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From
MEDIA: You magazine placed on Wed 30-Apr-08 10:30:51
Has his sex drive waned as you've become more successful
I'm writing a piece for You magazine in the Mail on Sunday about women whose partners lose their libidos as the women become more and more successful.
I'm looking for a woman in her 30s or 40s, married or single - who has had/has a relationship with a man whose sex drive waned the more successful she became. Alternatively, he may have lost his job and lost his sex drive at the same time
You will be interviewed and photographed and paid a small fee for your time.
Anyone interested can email me on anna@annamagee.com or phone me on 0208 519 5888 or phone 07971 61 31 51
Oh FFS Elasticwoman, leave her alone, it's a reasonable question and she's trying to make a living. She has paid good money to put a request on here and can do without infantile unfunny insults
PMSL. Oh my God! It's not Daily Mail-esque. It's actually for the Mail! <Rolls around with laughter> Will you illustrate the article with pictures of wizened, sour faced prunes in power suits with caption 'City Slickers Slack on Sucking?' or summat. <cackles>
The fact that there is money in a transaction does not make it ethical, Furrycat. Anybody who wants to tempt some one to go public with information which would be very distressing to a third party, is just a troublemaker.
It is a very strange question - is this a common problem? Not one I have seen discussed on here or anywhere else? Or is it just a way to keep women down?
It does seems that this is actually a construction of high powered women as unattractive and therefore something that we should not aim for. How to inspire a generation eh !!
And so, for that I agree with plastic - it is a disgraceful question to ask, particularly for a female journalist !
Well there's two ways to look at this. It could be seen as suggesting career women are unattractive. Equally it could be about men and their issues. I have friends this has happened to. I blame him, not her, for the fact that it's a problem for him that she's successful.
So we should wait and check out the article and see if it is sensible, scientific and feminist or a load of woman-baiting DM tosh!
I don't see it as successful = unattractive - I suppose it depends on how you would define unattractive. I feel men often emasculated by a successful woman and is indicative of the last thirty or so years when women have moved from the private to the public sphere.
No it isn't. It could be an implication that the man has a fear and loathing of successful women that affects his sex drive. The answer then would be to bring up boys differently and also to avoid controlling, insecure men. It could be very interesting and pro-woman. I agree with you that's hardly likely in the DM, but I don't think it's a question that shouldn't be asked.
Sorry but how is it acceptable to be re-inforcing "fear and loathing" of successful women ? It just perpetuates the concept and makes it acceptable. How will you bring boys up differently if this sort of argument is an acceptable one in society and the media?
I really don't think to raise the question - does this happen, has it happened to you - is to "reinforce" the phenomenon. Are you saying we shouldn't ask "have you been a victim of domestic violence" because that would be to "reinforce" the idea that it is OK?
If this article was written from a feminist angle (though I concede it may well not be in this case) it's a subject I'd be very interested in. I think it's extremely important to examine and interrogate - to use the poncy academic term - sexist male behaviour and male insecurities because they often lie behind more extreme behaviour such as physical abuse.
It goes without saying that men prefer their women fluffy. So if a woman has a brain and a good job then of course no-one will fancy her. And that will teach her to get above herself. Is this the sort of thing you're looking for?
Cant help with this particular article. BUT, I take vitamin supplements and have cellulite. I am willing to be lambasted in exchange for 'a small fee'.
Snow - the problem for me is that this seems to want to represent a (DM) attitude to women in power, not a true report or considered representation of what is happening. Of course, interrogate and examine but I don't think the angle of the article is going to do that - it's purpose and goal is to perpetuate a view that women in power are not attractive.
Whatever your views on the article the person is writing, it's unacceptable and offensive to write sneeringly "can't you make an honest living by going on the game or something"
I wonder what reaction this media request would have got had it not been in the Mail? If this was a Gurdian journalist would we all have thought it was a legitimate question?
I appreciate there is good reason to assume the Mail will only publish this article if it makes successful women look bad, but I just wonder whether people would have given more thought to the question if it had been asked by somebody else?
I don't think it matters if no-one responds. They'll just make someone up. Shall we make her up? Two sentences each.
Antonia Latterly-Shagless, 35, is a fee earner at a big City law firm. Her husband, Rupes (Antonia resists the urge to call him Drupes), is a recruitment consultant.
i saw a text dh had form a nusiness mate who is form OZ but was at that time in the us he said he'd do whatever it was dh wanted " as soon as he had got home after he had shagged the missus"
THAT is why I had a 12-day pregnancy scare this month. Because I am SAHM. If I just got my career up and running, I would never need to worry about taking precautions or late AFs again....
Er, well, it has been known, ahem, yes, but Anna clearly has principles. Also this is one of those stories where you have to get pics. Which is always a nightmare.
