On February 8, Fox News published an opinion piece with the headline "Society is creating a new crop of alpha women who are unable to love." After seeing the field day Twitter was having with it, I clicked through out of a masochistic inability to stay away from things that make me want to bang my head against a wall.
The basic thesis of the piece is that women are simply not feminine enough anymore, which means they're harming the potential of their romantic relationships. (Of course, this only applies to straight relationships, because apparently in this article gay people do not exist.) It contains gems like this paragraph:
Alpha women aren’t exactly new, but they were once a rarer breed. Today they abound. There are several reasons why, but it’s in large part due to women having been groomed to be leaders rather than to be wives. Simply put, women have become too much like men. They’re too competitive. Too masculine. Too alpha.
I can't decide whether to laugh or cry.
The writer, Suzanne Venker, makes sure to mention that she doesn't think women should become overly timid. Strong women are good...unless they're telling their husbands what to do; that's an absolute no-no.
She laments that by teaching women to be leaders, society has made the female sex forget about our true roles in life -- to support men:
The roles may have changed, but the rules haven’t. All a good man wants is for his wife to be happy, and he will go to great lengths to make it happen. He’ll even support his wife’s ideas, plans or opinions if he doesn’t agree with them.
How kind of him to support his wife having differing opinions. I may swoon.
I was certainly not groomed by my parents to be a wife. Although Venker evidently considers upbringings like mine to be the greatest tragedy of our time, I could not be more thankful for the lessons I learned.
I was raised to understand that I should never dim my own light for the sake of someone else, especially not a romantic partner. Learning that at an early age made me a stronger and more confident person, secure in my own self-worth. Men who are uncomfortable with the fact that I am unapologetically outspoken and opinionated are not men I am interested in dating.
Some women enjoy or prefer being submissive, and I'm not knocking that at all. More power to them. The beauty of today is that we can choose how we want our relationship dynamics to look.
However, the claim that women are unhappy or unable to love simply because they want to take the lead in relationships is laughable.
Ladies, be an alpha, be a beta, be an omega, whatever the hell makes you happy. Don't, however, listen to writers like Venker who tell you that there is a certain way you have to act in order to be worthy of love.
