Original Publication: New York Daily News, August 28, 1980
One of my women friends is a sophisticated writer with a powerful job. She’s also very pretty. Not long ago, she called to ask me if I knew a certain male executive at a movie studio. I said no. “He took me to dinner last night, and I really liked him,” she said. “But there’s just two things I can’t figure out: I don’t know whether he’s gay or straight and whether he’s taking me out for myself or for my job.”
Now there’s a 1980s dilemma. In calmer times, if an eligible single woman were asked to dinner by a man, she usually knew at least two things: his sexual preference and his purpose. These days it’s not so easy – particularly if the woman’s job makes her powerful and visible. “Tell her,” said a gay friend of mine who knows them both, “that he’s gay and it was for her job.”
Last week she called again. She was madly in love with someone else who told her right up front that he loved her for her body and wanted her to run away with him to the country. She asked her (male) boss for some time off, so she could enjoy her new relationship. She was even willing to wait a few months if she couldn’t run off that very weekend. Her boss was aghast. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he told her. “If you go away with him he won’t like you anymore. Having this high-powered job is what makes you sexy to him.” My friend was crushed and honestly pondered quitting. But she realized that if what her boss said were true, that power really is so sexy, she could end up without a job or a boyfriend. That’s very solo.
Single women who have recently earned their way into the power structure have more difficulty than men in integrating their personal and professional lives. Big men are flattered when little cupcakes go goo goo all over them. They encourage it, particularly when their title and position are virtually the only things they have going for them sexually. (Just look at the walking aphrodisiac, Henry Kissinger, before he married Nancy.) But big women are less comfortable exploiting their new-found power. They worry if they drop too many names, if their shop talk is threatening to whichever male ego they are protecting at the moment. They are crestfallen if they discover that a man might be using them.
“Women still want to think they are being taken out for themselves,” said a successful woman friend of mine. “They want to be kissed and given chocolates. They are offended if they find out the man is after them because of the job the hold.”
“I know I shouldn’t feel guilty about the various young men I find myself in bed with,” says another woman, “but sometimes I do. I mean, why should I have twinges about sleeping with my researcher or that gorgeous young ad salesman? Older men never did when they were sleeping with me.”
Before women were able to secure power in their own right, heiresses were the ones who used to get male attention all out of proportion to their attributes. There has been a recent variation on that theme, too: radical young men who specialize in the alienated daughters of the rich. They love having the power to grab the daughter away from the father’s money and authority. In so doing, they can screw the establishment both ways. Still, mere heiresses don’t really make it these days – even if they have pretend jobs, are alienated or are “really into photography.” Who wants a rich little Nikonette when you can have Barbara Walters?
Of course, the ultimate today is Couple Power, where both sides use each other. Bess Myerson and Ed Koch, Barry Diller and Diane Von Furstenberg, Gloria Vanderbilt and Bobby Short. Phyllis George and Bob Evans, Phyllis George and John Y. Brown. Elizabeth Taylor and John Warner, etc., etc. Am I a stonehearted cynic to assume that deep and abiding mutual love and respect were not the sole motivating factors in one of these liaisons? Even today, if you ask Bob Evans about his marriage to Phyllis George he will dismiss it as “bad casting.” Casting. It’s come to that for those who intuitively understand how to make the gossip columns and people pages throb. The woman achieves, the man attaches, or the ambitous woman goes right over and attaches herself to the man. What is better than power except more power? Unfortunately, not even Barbara Walters can make a studious economist like Alan Greenspan sexy.
