I’m sure there’s people out there that this is genuinely great advice for, but at least from my perspective, it just reads like an extremely long way to say almost nothing. “be out there and be confident” is like the most basic possible dating advice, ever, and is really only useful if you’re completely off track on things. And to some extent, I feel like the article did itself a disservice by making it entirely gender neutral, because like it or not, society still tends to be highly gendered, and the problems people face in dating tend to be different along gendered lines.
The problem here isn’t that they have unattainable standards, it’s that a lot of men aren’t putting in effort to meet those basic standards, for whatever reason.
Are men obligated to meet those standards if they have no interest in doing so? Men don’t just exist for the sake of giving women someone to date, after all. And while the article was (I hesitate to say intentionally) vague about specifics, one thing it mentioned multiple times was holding a college degree. It’s hardly what I’d call “basic standards”, considering it takes a huge amount of time, and a fair deal of money to achieve. Of all the men I’ve talked with, myself included, that “standard” doesn’t seem to be prevalent, with the closest thing being “I guess it would be cool”.
At what point does the principle of “if everywhere you go smells like shit” start applying to these women who date but seem to never find a man that meet their standards? It only seems reasonable if nobody meets the standards, that the standards may be a major part of the issue.
And I don’t mean to say that women should just settle for men they don’t like, but “just stay single” is always an option, one men are told repeatedly whenever they struggle with relationships.
Or women could just lower their standards if they don’t think anyone is good enough for them. That’s basically what men have been told for ages, that women don’t need to go about changing themselves to meet the standards of men. Surely the same operates in reverse, no? If women don’t like their prospects, they can either lower their bar or stay single since men don’t need to change themselves to please women?
I mean it makes sense. Feminism has become quite the loaded term as of recent, and young people are going to be a lot more distanced from the earlier wages of feminism.
Overall, I’ve just been vibing, though I ended up blowing the vacation day I took on Friday basically just having an identity crisis and playing games. Guess I’ll just check out the restaurant I had wanted to hit up next week. Glad I was able to get everything resolved before going back to work, but damn a wasted Friday always sucks.
Let’s go, free vacation incoming!
Jesus, how many panels in before someone would think “maybe this should just be a written piece”. The comic format does it no favors whatsoever