A column (thanks, Fuerza Dulce) from the women’s magazine Marie-Claire on Anjali Mansukhani’s enthusiasm for arranged marriages (including her own), didn’t really start in what seemed like the best possible way:
By age 26, after attending more than 150 weddings, I was fast approaching my “expiration date.” (link)
“Expiration date” at age 26? That’s pretty young; personally, I think women get “expired” these days at around 27 or 28…
But it gets so much better. Anjali, a Bombayite, meets a guy who seems like Mr. Right — a New York based banker — and moves to his 40th story Manhattan apartment after three dates (and a marriage). Life there is blissfully happy:
While I craved privacy in India, the lack of neighbors and family dropping in left a shocking void every day as I ate breakfast and lunch alone. My husband worked late most evenings, and I sat in front of the TV, unable to call home because it would be 2 a.m. there.
After a few weeks, I learned that I’d married a “jetrosexual.” He had an exhausting travel schedule (four cities in four days). I joined the ranks of corporate wives who saw every show, opera, and ballet in town, just to fill the hours.
To make friends, I joined a gym, went to the library, and took Italian classes. I discovered that having an arranged marriage was a great icebreaker, and my social circle mushroomed each time I retold my story.
Marriage, I soon learned, wasn’t easy — especially to a modern man. My husband had acquired a mistress, and her name was BlackBerry. She had the power to stop discussions midsentence, her red signal lighting up his face in the way I only dreamed of doing. (link)
Such happiness. It really brightens your day.
Off to a great start, no doubt. But Anjali’s new life really takes off when she learns to name-drop consumer goods and lifestyle choices like a professional New Yorker:
As peers in India opted for motherhood and worked on post-baby waistlines, I took Spinning and pole dancing at the gym to work off exotic dinners of sweetbreads, foie gras, chocolate mousse. After reading about America’s obsession with Venti decaf skim mochas, I went to try one — but came back instead with a spiced chai latte. Amazingly, Starbucks was providing my childhood drink on every corner.
I found a job as a financial consultant. The New York Times in one hand, coffee in the other, I realized that my saris of bright pink, violet, and salmon were not exactly subway wear. Quickly, I succumbed to Levi’s and Ralph Lauren.
I started to realize that I just might have the best of both worlds. I marinated my Indian marriage in the flavors of Manhattan. I kept the sari and bought the Jimmy Choos. I made fabulous curries, seasoned with spices from Dean & Deluca. And after months of enjoying decidedly non-Indian experiences of seders, Saks, and sake, I felt confident enough to direct Indian guests to a hotel, occasionally throwing in a MetroCard.
I’m not hating, really I’m not. In fact, I’m thrilled she’s so happy — with those Jimmy Choos that she got from Bloomie’s, drinking Chai Tea Latte at Starbucks (which is just like the Chai in India, isn’t it?), before her pole-dancing class, where she’ll burn off the foie gras from the night before. Arranged marriage can be great that way.
Maybe because it wouldnt be too flattering for the man? 🙂
Nobody has said that. We are commenting on what we think are factual inconsistencies in her write-up. For example her comments about chai at Starbucks being like chai in India, buying Indian spices at Dean and Deluca, it just doesn’t add up..
That’s a pretty cynical view of marriage, isn’t it? 😛 I would like to think my marriage would truly be a partnership. Maybe it’s because I’m young and not looking to ‘settle down’ yet, and/or because my parents have always encouraged me to be economically successful and independent, but I fully admit to being a superficial young woman who cares mostly about appearance and sexiness (and a smattering of personality/the ‘click’ factor) when it comes to guys.
