A NY Times article about Jackie Warner – and the myriad housewives who have crushes on her – leaves out one explanation for what’s going on: women are starting to see good “husband material” in other women. Warner is the perfect case in point: she is physically strong, financially independent, able to hold her own in the business world and manage her own company… which all adds up to her being what my aunts would have called “a good catch.” The only caveat is that she’s a woman.
To me it’s a weird intersection of eras and values: a generation of women who still believe in “the good catch” but who are open-minded enough to begin to view a woman in the way that women traditionally only ever saw men.
Honestly, I think women are now only beginning to glimpse what equality might actually be like. If we continue to de-gender things like physical power, financial power, caretaking, family leadership, ambition and confidence, the whole heterosexual paradigm might find itself on its head, which is a very heady idea indeed.
Oy, think how much fun the fundamentalists are going to have with this one! As a group they are pretty defensive of the heterosexual paradigm.
Very interesting. It makes you wonder how much some peoples’ heterosexuality is not necessarily attachment to a certain type of body, but to a place in wealth/power dynamics.