Deflation

In the discussion of Grannies gone wild! newly arrived worker ant Just Asking noticed that something was amiss with the anthill and immediately set about rebuilding it:

Why do you people spend so much of your life discussing things that really have no bearing on your life. If sexy grandma wants to hookup with sexy grandpa for a little action, so what. Let them have their fun. Or are you really that desperate to find something/anything to complain about and yet another thing to blame it all on women. Gee whiz people have you nothing to worry about but what other people are doing.

Fellow colony member T eventually recognized a kindred spirit and started rebuilding as well:

I agree with you. But the manosphere enjoys insulting women, and granny’s wrinkled up lady bits are an easy target.

The OP of course had nothing to do with insulting women or granny’s aging lady bits, but if you are a worker ant you have to do the best you can.

The point of the post was how the media sells the fantasy to women that their romantic prospects somehow don’t decline dramatically with age.  In this case the media pulled out all of the stops in an effort to claim that this was true even for 68 year old grandmothers, but the most important impact is actually on 30 something and middle aged women.  The media of course also targets this fantasy directly at these younger (but not young) women, as I’ve demonstrated with Eat Pray Love, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Lorraine Berry, and Single in the Suburbs.  But selling this fantasy for the oldest women gives comfort to aspiring divorcées of all ages.  If granny still has it all going on, surely their own nagging fears about reentering the dating market are entirely unfounded.

All of this constant reassurance from the media is very effective, even though the message is preposterous.  It is absurdly easy to see through these fantasies but the target audience wants to believe.  They don’t want to know the truth behind these stories, as CL recently described:

my brother sent some woman (a university student) he’s talking to Dalrock’s post on Eat Pray Cats and How Stella Got Her Groove Back, and this woman said she felt “deflated” after reading it. LOL

It is important to remember that this deflation isn’t an act of cruelty;  it is in fact an act of kindness.  It is an act of kindness to the children who would otherwise have their father ejected so their mother can collect 30 pieces of silver.  It is also an act of kindness to the woman herself.  It can only help her to understand that if she decides to blow up her family for profit she can’t actually expect to be magically rewarded with a better man.  She needs to know that in real life the best men aren’t pining for a treacherous, aging woman with another man’s children and a track record of not keeping her most sacred of commitments.  The best men have the best options, and none of these markers is a positive thing in the eyes of men with options.

Being honest with her upfront will spare her decades of regular Where have all of the good men gone? conversations.  One problem with treachery is it makes for very little sympathy.  The same women who egged her on to divorce in the first place will never let her forget how foolish she was for divorcing such a good man, and the children she put through the meat grinder aren’t going to have much patience for her complaining about the results of her obvious foolishness either.

While the point of the original post was the catastrophic fantasy being sold to women, there is also a valid point to make regarding the unseemliness of our elderly talking and acting in such an undignified manner.  Commenter gdgm+ linked to an excellent article by Kay Hymowitz titled Desperate Grandmas, which covers both the true outcomes for those who sold the culture “feminist wisdom” and the gross indignity of their continued attempts to deny reality.

See also:  Why do you care?