As for the ‘wired’ thing… “Evolutionary psychology (abbreviated EP) is a theoretical approach to psychology that attempts to explain mental and psychological traits—such as memory, perception, or language—as adaptations, i.e., as the functional products of natural selection.” I don’t doubt that the reasonings can be used to explain human societies and human behavior throughout history, but many societies have changed recently with the help of things like widely-available birth control, women having the same political and economic rights as men, etc. So I hesitate to say that it’s completely ‘wired’ into our brains. (I’m sure razib or someone will be all over this, but whatever.) And frankly, I always felt like a freak because I went through puberty early and had sexual fantasies from a young age, and my female friends would say things like, ‘I don’t understand how anyone would want to have sex!’ or ‘Guys are hot, but only from the waist up.’ But I gave it a few years (and tried to get them to stop calling other girls ‘sluts’), and now they don’t say that shit anymore; quite the opposite, in fact. 🙂 Honestly, the idea that women don’t like sex was always bizarre to me. Also, why the hell do women have shorter refractory periods and easier multiple orgasms then?? (and yeah, I’ve read about that book that posits that the clitoris is a holdover from embryonic development. But doesn’t that confuse the hell out of this narrative then?) I’m not doubting that men are more likely to want to jump into bed with a hot stranger, whereas women are more likely to need more ‘context.’ I’m just disputing the extent to which this really dichotomous claim applies, and how much of it is ‘wired’ into us vs. how much of it is cultural.
Watch what you say.
you forgot, portmanteau – when men admit to wanting an attractive mate, it’s because their brains are ‘wired’ to do so. (that’s why the 45-year-old man just can’t help himself when it comes to leering at the 15-year-old girl on the subway!) when women admit to wanting a financially successful mate, they’re gold-digging hos. that’s the general perception, which is why women aren’t as upfront about it as HMF would like them to be.
when women admit to wanting a financially successful mate, they’re gold-digging hos.
Now hold on wait a minute, I could easily offer the opposite, that is, the general perception of “gold digging hos” exists because those who do admit it, are usually not shy about having themselves called gold digging hos. (In the sense, they say they don’t care about the man, etc..) If more “normal”, intelligent women admitted it, rather than use their intelligence to explain it away, the perception might change.
how come all the most appealing alphas i know are living hand to mouth? hmm.
HMF, sincerity, an item you would find on my list, if you read things without hateration, is defined as:
meanwhile, i’m glad that our types stay away from each other 🙂 it’s called assortative mating. i’m happy with my alpha uptown boy.
Interestingly enough, Salma Hayek (I don’t know if she popped her baby out yet) has gestational diabetes, which is an indicator that her baby might not be perfectly healthy.
they don’t buy into the system.
jk 🙂 i’m just trying to say that they might be smart enough to march to the beat of their own drummer. at least that’s what i hope. but i’m a romantic fool.
i’m happy with my alpha uptown boy.
well, thats good, at least you’re going with the real deal. Last time you were all over Rahul-lite.
Salma Hayek (I don’t know if she popped her baby out yet) has gestational diabetes
but how many guys wouldn’t f**k her brains out given the chance? this is my point, from an appearance perspective, she transmits fertility.
shrug I don’t know many women of the age who are looking to settle down. They say that they want someone who will provide stability, and yes, that does translate into money. This is probably because, despite the fact that they have stable jobs, they will probably leave the workforce for some time to raise future babies.
Some women have trouble with their femininity if they date someone who makes less money than them; some don’t. Some men have trouble with their masculinity if their mate makes more than them; some don’t. My mother made more money than my father in a more professional occupation for a long time, despite being less educated (and frankly, less ‘intellectual’ not to mention less fluent in English). My father felt his masculinity to be threatened by this (though my mother didn’t feel her femininity to be threatened by this, but then again, she’s from a time and place where it would be ridiculous for someone to complain that they were uncomfortable by making too much money, and she also took on nearly all of the typically feminine household duties), and would get mad at her whenever she joked about it (and I don’t blame him for that, because she did it repeatedly in front of their friends despite him asking not to… but that’s my mother). On the other hand, he has a friend whose job consists of putting in time at his wife’s practice and raising the kids (he teaches both his son and his daughter to do housework, which I just can’t get over the amazingness of, in this place and time), and neither the husband nor the wife feel their gender identities threatened by this. There are a few other examples in my parents’ social circles where the husband makes less than the wife, takes on more household duties, participates more in raising the kids and in cultural activities, and doesn’t feel that his masculinity threatened. It’s kind of amazing to me that this exists to even this small extent in my parents’ generation, and we’re still quibbling about this in liberated, modern America.
