Just ask Lori Gottlieb, author of a new self-help book called “Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough.” She’s currently dealing with the backlash.

When I first read that title, I felt a bit cranky, too. It’s a feeling I remember well from a couple of years ago, when Gottlieb penned an article for The Atlantic about why women should give up looking for Mr. Right and just say, “OK, this guy is good enough.”

In particular, this paragraph irked:

And despite growing up in an era when the centuries-old mantra to get married young was finally (and, it seemed, refreshingly) replaced by encouragement to postpone that milestone in pursuit of high ideals (education! career! but also true love!), every woman I know-no matter how successful and ambitious, how financially and emotionally secure-feels panic, occasionally coupled with desperation, if she hits 30 and finds herself unmarried.

Well, clearly she’s got to expand her social circle, I thought. But then Gottlieb continued:

And all I can say is, if you say you’re not worried, either you’re in denial or you’re lying. In fact, take a good look in the mirror and try to convince yourself that you’re not worried, because you’ll see how silly your face looks when you’re being disingenuous.

Wow. WTF? Yeah, I know. To be fair, in the rest of the article, Gottlieb isn’t quite that presumptuous. The basic tenets of her argument are drawn from her own experience, and she’s at her most convincing when she’s not accusing other single women of lying about their own happiness (sour grapes, anyone?)

When she speaks from her own experience as a former super-picky dater and 42-year-old single mom who’s bursting with regrets about all of the merely adequate dudes whom she sent away, I can understand where Gottlieb is coming from. I think we all wish she’d just settled long ago.

Now, Gottlieb has turned the central thesis of that article into a full-length book.

She expands on the premise that younger single women (say, in their early 30s) who rule out life partners based on certain ultra-particular criteria (e.g. having the same taste in movies, being taller than them, not wearing bow ties) may be missing out on men who are less exciting/attractive but have the right qualities to be great life partners and fathers.

Gottlieb claims that the thrilling romantic obsessions of our 20s - hot sex, dating crazy artists, staying up all night enthralled with each other’s views on French New Wave cinema - tend to become less important over time. Now that she’s older, Gottlieb just wants someone to sit next to on the sofa and drive her to the doctor’s. You know, married stuff.

If only she hadn’t been so picky when she was younger….with this hard-won knowledge about how her requirements for happiness would change, Gottlieb urges her 30-year-old counterparts to settle! Settle for a guy who has some flaws, who possesses 80 percent of what they’re looking for. Settle for Mr. Good-Enough.

Understandably, Gottlieb’s new book is pissing off the same people that her Atlantic article did. But is her advice really setting women’s right back a couple of decades and insulting the intelligence of happily single women, not to mention all the men who would rather not think of themselves as “Mr. Good Enough?”

First of all: At some point or another, we’ve all know those women who are incredibly focused on finding “the one,” but who also have a list of deal-breakers long enough to rival the cast of Seinfeld’s. Often these same women are voracious consumers of gauzy romcoms starring Rene Zellweger or Katherine Heigl that sell the phony narrative of “happily ever after.”

This book is clearly for them. In fact, I’ve also known men who are constantly looking over the shoulder of their current girlfriend for something “better” - this book is also for them!

On the other hand: There’s settling, and then there’s settling. I think it’s sound advice to recommend that women pay more heed to nice-guy qualities such as basic compatibility and respect, which tend to matter in the long run far more than whether or not he has a PhD or a potbelly.

In interviews, Gottlieb espouses this opinion, telling the Today Show: “You have to have passion and chemistry and attraction and all of those things, but the characters issues [are more important]: Is this person kind? Do you have the same values? Do you want the same things out of life?

But in the Atlantic article, she urges women to consider a man with halitosis, one who sends “a cold shiver down your spine,” or one who is rude to waiters.

OK, I’m all for looking beyond a receding hairline, but assholism? Bad breath? Either option seems like a “settle” too far.

photo by comedy_nose

The politically opposed husband-wife team has always been intriguing. James Carville and Mary Matalin. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver. In public, each partner professes to very different views. In private, we can only assume that their relationship is based on more than shared feelings about taxation.

