Tag: women

The lady postures too much

Naomi Wolf explains that she likes herself better and is actually more attractive now that she’s in her late 40s and no one wants to have sex with her. Unsurprisingly, now that she’s gotten older, she has concluded that age, like beauty, is also a myth:

Recently, I was at a party, and a man who, like myself, was in his late 40s, arrived with a woman 20 years younger. It took only a few moments of conversation before the rest of the group realized that the two had very little in common. And yet I did not feel the frisson of envy among the men present, nor did I see a bristle of jealousy from any of the stylish, accomplished women in their 40s. In fact, the mood of both genders was tender, almost pitying. The man may have imagined that he was showing off the youth of his date the way he might show off a new Maserati; but parading her around like an acquisition seemed only to make his friends feel sorry for him….

There are many other delightful surprises about being at this stage on the journey. I don’t miss the brutal sexual harassment that young women receive from men — and I love the far gentler flirtation or civil compliments from cab drivers and park chess players my own age or older. On the street, young women are told: Give me some. Older women hear: I love your eyes.

It is certainly amusing to see a woman whose entire literary career was based on her attractive-by-New-York-writer standards try to rationalize away the fact that she is past her sell-by date. It’s also remarkable that she managed to write about the changes in women’s attitudes and bodies over the last two decades without once seeing fit to mention the enfattening of America; Naomi has clearly packed on more than a few pounds herself.

Any time you see a woman describe “magnetic and dynamic women my own age” you know perfectly well she is referring to childless women fast approaching menopause who are filled with boundless hate for the young women their male peers are dating. Wolf’s attempt at a bemused zen-like pose is about as convincing as unemployed female college graduates babbling about how “strong and independent” they are as they move home to spend a year deciding what graduate schools Daddy is going to pay for.

The punchline which reveals the entire point of the article is this pathetic attempt at a neg: “[I]n my own circles, at least, it is considered more macho for a man to have an accomplished woman his own age on his arm. His ego, it is understood, can take it.”

Right, because men pursue beautiful young women in order to be macho. It’s not sex and beauty that interests them, but female approval. This woman clearly doesn’t know the first thing about men. One of these days, someone is going to have to inform women that their endless shaming tactics only work on other women and gamma males they don’t want to have sex with in the first place.

Don’t worry, you’re not too pretty for science

A female scientist desperately wants you to know that someone told her she was pretty, the bastard, and now she can’t wait to tell you about ithow angry that makes her!

I’m ticked off and venting via dashed-off blog rant…. I know Mr. Salesguy was trying to be nice and probably thought he was flattering me, but fer chrissakes, that is NOT the way to go about it. Women in science already frequently feel like “The Other,” that we’re “too XX” to be good at what we do, that our possession of breasts surely must mean that we’re too much of a fragile flower to be able to handle the “man’s work” involved in science and academia, and that we need to go above and beyond what our male colleagues do just to feel the same level of acceptance and appreciation. I’m sure Mr. Salesguy has never thought about the plight of women in science before tonight (and I doubt that my conversation really made him think about it for more than a few fleeting seconds), but it really dragged down what had otherwise been a very nice few days of unadulterated sciencey goodness.

This is a beautiful example of what is one of my favorite female faux outrage poses. Certain women, usually those of average appearance, love to pretend to be furious because someone complimented them, which they believe gives them an excuse to talk to everyone they can get their hands on about the fact that someone thinks they are pretty or whatever. You’ll notice you never see any genuinely gorgeous girl getting her thong in a twist over someone happening to recognize the obvious; she knows she’s hot and it’s no big deal.

And the idea that one can be somehow damaged by one’s looks defying the expectations of one’s occupation is a ridiculous attempt to justify the “look at me, look at me” behavior. At my second book signing, which was a large Barnes & Noble event at which there were some 10 or 12 other much bigger-name SF/F authors, including Gordon R. Dickson, there must have been at least 10 people who told me I didn’t look like a SF writer. I didn’t take any offense, of course, or agonize about how this made it terribly difficult to be taken seriously as a writer. It was not exactly hard to ascertain what they meant by the comment given that in addition to being the youngest one there by a decade or more, I was also the only weightlifter in the bunch. SF/F writers are often fascinating conversationalists and I quite enjoy spending time with them, but as a general rule they tend not to make for the most physically imposing specimens of humanity.

