Sham

by Steve Salerno

  Here again, however, are signs that the intended effect—equipping women with every trick of the romantic/sexual trade—may not be the actual effect. “For the average woman, measuring up to the exalted sexual standards set in Cosmo is nigh impossible,” the independent-minded feminist Camille Paglia has written. Surveys on the relatively low level of sexual satisfaction among single females would appear to confirm this. For example, a 1994 study by sociologists Linda Waite and Kara Joyner, “Emotional and Physical Satisfaction with Sex in Married, Cohabiting, and Dating Sexual Unions: Do Men and Women Differ?” showed that married women are markedly happier with their sex lives than the Sex and the City types to whom Cosmo appeals. Similarly, in a small but intriguing 2003 research project by Eric S. Blumberg, PhD, “The Lives and Voices of Highly Sexual Women,” only fifteen of the forty-four women who admitted to the title characterization reported “relative satisfaction” in their current sexual relationships.

  Further, one has to question the wisdom of telling readers only half the story—equipping them in a technical sense without putting that technique in any ethical context—thus yielding the impression that sexual virtuosity alone will guarantee a woman lasting contentment. In Spin Sisters Myrna Blyth accuses Cosmo and Glamour of indoctrinating women in the notion that “narcissism is an advanced evolutionary stage of female liberation,” and that a “predatory” approach to dating and sexual relationships is “the most important step in [a woman’s] personal liberation.” Such an approach has to cause feelings of confusion and self-doubt when women learn that sexual intimacy in the real world is not quite as antiseptic, painless, and consequence free as it seems to be in the pages of Cosmo.

  The final insult is that the self-help matter offered by women’s magazines sometimes isn’t even responsive to real-world problems, or, at least, the problems of real-world readers. A few years ago I asked a young editor I knew, who’d recently taken her third job in that segment of the industry, how her latest magazine managed to tease such great letters out of its readership month after month.

  “We make ’em up,” she said with a coy shrug. “We decide what kind of mix we need for the issue, or if there’s some really provocative theme we want to cover. Then we write a letter to fit.”

  ADVICE IN NINETY SECONDS

  People who seek feedback on relationship issues, and who don’t want to wait for Phil McGraw’s next book or John Gray’s next seminar, have two other major places to turn: the telephone and the Internet. Both deserve some analysis.

  Laura Schlessinger is not America’s only radio shrink, and at least in matters of dating and relationship building, she may not even be its premier one. Dr. Joy Browne has positioned herself as talk radio’s foremost expert on practical advice for finding a good relationship. Her books covering various aspects of the subject include Dating for Dummies, The Nine Fantasies That Will Ruin Your Life, Getting Unstuck, and It’s a Jungle out There, Jane. Unlike so many others in SHAM who call themselves doctors, Browne actually is entitled to use the descriptor. She holds an MA and a PhD from Northeastern University and did postdoctoral work at Tufts Medical School. Later she spent time as a therapist in private practice and then as the director of social services for the Boston Redevelopment Authority. Browne even has won kudos from the American Psychological Association, and from Talkers magazine, which voted her Best Female Talk Show Host two years running.

  Another in the growing list of The Oprah Winfrey Show alumni, Browne emphasizes that her advice is “compassionate” and “practical,” which most interpret as a none-too-subtle swipe at Schlessinger’s moralistic shrillness. Everyone in SHAM has a pet phrase, and Browne’s is “What’s your question?” (a softer version of Dr. Laura’s snappish “So what’s your question for me?” usually said to a caller who has gotten herself in a pickle that Schlessinger finds despicable). Though Browne has never quite hit Schlessinger’s heights, she has a loyal following among the lovelorn and has never inspired the rage and contempt that seems to build so naturally in so many of her rival’s listeners.