Can we now add John and Cindy McCain to that list?

This week, Cindy McCain made headlines by appearing in a poster campaign for NOH8, a gay marriage advocacy organization that takes a stand against California’s proposition 8.

The photos show the blonde businesswoman with silver duct tape covering her mouth and the slogan “NOH8″ on her cheek.

Adding to the shock value, NOH8 revealed that it was Cindy who reached out to them, after daughter Meghan appeared in a similar pose as part of the campaign.

So, what does her husband think? After all, the American public mainly knows Cindy in the context of the 2008 presidential campaign, in which John McCain stood unequivocally opposed to same-sex marriage. Won’t this strike some as dissonant to that message?

Publicly, the Arizona senator’s opposition to gay matrimony remains unwavering. Earlier this week, John McCain’s office released a statement saying that although he “respects the views of members of his family,” he “believes the sanctity of marriage is only defined as between one man and one woman.”

However, photographer Adam Bouska hinted in an interview with The Advocate that the senator’s feelings toward the issue may be quite different in private:

Q: Did they [Cindy and Meghan] give you any indication whether John McCain is moving in the direction of supporting marriage equality?

A: Um, I got that impression. I don’t know that I should speak much about it, but I definitely got that impression.

So, does this mean that the McCains are one of those cheerful “we’ll agree to disagree” couples? Or is it Cindy who is the true devil-may-care rogue in this relationship, boldly challenging her husband to rethink his views? Or is John McCain perhaps dipping a toe into supporting gay rights via the bravery of his wife, who conveniently holds no elected position?

As Maureen O’Connor writes on Gawker, “Are political wives more liberal, or are they just saying what their husbands are too chicken to admit?”

Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the McCain household…

Sneaks, cheats and infidelity dominated last year’s headlines. But did 2009 really see more adultery than usual? Or did the stories simply tell tales of bigger hitters (Tiger, Letterman) and include more preposterous details (Sanford)?

Here is a look back at some of the highlights lowlights:

The cheating male politician, once a mere cliché, became a parody of itself

There was a short period near the middle of the year when it seemed like a new unfaithful politician was being outed every week, particularly when you looked at the state legislature. (Yeah, I’m talking about you, former California State Assemblyman Michael Duvall, and your just plain nasty comments about your lover’s “eye-patch underwear.”)

In June, John Ensign - the Promise Keeper and senator who called for Bill Clinton’s resignation more than a decade ago - revealed he had “violated the vows” of his marriage. But Ensign had little time to squirm in the spotlight - just a couple of weeks later, Mark Sanford had taken center stage.

This is when things got truly surreal. First, there was Sanford’s naïve assumption that he could simply disappear to Argentina to see his lover without anyone noticing, and then his second that the press and public would be satisfied with the explanation that he was hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Then, when it came time to fess up, Sanford didn’t follow the usual contrite script. No, he really wanted us to see how he and his mistress had been in L.O.V.E. Full-fledged teenage stare-into-each-other’s-eyes love. You could imagine him carving their initials on a tree trunk, doodling her first name followed by “Sanford” on a napkin. If his actions hadn’t resulted in him bringing sorrow and shame to his wife, family and the entire state of South Carolina, it would have been kinda cute.

Meanwhile, the echoes of John Edwards’ affair periodically cropped up during the year, reminding us that men who look like your friend’s dishy dad may actually try to hit on you. From the revelation of the lame pick-up line he supposedly fell victim to (”you’re so hot”) to Elizabeth Edwards’ description of her reaction to the betrayal (first vomit, then rage), to the claim that John Edwards promised Rielle Hunter that Dave Matthews would play at their rooftop wedding after his wife passed away…more messy details just keep coming.

Tiger Woods, once an untouchable icon, quickly became a parody of himself

One lover, two lovers, 12 lovers - just like in the rest of his life, when Tiger falls from grace he does it to the extreme.