So, Ms Dr Smith needn’t worry. As an expert observer of the opposite sex, I don’t think she’s too pretty for science. I don’t think she’s pretty at all. I’m confident she can rest assured that most men who aren’t of low sexual market value, like the scientists and atheists by whom she is customarily surrounded, will not take any notice of her unless she happens to perform some spectacular feats of science. Which is probably unlikely, since she’s such a transparently superficial twit that she’ll find it hard to pull her narcissistic nose out of her navel long enough to observe anything scientific.

Mailvox: a profound change of thinking

MK writes to tell how she has found the dreadful miasma of misogyny that engulfs this blog to not only have adjusted her thought processes but also aided her marriage:

It occurred to me yesterday what a profound change in thinking I have had as a result of reading your blog and one of the books you referenced (Married Man’s Sex Life). In my youth in the 70’s, I was happy to soak up the happy horse-sh#$ that popular culture sold about roles of men and women. My marriage of [two decades] has been a difficult struggle owing in part to my desire to see my husband as a badly designed female.

For his part, in my assessment, my husband still struggles with the reality that I am not a man – that is, that I lack career ambition, aren’t that good at finishing what I start (except household duties), and would prefer he initiate sex. It might be harder for him to give up the desire for me to share the providing than for him to give up on primary child-care duties (when that was needed) and housework. The upshot: it is a relief to accept I am not the woman Madison Ave. promoted who wants and can bring home the bacon, serve it up in a pan, and also provide hooker style sex services to my man. That never was me and I always felt inadequate.

I hate to say, I think my husband does view me as inadequate (he works with many woman/mothers who earn big bucks alongside him, not to mention his mother was a dynamo working wife/mother out of monetary necessity). The blog has helped me, however, to accept that I am who I am and more importantly, he is who he is as a he. I have a newfound respect for that. Little by little, I am changing my behavior and attitude and while my husband may always feel he got ripped off because I really wasn’t the career woman he thought I was (I had a job when we met, was good at it, liked it, and parlayed it into working from home so I could take full-time care of and homeschool our children, not because I needed to work for my identity or the money; rather, I did it because I knew my husband wanted me to make money).

I am a Christian of [more than a decade], and this has been an area that the church we were involved with was no good at leading (male/female roles). I have a friend who has been a Christian all her life, but struggled in her marriage. She did not marry a devoted Christian and longs for leadership, but from our conversations, it is clear, she’s at least 50% of the problem. I have shared insights with her from the blog and it is changing her too. Thank you and please keep doing what you’re doing.

I’m glad she’s found the blog to be helpful. I think it’s interesting to see how MK’s email shows the flipside of the female employment issue. Whereas many men don’t want their wives to work so that the women can focus on their careers as wives and mothers, those who do marry working women often expect them to continue working so the men do not have to shoulder the responsibility as the sole income provider. This is dangerous ground, because it is a potential deal-breaker should the woman decide she wants to unilaterally change the arrangement ex post facto.

While women tend to feel they always have the right to change their mind, consider it from the male perspective. What wife would appreciate it if her husband told her that he wasn’t happy with his job and had decided to stay home and master Guitar Hero instead? Would she be delighted that he was pursuing his dream or would she be upset that he had, in a single stroke, suddenly put pressure on her to figure out how to increase her salary by at least 50 percent or accept the necessary reduction in the lifestyle to which she was accustomed? Even though MK’s decision was beneficial for both her marriage and her children in the long term, it’s perfectly understandable that her husband would feel as if he had been played with a bait-and-switch, because it would appear that he was, at least to some extent. There are no shortage of men who have discovered that housework isn’t as unpleasant, stressful, or time-consuming as office serfdom and they are more than happy to divide the responsibilities as they have been told that women want them to do. Naturally, they will resist a sudden demand that they to return to a more traditional role for which they are completely unprepared, and indeed, might even consider to be evil and sexist.

It’s also noteworthy that she has found the church to be useless with regards to offering support for traditional male and female roles. Churchianity is relentlessly feminized and feminist, which is only one of the many reasons to reject it as a pale, bureaucratic, heretical imitation of Christianity.

But I am pleased to hear that MK and her friend have derived a modicum of personal utility from this blog, and I’m sure Athol could use the encouragement as well.

WND column

Marital Roulette

There has been an amount of discussion of a marriage strike in recent years as various male and female commentators alike attempt to explain the continuing decline in marriage rates throughout the advanced nations of the West. As more and more men have become aware that women file for most divorces and that family courts are now little more than thieves’ dens designed to funnel financial resources from men to women by any means or legal-sounding excuse necessary, they have understandably become considerably more marriage-averse.

