Maggie's Farm

Cheer up! Have patience. There are plenty of sweet, cute, normal and smart women out there....My college age daughters are equally cute and wicked intelligent, but I doubt they would be happy at your school with all the PC nonsense. Then again, they are repelled by bimbo cheerleaders and jocks and beer and frat houses at more conservative campuses, so they will probably take their chances with the alternative lifestylers so as to get a better academic education and not have Animal House all around them.

However, I have to admit that, as a former Cliffie, I am a little prickly on the subject of just what y'all consider acceptably feminine. My daughters and I have always gone for modest boring attire in protest against the skin tight and low cut uniform of girls in their high school who look like working girls from 42nd st more than future coeds...

When I was in college, "our" guys always complained that the Wellesley girls dressed better than us (they certainly wore more makeup and more dyed their hair blonde), and "our" men also spent a lot of time cruising at Pine Mattress....

In the early years, we were just their friends, confidantes and ruthless competitors in class, the ones they saw over coffee in the dining hall or putting the paper to bed, so we probably wouldn't have inspired the same initial romantic excitement (familiarity breeds contempt). I was a dancer, then a marathoner, so looked okay and never lacked for company, but I never bothered to dress fashionably or flirt.

I couldn't compete in the packaging department with the girls from women's colleges whose sole ambition in life was to snag a Harvard guy. I was too busy with schoolwork, politics, to do more than have a "serious relationship" (my kids tell me people don't do these anymore?) with somebody I was in love with. I spent Saturday night in the library with him, went to church with him, or lifting weights, or massacring each other's writing....

My girls tell me that THINGS HAVE CHANGED. They say people don't date any more.

But I say to you, check out your lab partner again. She just might end up being your true love, and when she has less schoolwork, she might even learn how to dress (I certainly did eventually!) and you might find her quite the hot ticket.

However, if looks and sex appeal are the major priority, you may have to compromise and just go to a lesser college to find your women rather than hoping for an intellectual soulmate at your own school.

When I was working at the hospital, you could always tell (even without seeing what they wore) which young women were the new MDs and which were the nurses. The latter were babes and hot and easy and much nicer. The former weren't as pretty, were more complicated, but were usually more interesting people. Obviously there are exceptions... It's just that intelligence and caring about one's own profession can sometimes make one less appealing to certain men Even if one isn't PC or gay or a man-hater.

Fortunately for verbose and uppitty plain puddleducks like myself, what plenty of men hope for from a woman is not simply her looking and odalisquing like a Theo's babe but, rather, intelligence and a maternal nature. If she's energetic, kind to you, kids, and animals, she's probably just fine even if (especially if?) she does wear manure stained overalls and currently espouses asinine liberal causes...Entertaining tho she might be to read, would you REALLY want to marry someone like that Coulter person??? Anyway, college politics are just froth...People grow up eventually. A fashion makeover is easier than a brain transplant.

Haven't seen it, but will check it out.... it's easier to laugh about all this stuff now from the standpoint of middle age... but the social scene seems more intimidating these days than in my youth! The tribe thing is important (I married someone from my college, from a family close to mine over 60 years), but my kids throw things at me when I gently suggest that it helps to have some background in common.

By alternative, these days, I mean North Eastern liberal arts, including Ivies, despite their politics.