Social networking platforms were a new way to let the public know you’ve been wronged

These days, you don’t need a tell-all in In Touch magazine or an interview with Access Hollywood to publicly shame your partner after he cheats. Follow Kelis’ lead and post your feelings on Twitter.

Back in June, she used her iamkelis page to address her husband Nas’ alleged infidelity, saying: “This lovely day I would like to touch on cheaters. Super brief! Why be cowardly why not go after what you really want?” She also scolded the “sub par tricks” who should “go down in flames” with the married men they sleep with. However, she made sure to emphasize that “the husband is way more at fault.” (As of December, the pair had settled in divorce court).

Of course, blogs can also be a rich source for soul-baring confessions, but most celebrities use theirs to convey a more tightly controlled message, not unlike a bland statement their rep would give. Tiger Woods made headlines by using the word “infidelity” for the first time on his official blog, but the rest was just the usual stuff about remorse and healing.

Women dig on infidelity, too

Let it be noted that women were also known to stray from their marital vows in 2009. In March, LeAnn Rimes was outed by Us Magazine for cheating on her husband with actor Eddie Cibrian. (Actually, Cibrian was married as well, which means this is another point for the boys - but since he’s not even remotely as famous, Rimes carries this one.) Rimes and husband Dean Sheremet have since parted ways.

Meanwhile, author Julie Powell published a new memoir detailing her two-year affair that took place following the publication of Julie & Julia, as well as her experiences learning the art of butchery. In both cases, she included all the meaty details.

And then British researchers published a study that blamed some types of female philandering on hormones - beautiful woman hormones. Apparently, women with high levels of oestradiol are also more likely to cheat, and are more likely to have a symmetrical face, large breasts and a low waist-to-hip ratio.

So, not only do they get to beautiful, but now they get an instant excuse for playing around? Geez, life really isn’t fair.

Photo by Nicholas Kennedy

Memoirs, by nature, provide only a selective view into a person’s life.
If this selective view is cozy and pleasant - say, the story of a sweet-yet-flawed New Yorker trying to cook 524 Julia Child recipes in the course of a single year while her long-suffering husband looks on - we want it to remain so.

We don’t want to hear about what happens when that woman enters into a kinky affair with an old fling, or how her husband found out and found his own lover, or how she took up butchery perhaps as a way to deal with her confusing emotions - or maybe so she’d have a convenient plot device for her book (I know…cynical, cynical…)

In other words, Julie Powell should never have published Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession, her follow-up to the best-selling foodie memoir Julie & Julia.

If Powell truly cared about her fans - both readers and charmed filmgoers who enjoyed the Hollywood adaptation of her misadventures - she wouldn’t have messed with our harmless fantasy, as dull and quotidian as it may be.

Details of the new book’s plot have been sprinkled about in the press: illicit affair, naughty sex, deception, chopping up pig’s livers. But it isn’t the subject matter that seems most egregious to me - it’s the apparent lack of heart.

Listen to critics relentlessly chop Cleaving to pieces:

“Reading this book is like watching an automobile crash in slow motion, as the author engages in page after page, chapter after chapter, of self-destructive behavior, treating both herself and her husband abominably,” says the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Vain and self-pitying,” writes the Los Angeles Times.

“If you know your husband is a naturally reserved person, why would you even ask him whether it’s okay for you to write in detail about your sex life without him?” asks Linda Holms on the Monkey See blog.

That said, the question remains: why did Powell feel compelled to write this book? Pardon the metaphor, but did the literary soup really need more salt?

“I wrote [Julie and Julia] at this period where I was very naive and I thought marriage was a pretty little box with a bow,” she told the San Jose Mercury News. “Marriage is incredibly difficult and the people in it change. I wanted to honor that.”

And, in an interview with the Associated Press: “My interpretation of my own marriage had been too easy and then it had been set forth as this paragon of the institution. It’s not that simple.”

Unfortunately, “simple” is exactly what so many of us crave when we crack open a book about Julie Powell. Joyful and generous would be a bonus. Dark, complicated, and unkind is so … real life.

At least I have the selective depiction of one Julia to count on. Time to rewatch Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci as Paul and Julia Child. Absolutely perfect.