Why Vox Day is chick crack

Over at Alpha Game, Susan Walsh has posted about a recent scientific study which delineated certain aspects of male and female appeal for the opposite sex. The key summary, at least as it related to the post title, was provided by the headline of one article related to the study.

“Brooding, Proud Guys Score High on Sex Appeal”

As I mentioned in the comments to Susan’s post, this provided Spacebunny with no little amusement, given her observation that my tendency to brood is apparently on par with that of Heathcliff and Darcy. My protests that I merely engage in the moderate amount of contemplation that is necessary to anyone dwelling in this vale of tears were met with a) a burst of incredulous laughter, and b) an appeal to the dictionary: “to dwell on a subject or to meditate with morbid persistence”. Emphasis, it would appear, on the morbid….

(Full confession: I tend to think of “brooding” in the sense of incubating eggs rather than a gerund indicating contemplative activity, which in part accounted for my protest.)

As for the other part, well, I am informed that every so often, I am inclined to comport myself in a manner that is indicative of an inclination to consider myself in a rather favorable manner. I would merely point out that these things are relative and is not that I think so well of myself, only that I am so often given reason to think little of others.

In any case, this new scientodical expansion of scientage may help explain why women continue to email me and send me their pictures after expressing their outrage concerning my written opinions and threatening not to have sex with me. I’d like to say that it is hard being an intellectual sex symbol, (although let’s face it, the bar is an extraordinarily low one), but frankly, my dears, I don’t give a damn.

Stay away from career women II

Yesterday a few working wives took exception to the logic which suggests that because working wives tend to have more affairs than non-working wives, it is wise for the man who is interested in marrying to eliminate career-oriented women from his list of prospective mates. This was entirely unsurprising, but not entirely unamusing.

On a seemingly unrelated note, I have been reading Umberto Eco’s On Literature this past week, and one passage in particular will surely remind the Dread Ilk of why I regard him as a writer worthy of a regard that comes perilously close to idolatry. (Bear with me, this will all make sense soon.)  “Our only commitment is, by serious and continued work, without giving in to any blackmail, to humiliate those who are our inferiors.”

Thus spake Umberto. And as an Award-Winning Cruelty Artist and Internet Superintelligence, I have little choice but to heed the Zarathustranesque call. Hier steh ich, ich kann nicht anders, weil es ist mein Los.

So. With that in mind, let us now consider the claims made by a few of the various female critics yesterday. Connie asserted: “The percentage of men who cheat on women still outnumbers the percentage of women who cheat on men by at least double.”

This is simply wrong; as I correctly concluded on the mere basis of her sex and passive-aggression. Connie is a statistical illiterate. The most recent figures I have seen report that 20% of married men and 15% of married women have been unfaithful. This means that men are 33% more likely to cheat than women, which is significantly less than “more than 100%.” But more relevant given the context of the post is the fact that men between the ages of 25 and 44, (the age range in which most marriage and marital unfaithfulness occurs), are also 21% more likely to be a participant in the labor force. This tends to support the reported link between increased female labor force participation and increased female unfaithfulness.

This link is further bolstered by a 2005 report which shows:

1. “Working women are more than three times more likely to be divorced than their stay-at-home counterparts.”

2. “The longer hours women work, the more likely they are to be divorced.”

3. “Compared to non-working women, those with a full-time job have a 29 per cent higher odds of divorce.”

Now, obviously not all divorces are the result of extramarital affairs, let alone affairs by the wife. But the statistics are conclusive and clear. If a man elects to pursue a relationship with a woman who intends to continue working full-time, he will significantly increase the chances that his wife will be unfaithful to him and that he will eventually end up divorced. Furthermore, he should also know that if his marriage survives, his wife will make for an inferior mother, as his children will be 23% less likely to pass college entrance exams, 29% more likely to be unemployed, and will weigh an average of four pounds more at age 11 than children whose mothers care enough about them to stay at home and raise them.

(For the Nth time, this should not be taken as criticism of single mothers who have no choice but to work and provide for their children. One cannot condemn a nonexistent choice. However, most working mothers who are married do not have to work, they have instead made a lifestyle choice that happens to place a priority on other things than personally raising their children. While it is their right to make such a choice, it is not their right to pretend they have not made it.)

BJ attempted to respond by relying upon the always humorous, but logically invalid Appeal to Individual Nonexistent Hearsay approach, as she wrote: “Sorry, but my husband has yet to tell me that a co-worker hit on him, but rather a customer (i.e., stay at home moms who are good wives and superior mothers).”

