According to Princeton University alumna Susan Patton, I’ve sacrificed eternal marital bliss by not locking down a husband while in the oh-so-casual days of college. “Here’s what nobody is telling you: Find a husband on campus before you graduate.” Mrs. Patton said in a letter to the Daily Princetonian. “For most of you, the cornerstone of your future and happiness will be inextricably linked to the man you marry, and you will never again have this concentration of men who are worthy of you.”
Well, shit. I missed that boat, and now that I’m a woman in my 30s, Patton insists that I am fucked. In a speech to the university defending her previous statement, she claims that “a woman looking for a husband in her 30s gives off total desperation.” Thanks to Debbie Hunt from Singles, I am already aware that “desperation is the world’s worst cologne,” but I had no idea that I’m giving this scent off everywhere I go!
What should I do now that I am past the point of no return? Well, for starters, I plan to ignore this uptight elitist and continue being proud of myself for the choices I have made in my life that have gotten me this far. I don’t plan to get all preachy and impose my feminist ideals here, but I would like to assume that just because I didn’t meet the perfect man in college, that I still have time. Though, according to Mrs. Patton, I am even too late for that. “The fallacy of gender equality,” she said as quoted in NJ.com, “is that men can take a lifetime to marry and have children, and women cannot. That is a hard and cold bulletproof fact.”
Cold? Absolutely. Now that we should have already been married by the time we graduate from college, when do we even have time to choose anything but a husband? What happens to those of us who aren’t able to go to an Ivy-league school? Are we doomed to become cat-hoarding spinsters?
I wish Mrs. Patton could serve as a better role model for educated women, and offer better advice than “make sure you snag a man!” While she may have been one of the first 200 women allowed to be educated at Princeton, her idea of feminism is off the mark.
Images via nj.com, tumblr.com and imgur.com.
