The Plural of ‘Anecdote’ …

Posted on | August 25, 2011 | 27 Comments

. . . is “data,” and the data regarding our demographic apocalypse are varied and interesting, if often pathetic. Consider this confessional article from the London Daily Mail by journalist Rachael Lloyd:

When I was younger, I always expected to become a mum. I even played with names over the years — Robert for a boy, and Caitlin or Daisy for a girl. As far as I was concerned, the day I became a mum was just out there waiting for me to reach out and embrace it.
But I’ve just turned 39. I’m fit, healthy, with lots of friends and an enjoyable job in the family firm. I own my own flat, albeit a humble one. I’m close to my extended family and I’m reasonably attractive on a good hair day.
Yet, at times, I feel like an utter failure. I have failed to do the one thing that even the most uneducated, unimaginative woman, sane or insane, can accomplish. I’ve failed to have a child.
Having a child is so easy, isn’t it? Anyone can do it. So how did I manage to miss the boat? How did I mess up so spectacularly?
During my 20s, I put in long days as an aspiring journalist, and at night I partied with the best of them. In my mid-30s I battled an addiction to alcohol but have come out the other side smiling and sober.
Like a lot of women my age, I’d thought 30 was probably an ideal age to settle down. But once I hit 30, it’s was if I hit an oil patch and the years just slipped away. The men I dated either weren’t at the same life stage as me, or simply didn’t have the money to commit to a baby.
Having children is expensive, and I dreaded ending up broke and abandoned with a wailing newborn in my arms.
So to my dismay, like too many of my generation, I’ve become one of the ‘circumstantially infertile’ — a woman unable to have children because I don’t have a suitable partner with whom to conceive.
And I’m not alone. According to a recent study, 48 per cent of university educated women born in the late Sixties and early Seventies are childless. . . .

You can read the whole thing, and try not to ask yourself, “Is there maybe more to it than that?” Like, you should resist the temptation to think that maybe the circumstances of Lloyd’s “circumstantially infertile” situation were the result of her own unwise choices. Meanwhile, via WeSmirch, we have this shocking headline:

Charlize Theron Wants A Baby NOW & She’ll
Adopt If She Can’t Find A Man To Help Her!

That’s somewhat hyped-up but still, the fact is, Theron is now 36. Last year, she ended a nine-year relationship with Stuart Townsend and — strange as it might seem for such a famous beauty — she doesn’t seem to have any marital prospects.

Marital prospects are somewhat more encouraging for 27-year-old Hilaria Thomas, if by “encouraging” you mean shacking up with a middle-aged asshole:

Alec Baldwin is settling down as he advances his political ambitions.
The 53-year-old perennial bachelor, who has his eye on a mayoral run, also seems to have his heart set on marriage with 27-year-old yoga instructor Hilaria Thomas. . . .
Baldwin has sold his 300 Central Park West apartment at the famed Art Deco Eldorado to move in with his girlfriend downtown. . . .
“He’s really in love,” a source said. “He’s even met her parents. He sees marriage in the near future.”

And now we come to the final data point, involving this young lady:

That’s 22-year-old actress Emma Stone. If you’ve never heard of her, don’t worry. Neither had I until I saw (via Ace of Spades) that Miss Stone was the object of a rather bizarre online video proposal:

I just wanted to let you know that I think you’re all the way beautiful. Not just pretty, but, you know, smart and kindhearted. And if I were a lot younger, I would marry you, and we would have chubby little freckled faced kids.

That proposal was made by 49-year-old Jim Carrey:

The plural of “anecdote” is “data,” and perhaps you see the faint outline of a trend here: While 30-something women like Rachael Lloyd and Charlize Theron are withering on the vine, divorced middle-aged guys like Alec Baldwin and Jim Carrey are chasing after 20-somethings. There is some sort of mismatch in the romantic interests or lifestyles of modern singles, a mismatch that tends to prevent the development of durable pair-bonds. Without opportunities for lasting marriage, many women avoid child-bearing. The particular cases cited here may be exceptional, but they are nonetheless representative of a larger trend.

And aren’t stories more interesting than statistics?