BJ’s argument is based on four central assumptions:

1. BJ’s husband as likely to report being hit on by a co-worker, who would be a regular threat to their marriage, than a customer with whom he spends far less, if indeed any, time. This may be true, but it is by no means certain.  And BJ is not a reliable determinant of her husband’s inclination to keep her informed on the subject.

2. BJ’s husband is equally attractive to his co-workers as his customers. This is questionable. Since his work brings him into regular contact with stay-at-home wives, his employment status is probably relatively low, an observation supported by our knowledge that BJ herself works and supplements the marital income.

3. BJ’s husband has a similar number of female co-workers and customers. This is unknown, but unlikely. But it’s an important assumption, because even if he had been hit on 10 times more often by stay-at-home wives than by his female co-workers, the logic would still remain relevant if he had 100 female clients and two female co-workers. While 10>1, 10%<50%.

4. BJ’s husband’s experience is statistically relevant. Since we are dealing with a sample size of one, it is obvious that her entire objection is completely spurious. In my own anecdotal and equally statistically invalid experience, I have never been hit on by a stay-at-home wife while I have been the recipient of definite indicators of sexual interest from working wives on many occasions. Of course, I have always been of relatively high employment status and my work seldom brings me into contact with stay-at-home wives, so it should come as no surprise that my experience would significantly diverge from that of BJ’s husband.

Connie next attempted to appeal to studies that equate women’s “equality” with national “happiness”. “The happiest societies on earth, those that were surveyed quantitatively on quality of life across a variety of factors, correlate strongly with the societies having the most equality for women.”  This is partially true, but as you might correctly conclude, it depends entirely upon how “happiness” is defined. Given that Egypt and Saudi Arabia were rated the 12th and 13th happiest nations on Earth by the New Economics Foundation, (the famously equalitarian nation of Sweden was ranked 53rd), her assertion is as dubious as it is irrelevant to the subject of whether working women are a reasonable bet to make good wives. Most “happiness” metrics are little more than a measure of societal wealth, and since only wealthy societies can afford the economic and societal ills of equalitarianism, (even if only for a few decades before the inevitable structural collapse), it should come as no surprise that the correlation is mistaken for causation by the illogical and statistically illiterate.

But without question my favorite response was the quintessentially feminine one from Betty, who apparently takes an ad hominem approach to ascertaining the truth of any and all things. “After reading vox’s blog about women in the workplace (talk about painting a “Scarlet S” with a wide brush) I can’t in good conscience buy the argument [the column on Herman Cain] above. Being a member of MENSA doesn’t make him unequivocally correct.”

It is absolutely true that my daunting superintelligence is no guarantee that I am correct on any given matter, it merely indicates that those of lesser intelligence, a subset of humanity which includes approximately 6.92 billion people if one rounds up from the nearest hundredth, should at least be open to the possibility that they are wrong when their opinion diverges dramatically from my own. However, neither the vastness of my intellect nor my statistically sound conclusions have anything at all to do with the wisdom of electing a former Federal Reserve executive to fix a problem that was primarily caused by the Federal Reserve, still less a Fed official who believes that the Fed has done nothing questionable, let along wrong.

Stay away from career woman

It’s hardly news to any man who works in an office that wives who work are much more likely to have affairs:

‘Climbing the career ladder can do weird things to people and it can corrupt both men and women,’ she says. ‘I think it’s very plausible that it makes women more sexually promiscuous.’

This is borne out by the volume of traffic on Illicit Encounters. The internet site which caters for married professionals looking for adulterous affairs has nearly 600,000 members, and women looking for extra-marital sex outnumber men by 3½ to 1. Most are married with children, aged between their early 30s and mid-40s, and pursuing a well-paid career.

It is a very, very bad idea to pursue a relationship with a woman who has a career. As a general rule, they don’t make good wives and they make inferior mothers. While it might be nice for a man to think that he will be relieved of at least part of the burden of supporting the family, the brutal reality is that between the increased tax burden and the increased material ambitions that more joint income usually entails, two-income families don’t tend to be significantly better off in terms of wealth once debt is accounted for than single-income families. There are often some additional material benefits, but those are balanced by the combination of a degraded quality of home life for everyone, including the wife, and the increased risk of extramarital affairs and divorce.

There is a reason that stable societies are built upon a structural foundation of men providing for women and women caring for children. One rejects the historically sound model at one’s peril.