Photo by chelseagirl

You see, Radnofsky – a Democratic candidate for Texas attorney general – was perusing a 2005 state constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage when she uncovered what she claims is a glaring gaffe with legal implications.

The problem? In trying so thoroughly - and yet so carelessly - to prevent gays from entering into legal marriages, domestic partnerships and civil unions, Texas may have done away with matrimony of all types.

You see, subsection A of the amendment defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

But then, on the back of the first clause, subsection B proclaims:

“This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.”

Yes, that’s right. According to its own constitution, since 2005 the state of Texas is apparently not permitted to create or recognize any type of marriage.

“You do not have to have a fancy law degree to read this and understand what it plainly says,” Radnofsky told the Star-Telegram. “Whoever vetted the language in B must have been asleep at the wheel.”

Following Radnofsky’s logic, you can imagine the matrimonial carnage. Take the May 2008 nuptials of Jenna Bush and Henry Hager in Crawford, Texas, for example. Could that law-abiding heterosexual couple really have been living in sin for the past 18 months?

Although Radnofsky concedes that a wholesale invalidation of millions of marriages is pretty unlikely, she stresses that having this language in the constitution creates a loophole for a slew of recent divorces/divorcees who may be looking for, say, a way to avoid paying alimony.

So, what are Texas’ options? In a column for the Huffington Post, Radnofsky explains that the state could either create a new amendment or start a massive, muddled undertaking to change the current one.

One option is unthinkable, while the other one is messy, to say the least.

While Radnofsky’s complaint may be more about political strategy that gay-rights advocacy, it does draw further attention to the difficulties inherent in promoting rights for one group, while denying them to another.

Cue Jerry Seinfeld, the man who made arguments about minutiae a national fetish, and who is launching a new reality show about marriage that is set to debut next spring.

Earlier this year, NBC announced that it had purchased six episodes of The Marriage Ref, which will feature real-life couples and their day-to-day spats.

To give it even wider appeal, NBC said the program will also invite “opinionated celebrities,” comedians and sports stars onto the show to comment, judge and offer strategies to the couples.

Seeing as most of the opinionated (read: vocally underemployed) celebrities I can think of are divorced - multiple times - the premise seems destined to turn into a farce.

Seinfeld himself admits his objective with the show is to get chuckles, not to tug at the viewer’s heartstrings. He also admits that his inspiration is - unsurprisingly - his own marriage.

“This is not a therapy show - it’s a comedy show. After nine years of marriage I have discovered that the comedic potential of this subject is quite rich,” the comedian said in a statement in February.

True, it can be amusing - and reassuring - to see other married couples arguing about cleaning hair out of the shower drain. It makes us feel less lame and petty about our own humble spats.

But personally, I prefer watching celebrity couples air their own dirty laundry (sometimes literally)  - regular folks just don’t hold the same appeal.

For example, I’d still gladly watch Nick and Jessica argue about $1,400 sheets on reruns of The Newlyweds.

But that clichéd and lackluster ABC series “Here Come the Newlyweds“? No, thank you. I get enough average-person relationship revelations (e.g. what’s the weirdest place you’ve ever had sex?) through overheard cell phone calls on public transportation.

However, I do think Seinfeld’s on to something with his inkling that other folks may want to listen to normal husbands and wives complain about each other.

After all, blogger Tiffany Wong has gained quite a following with her labor-of-love blog, MyHusbandIsAnnoying.com, which chronicles the trials and tribulations of living with a man who wears the same green sweater in every single photo in their album, regardless of setting or occasion.

But perhaps the fact that the blog is so obviously a labor of love is the reason so many people identify with Wong’s gentle fun-poking. Even her husband likes it, after all.

“To me, it’s kind of a tribute to all husbands,” he told the New York Daily News.

All together now: Awwww…

Photo by Alan Light

Marcotte is the brains behind the delightfully inventive 2010 California Marriage Protection Act, a tongue-in-cheek initiative that claims to want to outlaw divorce in the state. Check out his website for the full effect - you can even order a T-shirt that reads: “You said ”Til death do us part. You’re not dead yet’.” I predict it will be this year’s “I’m with stupid.”