Category: Celebrities, Culture

Comments

27 Responses to “The Plural of ‘Anecdote’ …”

CalMark
August 26th, 2011 @ 2:29 am

Young women (of what was once called “marriageable age”) now simultaneously work, attend grad school, party, travel, etc., etc., etc. They reject good marriage prospects, preferring creeps–sleeping with them, living with them, breaking up (often dramatically) with them, then complaining about “bad relationships.” Suddenly, they’re 40-ish, alone, and miserable.

Serious 30- and 40-something men should reject these “have it all” women because they have: a) rejected decent men for a generation–so now the good guys are supposed to come running? b) frittered away their child-bearing years–rejected men (see a) above) want someone sensible to have a family with.

Feminism worships “choice” but ignores the fact that choice-directed actions lead to real-life consequences that can’t be shouted down by the New York Times. Women are learning the hard way, too late, about the real world.
Anamika
August 26th, 2011 @ 2:37 am

If I were to be totally naked in front of the mirror, I’d have nothing to say except that it is a very beautiful world.

I’d say “Thank You” because all of it is a gift.

Hey did you know there is a growing trend for women of all ages to stop covering their grays, and celebrate its own unique beauty. One of the re-frames is that gray is not to be looked at as the absence of color, but a color in its own right.
Anonymous
August 26th, 2011 @ 2:58 am

Dungbat.
gg
August 26th, 2011 @ 3:03 am

In Germanic countries and French North it is still considered sissy or “fake” to dye one’s gray; my father is gray early like me and often he expressed his contempt for his brother in Canada who was “hiding his age” by dyeing his hair.
Dianna Deeley
August 26th, 2011 @ 3:04 am

There’s another aspect, though.

For me, who never wanted kids at all, it’s actually worked out all right. I was clear on most of what I wanted from early on – and I’ve been able to be a support to my friends who did want (and have, boy howdy, did they!) kids. It hasn’t all been beer and skittles for them, but the majority have made successful marriages, and even those who didn’t, have coped. I’m happy to have been of some help for all of them.

There’s nothing sadder than a woman who cannot find a man to be her husband and the father of her children, except a male human being who never grows up, and ends up sad, empty and alone.
Dianna Deeley
August 26th, 2011 @ 3:06 am

And this has to do with the topic, what?

Let me put it this way – as a graying, less-sylph-like than of yore female of a certain age, it’s very nice that you’re happy. But your effusion does not address the topic of the post.
Tennwriter
August 26th, 2011 @ 3:09 am

Feminism is bad for woman and children and green, growing things. Feminism needs to be destroyed as a species of Leftism which also needs killing.

Let us bring back the System of Chivalry (which does not just bind men, but woman to the pursuit of High Culture).
Anamika
August 26th, 2011 @ 3:16 am

Why am I not surprised. It never goes out of style to find something “wrong” with other people, whatever it is. Do they ever ask themselves why they continue to give an energy like ‘contempt’ a life of their own? Contempt is an object, too.

Maybe this is an aspect of the tendency to default to the “I have been happy and everything is wonderful for a long time, surely something bad is going to happen soon” so they look for something bad, and when we are happy we keep looking for ways to make sure it stays around, rather than just being the happiness.

Or maybe they think like you and are convinced that everyone is just a bundle of shitty impulses, and realizing this is their salvation.
Anamika
August 26th, 2011 @ 3:24 am

Who said i’m graying? Or that I’m less-sylphlike? Oh, i see…. you must be either projecting or your have poor comprehension skills. Either way that’s OK, I understand.
Anonymous
August 26th, 2011 @ 3:26 am

The feminists of the 60s and 70s welcomed the destruction of the sexual taboos because they thought that they were imposed by and for the benefit of males. It turns out that women benefited from them. Easy availability of sex allows males to avoid commitment and remain adolescents into their thirties. That in turn results in a lot of women who finally grow up and find that they want to get married, only to discover there is no one who wants to marry them.
gg
August 26th, 2011 @ 3:31 am

Not you dear Anamika, you are not a bundle of shitty impulses, each of your thoughts is precious, and the ground you tread too … It was only a description of my brother Wombat and I (hermanos latinos, caramba! banzai! vive la république!), who have been freed by seeing how oneself is the cause of all evil and that misery is never out there, but i don’t advise it as a method; it is not for maricones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQbu996yyEI
Dianna Deeley
August 26th, 2011 @ 3:32 am

*Sigh*

Not…quite.

