Have you ever heard of the Competitive Marrieds? No? Well, neither had I till a couple of days ago when someone forwarded to me an article from The Sunday Times. Competitive Marrieds, as I discovered from this article, are ?the newest and scariest social category since the yuppie, and their mantra could be: ?My life is better than yours.??
The term Competitive Marrieds applies only to married women. These women are fabulous cooks and their homes run on oiled wheels. They have full-time jobs but nevertheless, they have the time and talent to paint or ride or write. They bring their children up beautifully, coping with their homework and attending to all their needs. The children themselves do well at school and in addition they participate in every conceivable extra-curricular activity. In other words, everything in the lives of these superwomen is done to presentation levels.
We have all come across these superwomen. But what is of interest, and the point of this article, is that these women are not just striving to be the busiest, glossiest and most productive for their own personal satisfaction. To make it worthwhile, they need an audience of their peers against whom they can measure their success ? which is why they are called Competitive Marrieds.
Many women aspire to having perfect glossy-magazine lifestyles, but Competitive Marrieds are under greater pressure to achieve this. Expectations from women have expanded and they now expect to be eternally youthful, capable of earning a living, raising a family, being independent, beautiful, well-groomed and fit. In addition they also need ?a personal outlet for their ambitions, uplifted breasts and white teeth?.
And where do the husbands fit into this scheme of things? Quite simply, they don?t! Husbands, it would appear, are incidental to this driven existence. Indeed, if truth be told, they are slightly freaked out by the new multi-achieving woman. These women are not vying for the attention of men but competing to outperform each other. As a consequence, a lot of women have now taken to policing one another, and in the process indulging in wholesale criticism of each other. They earn points for themselves by whispering to each other about the weight A has put on, the manner in which B neglects her husband, the amount C spent on her curtains. ?These days,? says Shane Watson, the author of the article, ?the favourite national pastime is dissecting other people?s marriages, whether it?s those of celebrities or friends.?
The article talks primarily about women in Britain. But looking around, I suspect that we too have more than our fair share of Competitive Marrieds, all competing to have what is seen as a better life than the other. Would you agree?
