Tracy Clark-Flory at Salon Broadsheet wrote a comment today about the results of a pair of surveys conducted by AskMen.com and Cosmopolitan magazine. Among what she calls a “some surprising, and surprisingly refreshing, findings about modern manhood” are some stats about what male and female respondents to these surveys regard as “the ultimate status symbol” for their gender:
“The ultimate male status symbol,” according to respondents, isn’t a fancy car or a Budweiser-sponsored man cave — it’s having a family. (Not to interrupt the chorus of “aww’s” — but “a beautiful wife or girlfriend” ranked third.) As for what “defines a ‘real man’ in 2010,” they say it’s “being a great father and husband who takes care of his family.” That’s either retro (man brings home the bacon) or progressive (man helps to support his family both financially and emotionally), depending on how you look at it; the same can be said for the rise of a family as the ultimate status symbol.
Frankly, you men make us women look a little superficial: Cosmopolitan magazine did a sister survey of their female audience and found that 46 percent rank a “beautiful house” as the ultimate status symbol, and a successful husband or boyfriend came in at second.
I’ll admit that at first glance, the results in the Cosmo survey do indeed “make us women look a little superficial”. It’s hard to read anything but superficiality into responses that appear to value a beautiful house over a family, after all, isn’t it?
I think, however, that these responses could very well be read in a different way. First, it’s worth considering that the responses Clark-Flory cites from AskMen.com are not answers that indicate that the family (and care thereof) is the most personally or emotionally important thing in the lives of survey respondents. Instead, the survey indicates that being the head of a household is, for the self-selecting group responding to this survey, a marker of status and “real” masculinity. Clark-Flory acknowledges that there could be some “retro” values and ideals at play in these responses — but I think she underplays this possibility, in favor of making an optimistic claim about these results as proof of an emerging New Man. That’s not to say that Clark-Flory is wrong, necessarily, or that the men who responded to this survey aren’t a bunch of proud Papa Bears whose love of family would just warm your heart; given the language of the question that was asked, however, I’m not sure that conclusion is warranted.
Similarly, when taking the precise language of the questions into account, it seems too easy to read the Cosmo results that peg “a beautiful house” as the ultimate status symbol for female survey respondents as evidence of their superficiality. Instead, I’d point out that respondents not identifying the family as a “status symbol” suggests that they’re aware of a catch. While a husband and children might be markers of elevated social status for women in some respects, the demands placed upon wives and mothers in our culture still tend to erode their social (i.e. economic and professional) status in other ways. For a man, having a solid career and a wife who takes the lead on childcare will quite reliably indicate, or translate into, elevated social status: conversely, a woman who tries to “have it all” will often face myriad professional challenges and prejudices that make it difficult to compete with her male colleagues. So — superficial, maybe. But also quite canny and revealing.
That’s not to say, however, that I read this response as an indication of some wave of feminist subversion. Instead, it seems to be “retro” in the same way as the male responses: there is, let’s be clear, nothing really progressive about a set of values that ascribes elevated social status to a woman who lives in a gleaming suburban palace. That is a very, very old measure.
(Why, Mrs. Helmer, have you gone shopping again? Silly thing. Oh, Mrs. Draper, I simply adore that sofa!)
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