man vs. woman, again

from this morning's ny times:

One mother in TriBeCa, who is married, at least for now, to a Wall Street executive, put it rather bluntly: “My job was to run the household and the children’s lives,” she said. “His job is to provide us with a nice lifestyle.” But his bonus has disappeared, and his annual pay has dropped to $150,000 from $800,000 a year. “Let me just say this,” she said, “I’m still doing my job.”

since the crash, the times and its upscale sisters have all spent a fair amount of column-width on the newly spartanized lifestyles of the former masters of the universe, many of whose families were in the 1950s model of dad as breadwinner and mom at home. yes, these modern women had staff, botox and s.u.v.'s, but most of them gave up lucrative careers in their prime. hey, we all make choices, ya know?

time after time, (as if you need further proof of my masochism, i do keep reading the bits) i am dumbfounded how these women simply will not adjust or bend. they might go an extra week between blonde root-touch-ups, but won't forsake their $200 haircuts. they choose to keep buying $300 jeans and their kids' clothes at ralph lauren. why the hell are they still shopping? oh, right, cuz that was part of their job description.

but what really gets me is the blame. we face an economic meltdown of cataclysmic proportions, its depths still unknown and unfolding, and these wives fault their husbands. it's not seen as a time to pull together, scale back, make different choices, experience life as less of an acquisitional race, maybe get a job (!) most americans would view a salary of $150k as quite comfy. yo, ashley, boohoo about that in flint, michigan why don'tcha? many of these men were victims of hubris, which wasn't unique to the individual, but endemic to the institutional culture. yet their mean carbo-deprived wives see only personal failure and betrayal and not a gigantic paradigm shift. eat an english muffin (ok, just half) and step outside yourself for just a sec, maybe?

a woman who works for me is in the midst of a divorce, details of which i'm fine not knowing. the genesis of her remarks last night aren't so germane here, but the message was essentially any woman is an idiot who goes out of her way, even one inch, for her man. that he should be crawling before her at all times. she thought i was insane for taking the commuter line back and forth to see the owner. if i were meaner, i suppose i could have offered that i clean his house too and watch her have a nervous breakdown, lol.

heading back to the vipers' nest, i guess i've spent a little extra time of late pondering where and when so many women become so parsimonious of spirit, why they don't see it and why they don't put on the brakes. i watched sadly as so many people got hurt by it for so many years. souls blackened, love crushed, my own emotional development suffocated for so long.

let's hope it's enough to know i want better and i expect more, while being fully aware it's up to me to make it so.