HMF, sincerity, an item you would find on my list,
Sincerity, eh?
maybe you should qualify that to be “sincerity, unless it challenges borderline hypocritical positions”
how come all the most appealing alphas i know are living hand to mouth? hmm.
I think this is just another misuse of the term ‘alpha’ someone isn’t alpha if you just find him appealing. The majority of women alive must also find him appealing. I’m sure a crack head is appealing to his crack ho girlfriend, you know, by impressing her with how many vials he can hold at once, but that doesn’t make him alpha.
I’d go gay for her any day. Even today.
She doesn’t fit the current narrow-hipped media ideal though. Like you said, Paris Hilton. And many guys prefer more narrow-hipped beauties that are part of the itty-bitty titty committee. 🙂 Which shows that there is much variance in the dichotomous evolutionary theory, both among males and females.
And yeah, she’s 41… and freaking h0t.
1. even rahul-lite is more appealing than you, what can i say?
If my goal was to be appealing, it could easily be accomplished, but I choose to be sincere a hard choice no doubt, which is why so few make it.
RE: Salma Hayek As a similarly well-endowed possessor of two X chromosomes, though, I’m perplexed as to how she made it to 41 without, um, gravity working on her. I guess some girls really do get all the luck.
keep, er, blowing your own horn. for you may be the only one doing it for the forseeable future. i do give you props for being self-reliant; and for acknowledging your limited charms.
i do give you props for being self-reliant; and for acknowledging your limited charms.
I think you’re missing the point (yet again). I’m fully aware of how to “charm”, I just choose not to do it.
nala-
Similarly well-endowed? Well I’m a liberated, modern american desi. What’s your #?
No, I dont want to know that 😉
Finally something supporting me and my curvy badonkee.
right. and i’m the queen of sheba.
Nala, gravity has worked on Salma, she just wears extreme push up bras which create the illusion that it hasn’t. Even someone as young as Serena Williams has low hanging breasts, which you can see clearly coz she often wears braless outfits, and that’s natural for heavy breasts. There is no woman with heavy breasts that are not pendulous, unless they are fake. Facts of life. Let’s celebrate our womanhood in all it’s aspects, and greet aging as what it is; normal and natural. If we don’t age, we won’t be normal and natural. As far as those vaginal reconstruction surgeries (links), well, I would just suggest my husband undergo genital “rejuvenation” if it was so important to me (or him) , rather than put myself under the knife. And the article said no improvement in sex life was reported after surgery anyway. If a woman wants to improve her sex life she just needs a partner who is skilled in the oral arts, simple as that. And it doesn’t cost thousands of $$$$$$$$ either!
Ladies, buy your husbands some books or instructional DVDs!
Seriously, PM, who I am, and however limited my charms are, aren’t very relevant at all. However, from the tail end of this discussion, I have a hard time believing you actually do indeed appreciate sincerity and honesty. As a simple disagreement (and a clearly logical one, I might add) with your hackneyed attempt to apologize for “gold-digging” (of the non ANS variety) spins you into lazy and repetitous insinuations about “horn blowing” (which I dont’ mind you making at all, but it’s a clear indication you have nowhere else to go)
Fuerza Dulce, from that article:
This is interesting. Why won’t the flippin’ BBC tell me more about this?? Though I wouldn’t have a problem with letting people believe the results of this study either.
(and, um, i’m happily taken)
but portmanteau and HMF – the tension between you two reminds me of numerous boy-meets-girl, girl-hates-boy, boy-annoys-girl, boy-and-girl-fall-madly-in-love battle-of-the-sexes type flicks.
Women, a word of warning! Gold digging might seem great at first, but it is bound to lead to grief.
that’s why i just polish the family jewels 😛
[sigh]
I’ve been a long-time subscriber to Marie Claire and this article was the first one that annoyed me enough to write a letter to the editor.