  Where Browne goes astray is that she buys into the conceit that confidence comes before success or other “factual” attributes. Early in her book Dating for Dummies, she outlines her theory that success in dating—like success in just about everything—flows from self-confidence. “So let’s talk about this confidence thing,” says Browne in her chatty style. “Are some people—the gorgeous, smooth, successful among us—born with it? Nope! These people got to be successful and smooth by appearing to be confident.” It’s the type of omnibus statement SHAM thrives on.

  The evidence, alas, does not support Browne’s optimistic statement that attitude is all that matters. Daniel Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle, researchers at the University of Texas, have devoted considerable attention to the specific impact of looks on success. Their work appears to show that the job market clearly and substantially rewards beauty—something people are born with. People judged “strikingly attractive” by the survey’s information gatherers earned, on average, up to 10 percent more in salary than less-attractive peers, even after adjusting for education and other factors. No matter which profession Hamermesh and Biddle looked at, they found the same phenomenon. In the legal profession, better-looking lawyers of both genders earn more money by their fifth year of private practice than less-attractive lawyers, and the skew widens further with time. Good-looking male attorneys, the researchers found, also have a much higher probability of ascending to partner than their more ordinary-looking colleagues. Hamermesh found the same thing when he looked at the University of Texas itself. Faculty members whom students considered “good-looking” got higher ratings as teachers. (The bad news for the good-looking is that in some studies physical attraction has been negatively correlated with honesty and overall concern for others.)

  What’s more, if you’re ugly, don’t commit a crime, at least in Texas. A 1991 study of fifteen hundred defendants by sociology researchers Chris Downs and Phillip Lyons showed that Texas judges impose meaningfully sterner sentences on the unattractive felons who come before them. Even doctors aren’t above considering beauty. Studies show that doctors spend more time with attractive patients and have a better, ahem, bedside manner with them. Other studies suggest that good-looking people generally date other good-looking people. This is especially true of good-looking men. The message would appear to be that despite Joy Browne’s simplistic statements about the power of “confidence,” an ugly duckling can summon up enormous confidence and still not land that date with Halle Berry or Brad Pitt.

  SHAM partisans might argue that physically attractive people possess more self-confidence, and they’d surely have a point. Looking in the mirror and seeing Brad Pitt or Halle Berry staring back at you no doubt does wonders for your mood. But the correlation with success that researchers consistently find is with the beauty part, not the confidence part. If Joy Browne and others were correct—if confidence were the marker for success, not beauty—then the statistical correlation between beauty and success would not be as clear as it is. And you can’t will yourself to be beautiful.

  You can’t will yourself to be omniscient, either, but that doesn’t seem to stop Laura Schlessinger. Her much-maligned fondness for jumping the diagnostic gun—even in the course of a ninety-second phone call—compounds the problem for those seeking romantic help via the telephone. During an August 2004 radio show, Schlessinger spent the first half of a call chiding a young caller, “Marilyn,” for expecting men to be more like women. Marilyn had begun the call by voicing the fear that her boyfriend of seven months was “unable to attach,” possibly because of his “abusive” upbringing; she said she’d like him to “open up” more to her. Cutting the young woman off in the midst of several fumbling attempts at greater specificity, Schlessinger launched into one of her favorite tirades, on how today’s society has conditioned women to expect wimpy men.4 Schlessinger strongly implied that Marilyn should count herself lucky to have a more traditional, masculine
man.

  I asked Dr. Michael Hurd how he would have handled Marilyn’s situation. “I’d want to know more about this guy,” Hurd told me, “especially when I hear the caller hinting at an ‘abusive childhood.’ I definitely would’ve explored that angle, when you’re talking about a guy who presents as cold and emotionally withdrawn.” Depending on the nature of the abuse, says Hurd, “what that girl could have on her hands is not so much a traditionally masculine man, but a time bomb. A good therapist might recommend that he needs some counseling himself.”

