate hurry to get the girl married off and are holding off the marriage plans until much later.
Ha! Do you think that good high school teachers get endorsement contracts? I’d love to be on a Wheaties box! Oooh, or a sneaker contract!
Sorry for the snark Hema, but there are plenty of professions where excellence has little to do with pay. A brilliant high school chemistry teacher gets a fraction of what a really stupid and incompetent ibanker makes.
Look, there are women writing Scott Peterson to this very DAY talking about “I’m glad you got rid of that Lacey bitch, so we can be together!”
Women are no more sensible or intuitive in choosing mates, as are men sensible in choosing which potential mate to pursue. Whether it’s money vs ambition vs success vs whatever the hell else, yall screw up just as much, if not more.
HMF, do you watch too much local evening news?
Sorry for the snark Hema, but there are plenty of professions where excellence has little to do with pay.
I guess I see that differently. I see the ability to hold down a job with a decent paycheck as “success”, even “financial success.” IMO, all success ultimately leads to some form of financial success, if only because that is how success is quantified in this world. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know too many excellent professionals who stay unemployed for long periods of time (well, unless they want to, of course).
If women only equated success with having serious bank, then a lot more of us would be chasing vapid but generationally wealthy guys, instead of the doctors, i-bankers, teachers, and other guys with “personality.”
And for all my talk of women being attracted to success, I don’t think success alone makes up for various other shortcomings. I mean, what would be the use of a guy who makes $500K a year, but can’t carry on a conversation for more than 15 minutes?
I was paraphrasing the Scott Peterson suitor monologue, but my point is, it’s very irksome when women act as if they’re more erudite about choosing who they’re with.
it’s very irksome when women act as if they’re more erudite about choosing who they’re with.
I already said (in #42) that I thought it had to do with genetics, and not with erudition. This isn’t about women being “smarter” about relationships. It’s about women being attracted to something fundamentally different than what men are attracted to.
I am only 23 and my sample dating size is really small (2, to be precise). Does my opinion count?
Very rarely do I make such snide references to the deceased, but ask
I’m not sure I’d so quickly lump what one desires in a significant other into the category of superficialities. If by the notion that women who seek someone who is successful or has potential for success and makes a decent living are superficial logic would say that the whole arranged marriage system is superficial because it’s completely built on need and provide basis.
If you are talking about someone who would only go for a man who makes $500K+ and not consider a man making $100K I’d say that falls into superficiality but wanting a man who makes as much money as me or relatively more is not superficial it’s just smart and thinking ahead because chances are strong that the parent who chooses to stay at home and raise kids would be me.
So from a purely evolutionary point of view, we’re basically looking for incubators, and yall are looking for someone to provide the best conditions for incubation?
I’m in agreement, BUT, when the word “superficial” gets thrown around, the next logical step is “not as smart” – If you agree that women are just as poor at making those decisions as men are, then we’re good to go.
I dunno, it seems more like this study is saying it’s about women being attracted to about the same things men are or, when physical attractiveness is lacking, “success”. Isn’t it?
So from a purely evolutionary point of view, we’re basically looking for incubators, and yall are looking for someone to provide the best conditions for incubation?
Yep, that’s basically it. And I do agree that women make poor decisions in this area as frequently as men do. It’s just that the decisions are made on the basis of different criteria.