There has to be some room for women who simply (forgive the caps, here) DO NOT WANT to have children, do like sex, and want a life lived on the same terms as a man could demand.

My honor is in my word and my work, not between my legs. If there’s no room for that, then the ideal of individual freedom has failed.

Note that I am not saying men and women are identical – they simply are not (I could not fulfill the demands of an combat infantryman, and it would be both ridiculous and deleterious for me to try); but I will put my mind, my integrity, and my competence up against any man, any day, and be sure of at least an equal outcome.

However, there’s a corollary: I have to accept that I will be weighed exactly like a man. Which means (as I accepted by the time I was 16) no children.

For me (and I grant that I am an exception), that was not a hardship; for many women, maybe even the majority, it’s a disaster.

What’s needed is a world with room for both choices, instead of leaving both men and women sad and empty.

Sorry for so long a comment. I’ve been thinking about Lloyd’s article rather hard.
Dianna Deeley
August 26th, 2011 @ 3:49 am

Did I say any of that? I described myself, and expressed my happiness that you are happy when you look in the mirror.

I never intended to step on your sensitivities – I was congratulating your self-love.
Anamika
August 26th, 2011 @ 3:53 am

What’s needed is a world with room for both choices, instead of leaving both men and women sad and empty.

Good point, Dianna.

Oooh, and the notion of “eager to please” is another aspect. The indoctrination of little girls to become people pleasers as women…Oy.

It seems to me that women have more native talent for this in general
but there are of course many exceptions and variations. Problems arise
when individual women who have less are met with stereotypical
expectations.

And so there is this indoctrination, which fails when contrary to nature, and fails in many different ways.

The indoctrination or acculturation is so insidious. And who do we have
to blame for that? For the most part, it still seems to be passed down
from mother to daughter. Sigh.

Blame — lots of that to go around. A wise man one said that men have so
oppressed women that they (men) are to blame. Except . . . to restore
balance, women who have no power in their marriages will “get back” by
taking it out on their children, and the sons grow up to be chauvinists
and the game goes on, a chicken-and-egg question really.
ThePaganTemple
August 26th, 2011 @ 3:56 am

What the hell is wrong with these idiots? What makes Charlize Theron think that any man worth his salt is-well, never mind that one, let’s move along to the real fool, Jim Carey. Does he even comprehend that he looks and sounds creepy? And Baldwin? Par for the course there. And why is it these people think that anybody gives a shit about their personal lives? Because so many of them do, enough to keep the tabloids flying off the shelves anyway.

This is why I am always saying you shouldn’t take anything for granted when it comes to the American voting public. What you are dealing with here are millions of people who will literally spend north of twenty dollars calling to vote for their favorite American Idol contestants. And they’ll do it every week, as long as their favorite one lasts.

No, I’m not sure Obama’s defeat is assured. Not in this Foolocracy.
Dianna Deeley
August 26th, 2011 @ 4:13 am

“Oooh, and the notion of “eager to please” is another aspect. The
indoctrination of little girls to become people pleasers as women…Oy.”

I’ve heard of this, but never experienced it, so have no way to respond.
Anamika
August 26th, 2011 @ 4:19 am

We all come up short, or trippy, not walking talk, unclear or whatever that can be criticised in some way. I apologise for my snappy reponse. In fact, it was my own poor reading comprehension that led me to make that remark about you.
Anamika
August 26th, 2011 @ 4:39 am

The mirror game is funny, though, isn’t it? I believe that God keeps a video camera in every full length mirror so he can take a look once in awhile and get a good hysterical laugh to relieve the pressure of tallying all of those bloody wars.

Then, when people die and assume they’re going to get into trouble with God for blowing up another tank, he sends them to the viewing room and instead of showing them the war video, he makes then watch and listen to themselves in a video he made of them naked in front of a mirror. How many souls have been dragged to Hell sobbing and crying out to the Lord.. “But, Lord, ALL I wanted was a tighter ass and a nose job!!”
Anamika
August 26th, 2011 @ 4:44 am

Not you dear Anamika, you are not a bundle of shitty impulses, each of
your thoughts is precious, and the ground you tread too …

oh, yeah, right hahaha …

It was only a description of my brother Wombat and I (hermanos latinos, caramba! banzai! vive la république!), who have been […]

Now you’re talking !!