What really bothered me about this article was the way Anjali implied that if you don’t have an arranged marriage, you are doomed to a life of familial discord. There was just something about her tone that made it seem as if she looks down on non-arranged marriages. Maybe I just took it too personally. My parents had a non-arranged marriage (at the past-expiration ages of 30!) in Inida in the mid-60s. No in-law drama ensued. My brother asked for a semi-arranged marriage to and again, no drama. I got married earlier this year in a non-arranged “match” to a non-desi and things are still peaceful.
The other thing that annoyed me was that we all know someone or know of someone who didn’t have quite the rosy arranged marriage experience Anjali had. I have a family member and a close friend of the family who ended up being victims of domestic violence while they were in their arranged marriages. I felt that Marie Claire really need to provide a counterpoint to Anjali’s viewpoint.
I also didn’t buy for a second that she could really believe Starbucks chai tea latte is equivalent to proper chai — wtf?! That comment made me believe that she was just generally snowed by anything that she equated with “quintessential American coolness”. Starbucks chai is vile.
naah, when it comes to HMF, the only role I’ll be playing is Mahishasura Mardini.
If I could arrange that, would you really?
In a never ending role of freeing those from the matrix, I guess this would be my role.
i thought you kept it real? wouldn’t that mean releasing people from the matrix? but i guess the rage marinaded imperative to call women bitches and equate yourself to the iq level of keanu reeves (whoa!) prevails.
i thought you kept it real? wouldn’t that mean releasing people from the matrix?
I was likening myself to morpheus, which I thought was obvious. Of course the imperative to call one’s self a god and label someone else a demon seems to blithely slip by your unilateral morality filters. Of course, I had no issue with such a jab, because those of us non-hypocrites usually take them as we levy them.
I’ll top that. I will undergo a gender change and then go gay for her anyday.
i’m cracking up here… even more so because it reminds me of this. certainly makes you wonder about arranged marriage, doesn’t it?
i’m just surprised you didn’t point us to this masterpiece.
you are right – calling a man a demon is exactly equivalent to calling a woman a bitch. thanks for releasing me from the matrix and exposing me to this reality, oh self-important-laurence-fishburne.
anyways, it is understandable that i react the way i do. my seed spreading genes induce me to sweet talk women. it is just my variant of those nlp techniques you swear by to induce the pavlovian slobber in these female canines. well, off i go now.
I’ll top that. I will undergo a gender change and then go straight for her anyday.
Wow, this really belongs up up up thread, as I typed it last night and forgot to hit ‘post’..but why waste a nice slice of cake? and all that
Word UAE chica, go! 🙂
Yeah, really. And when it comes to your own sister’s marriage, I highly doubt that you’d be so censorious of her marrying well. Women have a lot of societal pressures placed on them anyway, to be slender, to be upbeat, to spend time agonizing over their personal beauty. They’re constantly judged far more on looks and social graces than men and statistically will never make as much, but are they whining and complaining all over this thread? I agree the western system may initially seem like a better deal- “i†get a woman who spends time to look good, will have free sex with me, is never, never clingy, and will, of course, always pick up the tab. In other words, its all on her. When I finally do concede to attempt to attach myself one of these lovely houris and she suddenly turns into a “maneater” , is a complete b***, or is otherwise emotionally unavailable, I’ll tell myself that its her who is evil, rather than examine the retinue of experiences and social signals that have made her what she is- and how very little I expected to have to give her in the first place.
Hey, you give, you get. A few of you poor put-upon guys on this thread shouldn’t worry- this expectation is fading fast, at least among western desis. Some desi khuri hunters have definitely raised a figurative eyebrow because I’m not a doctor, a pharmacist or a well paid lawyer on top of being perfect ;P As the mother of one of the guys I was encouraged to meet in the Bay Area interrupted my description of my chosen career: “Yes.. but how do you make a lot of money?”
