Is this realistic or misogynistic?

[Thistimeforamerica]

I have a male friend who is talking about divorced women with children who want to remarry/ meet someone else. He is saying they have to “maximise” their “second hand market value.” He is saying they have to exercise, read, make the most of what’s left of their looks, become cultured etc.

Do you think he is speaking the truth?

It is sadly both realistic and misogynistic.

As much as we’d like to think that all those things don’t matter in the dating pool- being fit through exercise, being well groomed so we look nice, and reading so we have something interesting to add to a conversation, they do matter. That’s the reality if you are divorced with children.

But the way the OPs friend expressed it was in a misogynistic fashion. Calling women “second hand” and saying that self-care is for “market value”. Women are not objects to be bought and sold like they were in the not so long ago past.

Mysogynistic and twattish thing to say.

However, as a woman who falls into that category, that's genuinely how I feel about myself, that I need to "make the most of what I've got" so to speak, and while I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing in itself, the way he phrased it - likening divorced women to used objects - makes him a prick.