Also, we haven't come that far in regards to gender roles. Women wearing pants and going to work, and men wearing nail polish is the extent of what was normalized in society. Anything else and we still view it with very traditional lenses.
Even this is an optimistic lens: a man wearing nail polish at work is likely to play very differently between a coastal city and a small "heartland" town.
SV just like to put their own veneer on it to make it seem kinder and gentler than the NYC screw-you-pay-me approach, but make no mistake it's the same stuff.
Maybe he would, but he is quite an oddball in more ways than one. Both of his parents were Harvard/MIT professors, he is not silent about his political views (he at one point literally forbade anyone with a Trump hat to come in to his restaurant) so we shouldn't extrapolate from this one singular case one way or the other.
(excluding classical music)
Regarding men's fashion, I find it interesting that:
Long robes are still worn as formal/professional attire in certain contexts: judicial robes, academic regalia, clerical robes, etc..
Wigs seem largely out of style, with the professional exception of British judges and barristers.
Kilts are still around, but tunics are out of fashion and tights/leggings seem to be relegated to sports/athletics and dance.
One of the messages is "We are not here to do manual labour, fight physically, or display overt sexuality."
(Kilts are something of an exception, but they're dual-use.)
But I think you are on to something - men's attraction strategies are often via resources rather than health/fitness (or overt physical conflict with rivals.)
> Let’s start with the fact that professional women find it challenging even to be married—for most, a necessary precondition for childbearing. Only 60% of high-achieving women in the older age group are married, and this figure falls to 57% in corporate America. By contrast, 76% of older men are married, and this figure rises to 83% among ultra-achievers.
To your point, high achieving women don’t have significant value to high achieving men.
For instance, other studies have found that men's work is strongly tied to their sense of identity, much more so than women, so men who lose their identity could become depressed, irritable, lash out, etc.
myself i used to earn a lot less than my wife, but i never felt useless as i see my purpose in contributing to society and i could always do that by working with FOSS. it is my work and my purpose, even if it doesn't pay.
I don't think this is true of all women. But I and several of my friends have noticed that as our income level changed the level of support and tolerance from our wives changed noticeably.
When I'm making more money or receive a promotion my wife is noticeably more supportive and tolerant of me. Despite me being much happier and more agreeable at the low income jobs, my low income jobs still pay more than her job, and only caused a very small change to QoL (due to my large savings). I can only imagine what it's like if I made less than her or we had to actually start sacrificing due to lower pay.
And of my friends where the wife is noticeably more successful than the husband there is always quite a bit of stress from the wife who is constantly pushing him to be more successful. Not to mention the amount of crap these wives get for their less successful husbands, which is quite substantial.
I’ve seen this once: Trophy husband (college buddy) to a high earning wife.
They are still happily married though I don’t keep in touch.
More common: I’ve met Ivy League women (or similar, very smart) who’ve underachieved in their career, who wouldn’t marry down.
They asked me if I knew anyone but thin pickings in the 40s: I know guy, but he’s in the milita…nope.”
Another issue is that college educated women do not prefer to marry non college educated men. This is a problem because there are way more women in college than men.
The best place to be for successful women to find a mate is Silicon Valley where the gender ratio is so messed up. There is a joke that women in the Bay Area have a “49er attitude”. A 4 who thinks she is a 9 because of the abundance of successful and intelligent men.
This is a result of their own sky-high standards and unwillingness to date/marry down. The same is not true for a man.
> There is a joke that women in the Bay Area have a “49er attitude”. A 4 who thinks she is a 9 because of the abundance of successful and intelligent men.
Isn't this also true nationwide due to dating apps, skewing the perception of successful and attractive men on the apps as the new "average" ?
That's a very reductive take.
While I'm sure this is sometimes the case, is it inconceivable that it's also hard for women to fulfill their socially prescribed womanly duties while also being a high performer in their careers, and they have to choose between picking from a limited dating pool of partners who don't have traditional expectations, or a relationship which becomes punctuated by conflict over their unwillingness to take on duties expected of them?
Whereas a traditional relationship is centered around men as the primary (or sole) breadwinner, and the family structures revolve around catering to their domestic needs while they make the domestic/familial/social sacrifices in order to climb the career ladder, so (while I'm not denying it's also a frequent source of conflict) it's easier for high-achieving men to find partners who will accept the status quo and take on supporting roles
If I like fast cars and I'll I've ever been exposed to is your average beater, then it wouldn't take that much to excite me. A sporty commuter might even do it.
But if I've been consistently exposed to supercars, or if I even own one myself, then it will take a much more impressive vehicle to excite me.
Fundamentally, I'm still attracted to the same thing regardless of my situation: fast cars..but one scenario leaves me wanting a lot more than the other.
It's true on dating apps but those women come back to Earth as soon as they turn off Tinder. In Bay Area, women don't come back to Earth. Tinder or not.
The part time job might be more about spending too much time with your spouse rather than failure to provide.
We can of course say, oh they are supposed to be funny, loving, and do their fair share of chores. But what can only they bring?
I think this could be a driver of insecurity. If not a provider role, we haven’t figured out what alternative respectable roles they could fill, which means as far as culture is concerned they feel useless.
Majority of women are not ok with men making less, no matter what they say - its often an unrevealed preference.