But seriously, even at this stage of our cultural evolution, your average hedge fund boys are a dime a dozen. Let’s face it- there’s a mass girl shortage out there, everywhere thanks to our Indian mores, even in the upper classes.. what’s a simple punjaben to do?
ps.- you can take pole dancing here (its called strippercise) and i live on an island in the north pacific. where have you guys been? I’ve always known what Dean and Deluca is, too- open any New York magazine! But that brings up an important point, this is exactly how you HAVE to write if you want to be published in something like Marie-Claire..why not just start a thread slanging Vogue, in general? Your audience not only goes to these types of places; this is their rarefied consumer world. Its not Newsweek. pps.- moornam, thanks for the vote of confidence. great good luck to you and yours..
calling a man a demon is exactly equivalent to calling a woman a bitch.
ok, purveyor of blog justice, ‘hate-filled spitball when they come from anyone but you’ policeman, what would be the equivalent of insinuating a man is evil incarnate, driving all the devas from heaven requiring a special
Perhaps in India (leading to middle class women having more choice in whom they marry and partly decreasing the dowry burden), but definitely not in New York. Girls/women still compete a hell of a lot to win a man’s attention. Just in a different way than in the old country.
But if, according to the ‘women are wired for relationships, men are wired for sex’ theory that you posited, why should men give a shit? It’s just them being men, right?
The writing style smacks of Mills and Boone/Barbara Cartland romances. In fact, wasnt there one titled I Married a Total Stranger?
Let me rephrase that. Most girls past middle school know how to get male attention. I should rephrase it as, ‘Girls/women still compete a hell of a lot to keep a man’s attention.’ See, that’s where I agree with you, but I don’t think it’s because ‘boys will be boys’ so much as because we keep telling men that ‘boys will be boys.’
hmf, i will start taking you seriously when you are equally anguished about the genetic imperative that makes all, ok, most (see, i am unbiased) men rapists and unashamedly call yourself that. it’s called keeping it real.
anyways, enough derailment of this thread from me.
This reminds me… I don’t know how common this is across India, but in Telugu movies (I confess I don’t know how true this actually is to Telugu custom), the night of the wedding scene involves the woman giving a glass of milk to the man before they get it on. Is this supposed to be some sort of fertility belief?
I think that men certainly have the capacity to be otherwise, or there would be no point to my rant. Its just that they are more choosy around who they permanently bond with, and less so about who they mac. Its the opposite with women. Men definitely do form longterm, committed relationships, but they’re less likely than women to develop affection through sex if all their parameters aren’t there. If there wasn’t some area of overlap between guys and girls, there would be no such thing as marriage.
since hmf is practicing sexual realism, i’d like to agree with him, if for no other reason than these argument-from-nature realpolicks (or “keeping it real” as hmf would say) annoy the pc social constructionists more than anything else. but something has been keeping me at bay.
really wealthy men don’t have really hot wives. certainly not on wall st. don’t believe me? go down the forbes list starting with buffet, gates, etc and see what you get. but i know lots of cops and firefighters with some smoking wives. good-looking, athletic retail brokers are often doing a lot better than their nerdier (and wealthier) ibanking or trading colleagues too.
my musician buddy who has slept with over 150 women. he’s currently the lead guitarist for a famous cultural imperialist singer but had no problem even when he was struggling. i’m sure all of you are aware that the musicians always do the best.
then of course there’s that humor thing that always appears on top of any cosmo list for what women look for in a man. just look at how many mutinettes drop their panties for rahul.
They do! They really do, Manju 😉 One of my most gorgeous girlfriends would be in a room mingling with say, a good looking NY doctor, and a scummy guy in a band, and she’d go for the bankrupt roadie every time. I’ve never understood that fascination that some girls have for musicians, but its undeniably there.
Ok. But how exactly does the Indian community’s approach to sex/romance/marriage (keep your legs closed! and after marriage you better have babies!) solve this problem?
Polygyny’s been posited as the ‘natural state’ of human society since marriage was mostly an economic arrangement in which the man got to spread his seed and the woman got taken care of. But I think most women nowadays would be averse to sharing a husband like that, because they believe in having a life partner. Doesn’t that change things somewhat?