  The old Laura Schlessinger, having rendered her verdict, might have voiced some perfunctory expression of goodwill to Marilyn (“Got it? Good luck now”) and moved on. But Schlessinger more recently has been attempting greater empathy, giving callers more time and latitude; she’ll allow them to hang on through a break (an extraordinarily rare occurrence earlier in her radio career), and she instructs not a few of them to “be sure and call me back and let me know how it all worked out now, OK?” This kinder, gentler Dr. Laura could have to do with some personal epiphany in the wake of her own travails, or it could have to do with her keen awareness of the attrition in her ratings as well as in the number of stations carrying her show. Regardless, Schlessinger did not immediately dispose of Marilyn this day. And when the frazzled young woman finally managed to get a word in edgewise, she gave Schlessinger a concrete example of the behavior that distressed her. She explained how, that very morning, when she’d tried to pin down concrete plans for that evening, her boyfriend had put her off by saying, in essence, “I’ll see how I feel when I get off work and if I feel like it, I’ll call you.”

  Clearly taken aback, as well as offended on Marilyn’s behalf—one could almost feel the little hairs on the back of Schlessinger’s neck perking to attention—the talk-therapist at this point reversed her field. The boyfriend was no longer a “traditionally masculine man,” but a self-centered brute who “didn’t care about Marilyn.” Suddenly the biggest question in Schlessinger’s mind was why Marilyn had wasted seven months on this bum.

  It’s almost impossible to overstate the significance of what happened during that phone call. A young woman came to Dr. Laura with a problem. Dr. Laura leaped to a conclusion about the nature of the problem and chided the caller, in essence, for being silly. Had the call ended there, as Hurd tells us, a fair amount of damage could have been done to Marilyn. But we can’t be overly happy about what finally did happened, either, says Hurd. “Anybody can have a bad day. And in spite of what I said before about any red flags in this guy’s background, I hate to see people giving relationship-ending advice based on a phone call. In any one phone call, you’re seldom getting a good feel for the nature of the problem.” In the end, he says, it’s further evidence that when life-changing issues like relationships are at stake, “you shouldn’t be turning to pop psychology for answers.”

  THE ANSWER IS JUST A CLICK AWAY

  You may recall Wendy Kaminer’s snarky observation that what mostly distinguishes self-help gurus from laypeople is the former group’s ability to “write well enough to get a book deal.” The Internet eliminates even that “credential,” modest as it is, thus further lowering the bar. It allows people who couldn’t get a book deal to direct-market their self-published (or, increasingly, e-published) wares and become viable niche players in the burgeoning relationships market. The Internet, after all, is where busy and bar-averse singles of all ages increasingly run to find their actual partners, so it stands to reason that they’d go there for advice on partnership as well. The rise of the Internet opened up SHAM’s relationship wing to anyone with a modem and a Web-design tool.

  We’re less interested here in actual dating sites like eHarmony.com and Match.com than in the cornucopia of other sites proffering all that essential wisdom on the mental game of romance.5 There are thousands upon thousands of such sites (a Google search under “relationship advice” yielded 197,000 hits), each offering “indispensable” advice for hopeless romantics, for people about to embark on relationships, for people who regret having embarked on the relationships they’re in—in short, for every possible permutation of relationship state-of-being. While many of these sites purport to offer free services, the truth is that nothing online is free. Eventually you receive a pitch for something that isn’t free. A Web page run by self-described “relationship coaches” Susie and Otto Collins, cheerily headlined “For Anyone Considering Leaving a Relationship or Getting a Divorce,” is typical of the group.

  “Dear Internet Friend,” they begin warmly. “If we guess correctly you’re in either one of two situations. One—you’re unhappy in your current relationship and are trying to decide whether to stay or go. Or two—you’ve already made the decision to leave and you want to make sure you’re making the right decision.” Leaving aside the issue of whether the two questions are basically the same question asked two different ways, the Collinses continue, “You’re about to discover some of the most important questions you need to ask yourself in order to make the clearest, most empowered”—there’s that word again—“decision possible about whether to Stay or Go. By reading the information on this web page you’ll also discover a powerful new resource that will give you fresh new insights into your current relationship.” After a few more paragraphs of that, and some confessions about how their own relationship weathered a period of turmoil that taught them profound lessons, and then a series of lines exhorting you to take a “true, honest and truthful” look at your own relationship, the Collinses finally get around to that “powerful new resource”—their own book, Should You Stay or Should You Go? The Collinses swear that Should You Stay or Should You Go? is the book they wish they had had when they were going through their own tough times. They finish up with a list of things their book will do for you, number one of which, startlingly enough, is “help you know whether you really want to stay in this relationship or move on.” They also emphasize that “although we do give our opinion and insights about some of the issues, these decisions are yours and yours alone,” lest you feel like calling them at home, after you’ve read the book, to ask, “Well, Susie and Otto, should I stay or should I go?”