I love it! Thank you!
Adjoran
August 26th, 2011 @ 6:28 am

If Charlize Theron had some idea of having children, she shouldn’t have made “Monster” – about the serial killer hooker.
nicholas
August 26th, 2011 @ 6:30 am

If Jim Carey were the appropriate age, he would marry Emma Stone, and they would have chubby freckled face kids, go camping, tell ghost stories by the fire, and sex …. …… Jim can’t even say how amazing that would be, but with a roll of his eyes and a boyish smirk, he thinks Emma will be able to get an idea of what kind of fun that might be. At least Jim is hoping it conveys interest in a playful and non threatening way.

Yeah, the world would pretty much be his oyster, er, her oyster, her oyster, if only he were the “appropriate” age. Yep, that’s a sad one all right. Jimmy almost gets a little misty eyed thinking of his cruel fate. Oh, and by the way, Jim has done a careful search, and all he can find in terms of signs of aging are a few lines on his face, some gray in his beard, and a longer time required for him to pee (in case, Emma, you really wanted to know).

Well, there are a few more signs, Jim, the most obvious being that the women you find yourself attracted to keep getting younger, and your pitch seems more and more bizarre and inappropriate. Can you imagine, Jim, a twenty-five year old guy making a pitch for Emma Stone by video like this? How about if you were twenty-five, would you try a video pitch about freckle faced children and roasting marsh-mellows by the fire? No, huh? Well, take that as a clue. You ain’t twenty-five.

Look, Jim, you may know about her, but you don’t know her. Despite leaving the cut-off point vague and possibly open to correction, you’re right, you are not the appropriate age for this young girl, and if you had any real care for her you would hope that she would work those issues out in her own good time, and with someone other than you.

Oh, and Jim, Emma Stone will be getting older with each passing day as well. She’s not always going to look so fresh and innocent. She will look more mature, and hopefully, she will be. But I doubt we will be able to say the same for you. Then what? Another video play for some other twenty year old. Please. Leave that crap to Bill Maher. It’s pathetic.
Bob Belvedere
August 26th, 2011 @ 12:14 pm

http://thecampofthesaints.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/troll-doll-flower-01.jpg
Bob Belvedere
August 26th, 2011 @ 12:17 pm

Dianna, Anamika is not sylph-like, but rather syphilitic.
Tennwriter
August 26th, 2011 @ 2:37 pm

Dianna,

Feminism created a Barbarian Low Culture for women; what we see with Roissy and the PUA ‘Game’ guys is the response which is to create a Barbarian Low Culture for men. Both sides have to be at the same level whether High or Low for the equation to balance.

————–

“A life lived on the same terms as a man could demand” is not desirable for women. It seems to me that women want the good parts of being a man, and the good parts of being a woman, with neither of the bad parts.

Well, thats nice work if you can get it.

I’ll freely acknowledge there are aspects of being a woman that are not fun at all.

But how about you produce a page of links showing women running into burning buildings to save people they don’t even know? You can’t. And before you think, I’m slamming women, I’m not. Its the guy’s job to put his life at risk, to be the expendable one.

Not fun.

So you’re not living your life on the same terms as a man, IMO. Neither should you.

————–

I will note that we’ve made the work place considerably more padded and safe for women. Now our economy sputters.

In addition, diversity is NOT a strength in its primary effect.

———————-

‘the ideal of individual freedom has failed’ because I can’t have a polygamous married relationship with all the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders.

————-

Before Feminism came along there was a place for women without children. After it joins Communism in the dust heap of history there will still be places.

See what Phyliss Schafly said about her great success and the total lack of help from Feminism.

————–

I’m a stay-at-home dad, and a writer and game designer. I should be sympathetic to people pursuing unusual life courses. So more power to YOU, and Death to Feminism!
Tennwriter
August 26th, 2011 @ 2:44 pm

There is a long list of crimes that Feminism has done, monstrous horrors inflicted on our society.

Chivalry allows for women not to have children as long as this choice is recognized as odd, which it is. I’m odd too.

Don’t think you have to associate yourself with this malevolent ideology to choose marriage without children.
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