Big balls and bigger moonbats

Indulge me here, please.

I have always felt a kinship with the New York Times' kickass columnist Maureen Dowd. That's not just because we share political perspectives and both get targeted by the right. (I am also a huge fan of the witty Molly Ivins and Arianna Huffington for similar reasons.) I feel that connection because, as she revealed in a 2002 column about dating -- or the lack of it -- she finds that she intimidates men, most of whom assume that she is as bitchy in real life as she is in print.

At the opening of "The Sweet Smell of Success" last month, a successful New York guy I know took me aside for a lecture that was anything but sweet.

He said he had wanted to ask me out on a date when he was between marriages, but nixed the idea because my job made me too intimidating.

Men, he told me, prefer women who seem malleable and overawed. He said I would never find a mate, because if there's one thing men fear, it's a woman who uses her critical faculties. Will she be critical of absolutely everything?

I thought about Dowd last month when I met one man for dinner who actually brought along print-outs of my columns so he could take issue with them. He then told me he wasn't comfortable with a woman who was so opinionated. Hunh?

Anyway, my emotional link to Dowd just deepened, thanks to this essay (reg. req'd)  "What's a Modern Girl to do?'') adapted from her forthcoming book, Are Men Necessary: When Sexes Collide which the Times published this past weekend.

So was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax? Do women get less desirable as they get more successful?

After I first wrote on this subject, a Times reader named Ray Lewis e-mailed me. While we had assumed that making ourselves more professionally accomplished would make us more fascinating, it turned out, as Lewis put it, that smart women were "draining at times."

Or as Bill Maher more crudely but usefully summed it up to Craig Ferguson on the "Late Late Show" on CBS: "Women get in relationships because they want somebody to talk to. Men want women to shut up."

While I can't say that that is universally true -- far from it -- I must admit I do better with men when I speak softly and carry a big purse.

Anyway, today via Bill Doskoch, I stumbled across this New York magazine profile of Dowd, which reveals that she has images of naked women all over her house.

Possibly, there are even more naked women at Maureen Dowd’s house today than there were when this place was JFK’s Georgetown bachelor pad in the fifties. They are lounging in the vintage posters, carved into her Deco furniture, painted in huge trompe l’oeil pastorals on the living-room wall. “My girlfriend Michi said, ‘You’ve got to paint clothes on them,’ like you know how they did at the Sistine Chapel?” says Dowd, who is drinking white wine from a goblet with a naked woman carved into its stem. “But I like them. I think they’re kind of campy.”

Hmmm. I have beer mugs with naked women handles, a vast collection of feelthy turn-of-the-last-siecle postcards over my bed, naked lady lampstands, tons of Icart nudes ... and French art deco furniture.

Maybe all those right-whingers who compare me to Dowd and accuse me of being just as conspiracy-minded are on to something: She and I clearly have our tooth fillings tuned to the same station.

Comments

[Jiminy C]

Antonia? Dinner with another man? Don't tell us you let your hunk slip away....or is yours an open relationship?
As for comparing yourself to Dowd...don't fret...she doesn't come closer than a country mile...either in her writing and her ahem - physical presence!;-)

[Big G]

Antonia,
Don't fret over this one, if a guy feels intimidated by you, then he must be insecure and has an inferiority complex, in either case he probably isn't for you.

In Dowd's case I can't believe a guy would "lecture her", as a man I find that a very weak and childish thing to do.

Antonia, I think you need to travel to Europe and have a look around.

[Robert Harper]

Antonia: I can't think of one possible way I can compare you favourably with Dowd, not one. And it has nothing to do with how smart you think you are ... I like brilliant women ... it is just that you are an amateur.

[Ivan Prokopchuk]

Antonia.
The Susan Ng syndrome.
Behave completely oppositely (alliteration, what the hell, it's late).
Don't talk about bits of toothpick still sticking in there, no matter what you hear from your teeth or your bathtub faucet.
Myself, I love smart women. The smarter the
better. My ex-wife nearly made it into Mensa...funny thing that she's ex, but then
I got involved with a whole series of dimbulbs, whom I could outsmart, but they got the drop on me relationship-wise.
Not yet considering the priesthood, but I seem to have the same problem as you, male
version. Smarter than most women, but not all women.
Sigh.
Ivan

[richfisher]

So you're both selfcentred, dilusional, lesbian,socialists ,....it does'nt make you smart, nor intimidating,... quite the opposite.

[MB]

If the guy had a problem with your columns, then he is probably a right winger and not a good match for you. The two sides of the political spectrum can get along, but only if one isn't opinionated or doesn't care.

Trust me on this one.

[Antonia Z.]

Rich ... I am sure a big brave smart guy like you could convert us into manlovers reallllllllll quick.

[Markus]

It's not that men don't like 'intimidating' women who are succesful; we just don't like annoying, whiny, self-centred and OVERLY opinionated airheads.

*Ahem*

Not pointing any elbows.

And stop spelling it "WHINGERS" - It's WINGERS.

Maybe you'd find more men if you stopped thinking in terms of partisan left/right BS.