  Order Should You Stay or Should You Go? and you will receive, absolutely free, no less than seven bonus products. That includes two additional books by the Collinses, Creating Relationship Magic and Love Lessons, and such “special reports” as “6 Keys to Healing After Leaving a Painful Relationship.” The “regular price” for all this wisdom is $59, but, of course, if you “order now”—the words form a clickable blue link—you get it all for just $34.95. And if you can’t wait another minute before deciding whether to stay or go, a downloadable version of the book is available to you as soon as the bank approves your credit card.

  Notice how Susie and Otto Collins have niched their approach to the marketplace—the whole Stay or Go conceit. The Collinses have learned and applied the cardinal rule of online marketing in a world in which each of us has been taught to see ourselves as a special-interest group. If you have a relationship or are desirous of having a relationship, any kind of relationship, with any kind of partner, there is a site that purports to address your special needs, even though, in most cases, the “special needs” part is just a smoke screen, a way of packaging generic insights that could apply to any relationship under almost any circumstances. Deciding whether to “stay or go” is not that different from deciding whether your relationship “works,” which is not that different from “fixing your relationship” (or “rescuing your relationship,” as Dr. Phil might put it), which is not that different from understanding “what you really want in a relationship,” which is not that different from evaluating your “relationship fitness.” And yet, by coming at the topic from so many different angles, online purveyors of SHAM succeed in segmenting and subsegmenting the marketplace, thereby cleverly reselling the same advice with myriad different labels, just as Hollywood keeps making the same slasher movies with different titles (or sometimes
the same title, with a II or a III or a IV after it, if they’ve got a bankable commodity like Freddy Krueger to work with).

  ROMEO IS HEMORRHAGING

  So where has all this SHAM-administered advice brought us?

  An editor I know at the Washington Post took his wife to a cozy Georgetown restaurant for their tenth wedding anniversary. Amid the mood lighting and champagne, they were nonetheless subjected to the conversation of a young couple in an adjacent booth who spent all of dinner swapping bond-fund appraisals, high-tech esoterica—everything but sweet nothings. Before long the editor’s wife leaned over to him and whispered, “I feel like I’m back at the office.” In my own travels, I’ve come upon similar scenes many times. I once wrote about a particularly striking experience in a trendy café in Manhattan, where I spent two hours surrounded by way-cool twenty- and thirtysomethings. I saw exactly one couple that night who displayed any outward signs of affection toward each other. They cooed and occasionally kissed, and, for those unforgivable sins, were greeted with smirks and muttered put-downs by others in attendance.

  These are anecdotal cases, but I don’t think anyone would dispute that by and large, romance—the true, swooning, Cary Grant/Grace Kelly kind—is dying, or at least on life support. Young men and women are “hipper” today. They laugh at chivalry and frown upon public displays of affection. Though many social influences come into play here, the combined forces of SHAM indisputably contribute to the mix, taking the spontaneity and magic out of love.6 SHAM kills romance by making courtship (another word that seems like a vestige of a bygone era) programmatic and premeditated, something to be regarded with cynicism. Romance is the abandonment of self-discipline; romance is reckless, and SHAM preaches, above all, self-control, the conscious triumph of will over impulse. This is why SHAM’s cure for the demonstrated romantic malaise of the past quarter century is as bad as the disease itself—if not worse.