Rupes picks up photo of Antonia wearing pretty flowery dress and sassy cardigan and regards it wistfully. "Tonikins used to be so dependent on me, and really dress to please me, but now with her butch powersuited shoulders and 6 inch stiletos, I just feel so ........... emasculated"
"Antonia thinks she can have it all, but I have to do it all," said Rupes to his old school mate, Shitty. "I'll get the beers in, you need cheering up." said Shitty.
I remember when my parents used to get the DM (we're talking 20 years ago or more) there was one month where the same woman turned up one week as Jemima, the 34-year-old marketing consultant who was agonising over the right private school for Joshua, and another week as Emma, the 33-year-old lawyer who was thinking of turning to prostitution. Or something like that. It was very funny.
Actually, I think Anna might have a point - if you think about it, almost every thing that goes wrong in a marriage could be placed firmly at the feet of working / successful working mums:
Did he have an affair because of your job success?
Did he become depressed because of your job success?
Even if it was the other way around and he thought your career success was a wild turn on, then he would become a sex addict because of your job success (surely every DM reader's nightmare, a sex addict...) win win for the DM
Oh my god, finally someone understands my pain! Since I got my MSc, DH hasn't been able to lay a finger on my repulsive, over-achieving body. How I wish I'd stayed at home and baked brownies like a good little wifie...
What gets me most of all is that so many Mail readers are women. What are you all thinking, ladies!? It drips misogyny from every page.
A man losing his libido when he loses his job is entirely separate from finding Mrs Boardroom-Achiever unattractive. Their message really is : if you want a healthy sex life the man must go to work and the woman muse stay at home.
<reeling from pregnancy scare shock news - you should slip into a pin striped suit and take yourself off to the boardroom - your DH will go right off you >
No one's ever called me Plastic before. Was that a typo or MN rhyming slang?
I would have made the same original comment whatever publication Anna worked for. I think it is immoral to ask people to break confidences and publicly humiliate their partner or ex partner. Prostititution would be a less grubby way to earn a living, and Anna should be ashamed of herself. I do not have to be some one who never reads papers or magazines to hold that opinion.
Love the case history. "Sometimes I think all those feminists lied to me," sighs Antonia, "They said that it was good to work and earn my own money but look at me. Single and desperate. If only I'd married the boy next door and baked my own bread. That's real feminism. And I wouldn't have hairy legs either."
Rupert talked incessantly about the Rainforest and a belated Gap year. "The reason you didn't have a gap year," snapped Antionia Latterly-Shagless, "is because you were too fucking thick to go to university." Antonia called her beautician and booked her Brazilian in a very loud and mocking voice.
What puzzles me is the assumption that there is a syndrome whereby men lose their libido when a woman becomes more successful - have neveer heard of this????? Since I became more successful - like Cd being promoted from floor sweeper to greeter in tescos - I am fighting the men off.
I lay a trail of my pay cheques along the hall floor, up the stairs and into my boudoir.
He crawls along it, positively slathering.
Then he finds the note on the pillow - 'sorry - in the office, some porn and a tissue under the duvet'. Or I send my PA round to look after him on her way back from taking my suit to the dry cleaners - it's important not to neglect your relatinship, after all.
Rupert watched Hayley, the Latterly-Shagless nanny, sunbathing in the garden. Funny, but the way she said haitch no longer grated on him; she had lost a bit of weight around her tummy.
What if you marry young, are equally qualified but for one of you things take off and the other they don't?
The balance of the relationship has changed and this can be emasculating if its the bloke still on the starting blocks. It is other blokes who are unsympathetic and the bloke themselves that is inadequate for feeling threatened by not being the major wage earner.
I have had a successful career (in Engineering but I'm not at all butch), I have two young children (born in wedlock) and I don't seem to have a history of having problems getting male attention so can't be that repulsive.
I now am running my own business.
Balancing the children and setting up the business - which won a business plan award - was too much for my ex who had been lacking the big success he sought as a writer.
He moved in with a women I believe is submissive and certainly not an academic or professional achiever (I don't know her and he is at fault not her so I'm not running her down just exclaiming the contrast in personality)
I do bake my own bread and have a bit of a reputation for my cakes and pastries (I admit I'm not so good with a vacuum). Maybe the more I do that I have been praised for the more it emasculated him - his father actually teased him to the point of almost tears a few weeks before he walked out. It started by saying thanks for a lovely meal its just as well you cook, you clean, you do the childcare, you look after the finances, you are setting up the business to provide stability etc.
I wouldn't want to be a bloke in the modern world we women have got so good at asserting ourselves the male role has become very confused.
I'm now reading The surrendered wife by Laura Doyle - I know its not meant to be comic but very funny seeing how the other half live. Maybe I should try it next time around?
From
MEDIA: You magazine placed on Wed 30-Apr-08 10:30:51
(Though he may have had a very happy sex life - my disclaimer!) 