Of captains and first mates

This comment at Amazon concerning Athol Kay’s book on marital sex is educational and highlights both the effectiveness of what he has written as well as the intrinsic challenge its concepts pose to husbands and wives alike:

Let me just say, as a feminist, I found so much of it to be revolting and awful. I stayed up all Saturday night reading it. I was irritated and pissed off at times, yet I could not put it down…. My husband is a VERY good looking man, think Tom Brady good looking. He is incredibly attractive. 6’3″, green eyes, blondish brown hair/full head, a member of Mensa and makes six figs. His genetics alone are what women would kill for. So why is it then that for me (the higher sex drive person), sex is just eh and I often don’t want it….

It hit me like a torpedo last night after everybody else had gone to bed. I want the Captain husband and me as his First Mate. I am tired of being the person in control. I never wanted it in the first place, he assumed I did as he saw this dynamic with his parents. I am tired of words vs. actions. He always says I turn him on, I am the one he wants, I am sexy. He doesn’t back it up with action though. His “action” is to wait and see, a very unsexy trait. He is very dominant in his career, so clearly he has the ability. I want him to be dominant in our relationship. I want my husband to say “be ready at 10 pm, wearing these heels and this lingerie” instead of “are you staying up?”. I want the directive and the passion that comes across with it. I would literally be putty in his hands if he told me instead of asked.

In most marriages there are one of four problems, and this woman is a good example of at least one of them. The first thing to understand is that there is absolutely no such thing as a 50-50 marriage, any more than there can be a true 50-50 presidential election. It’s not so much that it does not exist as that it cannot possibly exist. The two-party marriage, like the two-party political system, means that one party must be in the effective majority at all times or nothing will be decided and no actions will be taken. If both parties are in agreement, then obviously there is no issue. It doesn’t matter who is in charge. But when they are not in agreement, one party will decide and it will either be the party that is a) the default majority if one was previously determined or b) the more static party. The reason for (b) is because it is always easier to do nothing than act.

The four problem scenarios are 1) Captain wife, First Mate husband, 2) Two Captains, 3) Two First Mates, 4) abdicated Captain husband, insubordinate First Mate wife. Scenario (1) can actually work for a while if the wife has a dominant personality and the husband a submissive one, although it is a fragile relationship and likely to eventually break down due to female hypergamy. It’s usually only a matter of time before the wife loses all respect for the delta husband and starts pursuing an alpha or beta who makes her feel submissive and sexy. In any case, there isn’t any fix for this scenario, it simply is what it is.

The problem with scenario (2) is obvious. In this case, the marriage is likely headed for divorce sooner rather than later since both parties will tend to simply go their own way and neither will offer much support for the other. Unless one party breaks the other one to their will, there isn’t going to be much space for negotiating disagreements, and in most cases, both parties will find it easier to end the relationship and move on. The one positive observation is that such breakups tend to be on the amicable side.

Scenario (3) is almost always the husband’s fault. In this case, the wife is actively trying to submit to her husband and follow his lead, only he will not permit her to do so because he doesn’t want the responsibility that goes with the Captain’s role. It’s fairly difficult to make someone assume leadership when he doesn’t want it, but the one tactic that can work for a woman in this position is to simply refuse to make decisions or even express an opinion. The key, of course, will be for her to avoid second-guessing those decisions once she finally forces him into making them by default, as that will undermine the very objective she is hoping to accomplish. This is superficially the situation described by the Amazon reviewer, but based on certain things she says, it appears to be more a combination of (3) and (4). And this is the one scenario where the constant Churchian calls to “man up” are actually pertinent advice.

In the case of scenario (4), both the husband and the wife are typically culpable to varying degrees. It is usually, though not necessarily, started by the wife’s repeated refusal to follow her husband’s lead, an action which is subsequently exacerbated by his abdication of the Captain’s role and refusal to even attempt to offer leadership anymore. While (4) can be fixed in a relatively easy manner, the challenge is that it will require the wife to do two things that tend to be difficult for women, which is to first accurately share her desires for her husband’s leadership and then to clamp down on her inevitable desire to engage in back-seat driving as soon as he begins to exercise it. No man is going to lead where no one follows.

What the Amazon reviewer has belatedly discovered thanks to Athol is that she wants influence and respect, not actual leadership and responsibility. She clearly doesn’t want to decide when and how to have sex, although the chances are that she also has a contradictory desire for a veto over his decisions. The problem stems from the observation that very few women truly understand the difference until they obtain, either purposefully or inadvertently, a position in the relationship they do not want. This problem is compounded by the fact that most men make lousy First Mates; men tend to believe that if a decision is not our responsibility, then we have no need to spend any time thinking about it or even having, let alone expressing, an opinion.

