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"  Oh, Lord. So I&amp;#039;m pretty sure that Susan A. Patton, among the first group of 200 female students to attend Princeton University in the 1970s, meant well when she wrote this Letter to The Editor printed in the Princetonian. She&amp;#039;s like that older relative of yours who nervously wipes her mouth with a hankie and provides a weak smile when you tell her you&amp;#039;re still single. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m sure it&amp;#039;ll happen for you, sweetie. Have you thought about growing out your hair? Men like long hair on girls,&amp;quot; she stammers as she carefully folds her hankerchief back up and slides it into her pocketbook. She just wants the best for you! Because when women don&amp;#039;t marry in their early twenties, they shrivel up like salted slugs! I&amp;#039;m shriveling! I&amp;#039;m shriveling! Help me! Patton writes that she has been returning annually to the university to speak about women and leadership. However, she asserts that the students in attendance were more interested in hearing about personal relationships, particularly marriage (which seems... not likely! But OK, I&amp;#039;ll roll with it for now): You girls glazed over at preliminary comments about our professional accomplishments and the importance of networking. [...] Clearly, you don&amp;#039;t want any more career advice. At your core, you know that there are other things that you need that nobody is addressing. A lifelong friend is one of them. Finding the right man to marry is another. Patton then goes on to inform the &amp;quot;daughters [she] never had&amp;quot; that the most important part of attending Princeton is to land a Princeton-educated man\u2014forget all that Sheryl Sandberg stuff\u2014and you better do it before you graduate: Forget about having it all, or not having it all, leaning in or leaning out. For most of you, the cornerstone of your future and happiness will be inextricably linked to the man you marry, and you will never again have this concentration of men who are worthy of you. Here&amp;#039;s what nobody is telling you: Find a husband on campus before you graduate. Yes, I went there. GO ON WITH YOUR BAD SELF, SUSAN. Just kidding. You&amp;#039;re crazy. Two things. A) Recent studies show that marrying at 25 is the age most likely to end in a successful union. B) In Susan A. Patton Land, which is full of pearls and apple pies and retrograde notions of heterosexual coupling, anyone who has less than an Ivy League education is clearly not worth your time. (FYI, I&amp;#039;ve met some lazy Ivy League-educated assholes in my day.) I am the mother of two sons who are both Princetonians. My older son had the good judgment and great fortune to marry a classmate of his, but he could have married anyone. My younger son is a junior and the universe of women he can marry is limitless. Men regularly marry women who are younger, less intelligent, less educated. It&amp;#039;s amazing how forgiving men can be about a woman&amp;#039;s lack of erudition, if she is exceptionally pretty. Smart women can&amp;#039;t (shouldn&amp;#039;t) marry men who aren&amp;#039;t at least their intellectual equal. As Princeton women, we have almost priced ourselves out of the market. Simply put, there is a very limited population of men who are as smart or smarter than we are. And I say again \u2014 you will never again be surrounded by this concentration of men who are worthy of you. Every woman without a Princeton diploma is a dumb slag. Pass it on. Not only is this a retrograde attitude towards women, both Ivy-educated and otherwise, it&amp;#039;s also a narrow-minded view of men. Isn&amp;#039;t it likely that some men, especially those who are ostensibly smarter than average, look for women who are intellectually stimulating? It&amp;#039;s just so cynical. And, adds Patton, let&amp;#039;s not forget the Age Factor. Men don&amp;#039;t want ancient spinsters in their early to mid-20s, for they are covered in moss and bark and are as ancient and barren and dry as a tree in winter. As freshman women, you have four classes of men to choose from. Every year, you lose the men in the senior class, and you become older than the class of incoming freshman men. So, by the time you are a senior, you basically have only the men in your own class to choose from, and frankly, they now have four classes of women to choose from. Someone want to scrape all this bark off me? Thx! :D Follow Anna on Twitter: @annabreslaw Photo via Getty Images "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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