Meet the Roomates

[Jenn! 918]

When I read this, I couldn't help but be reminded of some of the conversations here on VJ regarding the alleged superficiality of American women.

Are requirements for a future spouse such as a respectable education and high earning potential superficial? Or is it just common sense? Do some women put too much emphasis on the opinions of family and friends and not enough on what they really want?

I thought my mother was tough on my boyfriends - then I went to college.

By Lena Chen | May 11, 2007

When my mother found out during my junior year of high school that I had been secretly dating someone, she scolded me, grounded me, and forbade me from seeing him again. A strong reaction, but this was a woman used to micromanaging her unruly eldest's adolescence. Now that I'm in college, she can only worry from 3,000 miles away that I'll make rash romantic decisions. Little does my mother know how good a job my friends are doing in loco parentis.

Clandestine meetings, for instance, are impossible to conceal. One summer during high school, I sneaked out of the house every night for an entire month without getting caught. Now I wouldn't last a week. Every time I come home in the wee hours without a good excuse, like a paper to finish, I know three girls will be waiting to grill me. When an unfamiliar male shows up at my door, there's an unspoken expectation that we'll rehash his life story over brunch the next morning. In college, you share clothes, classes, and common rooms. Privacy is communal property.

I'm much choosier about what I share with my mother. During our phone calls, I spit out a pithy description of the man of the moment ("overworked law student" or "much-older CIA agent"). She usually shoots down the suitor on the basis of some minute fault.

Now I live with even tougher critics. My mother hopes I'll marry someone well educated, but my roommates see no other viable alternative, since they're Ivy Leaguers themselves. (This is probably why the romance with "slightly spacey guitarist" was so short lived.) They are also surprisingly future oriented. By third dates, they've projected the boyfriend's earning potential and considered the phonetic implications of last-name hyphenation. While my mother is realizing slowly that she will eventually have grandchildren, my friends have already chosen my wedding dress.

In some ways, my girlfriends are looking at the same bottom line as my mother. As a result, I've learned that navigating romantic waters with guidance from friends is no more reliable than using a parental compass. Unless I take their advice with a grain of salt, I'm doomed never to date a poet or an activist.

My best friend at college is thankfully less prone to digging for details or preemptive speculation. Oftentimes, Jason tunes out when I try to tell him about new love interests. He does not want to become invested in a fling any more than I do. And he has reason to be cautious. Invariably, most beaus become lessons learned and amusing anecdotes. There was the architect whom everyone fondly refers to as "the soulless one." There was the law student deemed "fun but not stable." And then there was the ex-boyfriend who endeared himself to everyone. When he flew to Boston over Easter weekend to visit me, I was looking forward to seeing someone I missed and to confirming that I really was over him. The last thing I expected was for my friends to promptly fall for him. By the time my ex left, he had charmed them all. I had been thinking that the boyfriend bar was set impossibly high, so it was refreshing to finally introduce my friends to someone they approved of. I just wish he weren't my ex.

When he wasn't around, I was bombarded with questions. Everyone assumed we were hooking up (we weren't) and suggested not so subtly that we date again (we wouldn't). That Sunday, my mother called shortly after I had dropped him off at the subway station. "How was his visit?" she asked. I told her it was nice seeing him again and launched into an account of our weekend. But my mother could not care less about the impressive itinerary I had planned. She had the same priorities my friends did. Cutting me off, she asked, "Did you sleep together?" "We're just friends," I assured her. But even if we weren't, my mother didn't have to worry. My roommates approved.

Lena Chen is a sophomore at Harvard College.

Source

[Caladan 19]

I don't know whether it makes someone superficial, exactly, because one of the most pervasive sources of tension in a marriage is different expectations. If Harvard girl here marries a stoner guitarist, five years from now when her prep school buddies are marrying lawyers and i-bankers and comparing their platinum engagement rings and talking about what preschools they want to send their kids to, they'll probably be having differences of opinion on what they want out of their lives.

More importantly, if you're dating normally: meeting through school, work, or friends, that's already functioning as a pretty good class sorter. Chances are, if you're a young doctor, your friends probably are other highly educated professionals and if they introduce you to their friends, it's probably unlikely one is going to be a day laborer.

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

cripes - if she's a sophomore she should be running wild with the stoner guitarist and wait a few years to worry about "husband material" whatever she decides that to be.

[Caladan 19]

Well, that's true. But ten bucks to a donut says she would get bored of him long before it got serious.

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

Maybe -- but I am an advocate of having as much fun as possible before graduation, and that includes going out with inappropriate men.

I do find it disappointing that these high-achieving Harvard women are worrying about the earnings potential fo future husbands. That sounds like something my mother's generation did.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Not trying to open a can of worms here, but this woman's story does play up to the stereotype that financial security and social status are very important in finding husband material. I'm wondering how much her cultural background comes into play? (she could be a first generation Chinese American as an example).

[Caladan 19]

Maybe -- but I am an advocate of having as much fun as possible before graduation, and that includes going out with inappropriate men.

I do find it disappointing that these high-achieving Harvard women are worrying about the earnings potential fo future husbands. That sounds like something my mother's generation did.

I suspect that her roommates' tendencies are being exaggerated for comic effect in the article. i.e., they probably ask her about whether he's hot, nice, good in bed, and a good dancer before they tease her than she's after a Harvard Law man.

But I'd say in general that the biggest difference between them and their grandmothers: they expect to have the high-earning lawyer and to BE the high-earning lawyer.