This is why an atheist like Athol has nevertheless recognized that the Biblical model of the husband is a superior one, even for irreligious couples. When the man is the Captain and the woman is the First Mate, he is more likely to be comfortable making decisions and she is more likely to offer him both advice and support. When the woman is the Captain and the man is the First Mate, she is likely to be forced to make decisions that she does not want to make without any advice or support on a regular basis. And, of course, the 50-50 model, be it Captain-Captain or First Mate-First Mate, is structurally liable to devolve into the tragedy of the commons while it lasts.

Both men and women would benefit from accepting the actual state of their relationships. If you’re the one making the decisions in an aspect of your marriage, then you are the leader whether you consider yourself to be or not. And since you can’t be the leader and not be the leader at the same time, if you don’t want to be the leader then you have to ask your husband or wife to accept leadership on that issue. If you are the leader, then you need accept the fact of your leadership and the decision-making responsibilities that go with it. A significant problem with most American marriages, as indicated by the Amazon reviewer, is that women are the sexual Captains and they do not want to be. But unless they are willing to turn over sexual leadership to their husbands and actively embrace the First Mate role, there can be no permanent improvements in that aspect of the relationship.

In summary, married women have two choices before them. Either accept your man’s decisions or accept the fact that you’re going to making the decisions for both of you for the rest of your marriage. Whether one likes that choice or not, the logic is inescapable. In a democracy of two, one vote always has to count more than the other one.

Another victim of feminism

One can respect the woman for her honesty, but it’s hard to have a whole lot of pity for those who simply refuse to prioritize pursuing marriage and children:

I never envisaged life without a family. I had three significant relationships in my 20s and 30s, each of which I assumed would lead to marriage and children. My first relationship, with a fellow university student, ended after five years. We were 25, and he wasn’t ready to settle down, so we parted.

At 27, I started seeing the man who was to become my second major boyfriend. We had been together for 18 months when I found out he had been seeing someone else, so I was left with no choice but to end it.

I became involved with a man I was sure would be The One when I was 30. Right partner, right life-stage; what could go wrong? Three years down the line, he announced that he had fallen in love with someone else, and that it was over between us. And so, at the age of 33, I suddenly became single. The years that followed were some of the most difficult of my life, as close friends married and started families….

My regrets will always linger. My life is a poorer place for not having children, and I am less of a woman for not being a mother.

Needless to say, there are far many parents blithely encouraging their daughters to pursue worthless college degrees and dead-end “careers”, and far too few encouraging them to place a priority on meeting and marrying the right kind of man. It’s bizarre how young women are taught to apply to the right colleges, while at the same time waiting for the right man to drop unannounced out of the sky. Does anyone tell high school girls to simply wait and be patient for a university admission office to eventually ask them to show up on campus at the moment they least expect it?

On the royal wedding

Needless to say, I haven’t exactly been paying a lot of attention to the marriage of the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, but it’s inescapable over here. So, a few observations:

1. The two princes make a good pair. Unlike so many politicians, they always come off as two men you wouldn’t mind hanging out with. Even on a formal state occasion. If it’s merely an act, they’ve got it down. And the British people obviously have great affection for them.

2. The bride looked very pretty. A streamlined bridal gown always beats fluff and poofery, in my opinion. I still don’t understand the whole train thing, though.

3. The little groomsmen in their red coats were cute.

4. Prince Charles has aged remarkably well for a man who looked like a prince of dorks in his prime. Of course, as SB commented, there was nowhere to go but up.

5. I wish they’d had a mike on the Duke of Edinburgh. He always has some hilariously inappropriate comment for every occasion.

6. The service was remarkably and explicitly Christian for a nation that is supposed to have moved beyond all that Dark Age mysticism. The selection of Romans 12 for the Bible reading was well done.

7. I think it is vastly preferable for a woman to not vow to obey her husband than to vow it when she does not mean it. I am much more inclined to trust a woman who values her word enough to refuse a knowingly false vow than a woman who will blithely agree to say anything.

8. Don’t ask me about the NFL draft. I can’t think about the NFL draft. I’m still in denial. I just hope Spielman knows what he’s doing by selecting Ponder. He’s smart, so here’s hoping that the idea is that he’ll be better able to read NFL defenses than his more highly rated peers.