Society and Culture
5 Reasons Why Princeton Mom Is Your New Anti-Feminist She-ro
Twenty-something women of the world, are you married yet? Because according to Susan Patton, a.k.a. The Princeton Mom, you should be.
In her new book, Marry Smart: Advice for Finding THE ONE, Patton urges young, college attending women to spend their undergrad years husband hunting. According to her, finding a mate before graduation is imperative, because otherwise, your eggs will dry up in your ovaries and you’ll die alone with your seven cats. Or something like that.
Princeton Mom is all kinds of fascinating, and not just because she’s depressingly anti-feminist. Let’s run down the top five reasons why Susan Patton should be your new conservaturd celebrity obsession, mmkay?
1.) Lady is a tiger.
As a Princeton graduate, and a mother of two more, Patton is completely obsessed with orange and black. Her Upper East Side apartment is dripping with it — she’s got tiger tails hanging on the walls, orange and black craft projects strewn about, and she’s currently dreaming of a second wedding on the Princeton campus complete with orange roses.
If she wasn’t busy having New York Magazine features written about her and making appearances on the Today Show, I’d say Patton peaked during her college years. But maybe this tiger is just finding her stripes?
2.) Patton is recently divorced, which is totally a bummer.
She prefers not to talk about her former husband, although he “went to a college of almost no name recognition.” Ouch. Anyway, as it turns out, she frittered away her undergrad years at Princeton, you know, actually getting an education, and then wound up marrying whoever she happened to be dating at 31 in a race against the fertility clock.
I feel like it’s not a coincidence that that didn’t work out, no? Husband hunters, keep that in mind while you’re tracking down marriageable sperm donors. Marrying for the sake of your fertility timeline does not guarantee wedded bliss.
3.) The Princeton Mom is not COMPLETELY anti-feminist.
As a young woman, she eschewed immediate marriage and motherhood in favor of getting a top-notch education and developing her career. She even went so far as to legally emancipate herself from her “women don’t need to be educated” parents so she could attend Princeton.
Points, Princeton Mom. Feminist points.
4.) But don’t get too excited. She’s still pretty anti-feminist.
She doesn’t think date rape is a thing, and she thinks it’s a woman’s responsibility to keep herself out of situations where she might be violated. After all, we can’t expect men to act responsibly! Penises have a mind of their own, clearly. She totally freaked out Savannah Guthrie with this one.
Oh Mama Patton, I was rooting for you for a minute there.
5.) The Princeton Mom might be a tiger, but she’s also a cougar.
Embracing her newly found singledom, she’s dating multiple men at once, at least two of them Princeton grads. Free of the pressure of biology, she’s dating men who are fun and sexy — not potential sperm donors — and she’s having an awesome time doing it.
She just doesn’t really think YOU should be doing that, because, tick tock ladies. Those eggs of yours WILL NOT last forever.
So what do we make of the Princeton mom? Well, she’s a beacon of anti-feminist nonsense, the kind of self-help guru who sets women back a few generations.
She’s also kind of a badass. She’s unapologetic in her opinions, she’s going after it with all she’s got, and she’s feeling awesome about it.
So you do you, Princeton Mom! You be your fierce, tiger self.
The rest of you, don’t listen to her craze-tastic advice unless you’re inventing some kind of drinking game out of her TV appearances. In that case, please share.
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Hannah R. Winsten (@HannahRWinsten) is a freelance copywriter, marketing consultant, and blogger living in New York’s sixth borough. She hates tweeting but does it anyway. She aspires to be the next Rachel Maddow.
Featured image courtesy of [Andrew_Writer via Flickr]
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