Um, Why Is Maureen Dowd Rewriting Arianna Huffington?
Sad, successful, middle-aged women of the world unite! Or something. Last week Arianna Huffington, who is lately giving Google a run for its money in the Internet dominance dept., introduced a new column written by one Markus Buckingham, that aims to help women with their “sadness” (whether or not women knew they were sad prior to reading this is another question entirely).
Women around the world are in a funk. And it’s not because of the multitude of crises we are facing. Women’s happiness has been on a downward trend since the early 1970s, when the General Social Survey, a landmark study, began examining the social attitudes of women and men — who, by the way, have gotten progressively happier over the years.
When you think about all that has happened over the last four decades — with women securing greater opportunity, greater achievement, greater influence, and more money — the decline in our collective state of mind seems to defy logic, and raises the vexing question: What in the world is going on?
Something about this makes me suspect that someone has been internalizing too much Mad Men, but perhaps women really just are sad and I’ve just been too caught up with the general, recession-related malaise to notice. Maureen Dowd certainly thinks so! So much so she virtually rewrote Arianna’s post in Sunday’s column.
In the early ’70s, breaking out of the domestic cocoon, leaving their mothers’ circumscribed lives behind, young women felt exhilarated and bold.
But the more women have achieved, the more they seem aggrieved. Did the feminist revolution end up benefiting men more than women?
According to the General Social Survey, which has tracked Americans’ mood since 1972, and five other major studies around the world, women are getting gloomier and men are getting happier.
Before the ’70s, there was a gender gap in America in which women felt greater well-being. Now there’s a gender gap in which men feel better about their lives.
Not to worry, Dowd credits Arianna for her earlier post. Actually, she does more than credit, she practically shills:
As Arianna Huffington points out in a blog post headlined “The Sad, Shocking Truth About How Women Are Feeling”: “It doesn’t matter what their marital status is, how much money they make, whether or not they have children, their ethnic background, or the country they live in. Women around the world are in a funk.”…Marcus Buckingham, a former Gallup researcher who has a new book out called “Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently,” says that men and women passed each other midpoint on the graph of life.
“Though women begin their lives more fulfilled than men, as they age, they gradually become less happy,” Buckingham writes in his new blog on The Huffington Post, pointing out that this darker view covers feelings about marriage, money and material goods. “Men, in contrast, get happier as they get older.”
I left out the part where Dowd states (but doesn’t qualify with any sort of research) that Black women are actually happier than they were in the 70’s, but not as happy as Black men now are — this is one of Dowdisms that sort of defy description. Maybe she asked her friends?
The question remains! Why is Maureen Dowd reblogging Arianna Huffington…in print? Did all that race talk last week exhaust her and she decided to call the column in? Moreover, Dowd adds absolutely nothing to the conversation with her column except her name and subsequently her stamp of approval (which is, undeniably, still a very powerful thing indeed, but also the fear that we are now going to have to listen to an entire week of cablers discussing whether women are sad. Which absolutely makes me sad.