But beneath the witty one-liners and Stephen Colbert-style satirical essays (one is entitled “Jesus still loves you if you get divorced - just not as much as before”) is a potentially effective way to expose the hypocrisy behind the arguments of so many Proposition 8 supporters.

According to the San Diego New Network, Marcotte - a married father of two - filed his initiative with the state attorney general’s office earlier this month. It reads:

“No party to any marriage shall be restored to the state of an unmarried person during the lifetime of the other party unless the marriage is void or voidable, as set forth in Part 2 of Division 6 of the Family Code.”

Interestingly, Marcotte - much like Colbert - seems to have not yet broken character when speaking with the media, insisting that his desire to stamp out divorce is very real and close to his heart.

“Jesus clearly said that divorce is a sin: ‘What God has joined together, let no man separate,’” Marcotte told SDNN. ”But, he never even mentioned homosexuals or homosexual behavior. Probably a clerical oversight, but still …”

Meanwhile, Proposition 8 supporters should clearly want to support the initiative, as they are so gung-ho for “traditional marriage,” he added. Anything else would be “hypocritical.”

I must say, his logic is sound.

Photo by Monochrome

If you answered anything other than “multiple husbands,” then you got the wrong punchline.

We usually look at women like Liz T. and Zsa Zsa Gabor as colorful exceptions to the ‘natural’ order of things: the idea that while men possess a natural urge to sow their seed with a plethora of female partners, women are born to cling and cohabit.

However, in a recent Science column in the New York Times, Natalie Angier introduces us to research on the Pimbwes - and apparently both men and women trade spouses like Garbage Pail Kids cards.

After many years of looking into the mating rituals of the tribe, researcher Monique Borgerhoff Mulder of UC-Davis concluded that it was not unusual for women to take a number of different mates at different periods in their lives.

Basically, these women are playing the mating game to their own advantage. Borgerhoff Mulder tells the Times she suspects the Pimbwe women “are strategically choosing men, abandoning men and remarrying men as their economic situation goes up and down.”

Not only that, but she found that women with many husbands were generally better respected within the culture than their male counterparts. Angier writes:

Provocatively, the character sketches of the male versus female serialists proved to be inversely related. Among the women, those with the greatest number of spouses were themselves considered high-quality mates, the hardest working, the most reliable, with scant taste for the strong maize beer the Pimbwe famously brew. Among the men, by contrast, the higher the nuptial count, the lower the customer ranking, and the likelier the men were to be layabout drunks.

Yes, it’s just like a feminist reinterpretation of all that so many evolutionary biologists hold dear. Charlotte Perkins Gilman or Margaret Atwood could not have written it better.

Still, although the findings may provide a pleasing “ha” factor for those of us who are getting a bit tired of watching George Clooney float effortlessly to the next young Italian waitress while Jen Aniston gets flak for “being desperate” and “chasing” a series of eligible bachelors, what do the findings really say about women’s views on settling down?

Honestly, smug evolutionary biology may be annoying, but I’m not sure it’s too nice to celebrate women who love ‘em and leave ‘em based on the contents of their pocketbook.

As Sadie Stein writes on Jezebel.com, couldn’t it be tempting for some people to call those Pimbwe ladies gold-diggers?

Photo by Bashed

Public marriage proposals (think baseball stadium JumboTrons and skywriting) have always made me tense. What if the proposee says no? And – even worse - what if she wants to say no but can’t because of the debilitating humiliation such a refusal would bring to the proposer?

Of course, in a social media-laden world, there are even more ways to risk public embarrassment, in front of an even wider audience. But Fred Ehrhart, a New York City ad exec, doesn’t seem afraid. He’s launched a social media campaign to help convince his girlfriend Dalila to marry him.

The romantic stuff: First of all, he’s created a web page at Sheknows.com to give 10 reasons (all of them quite touching) explaining why Dalila is the one. Next, he’s made a video ad explaining his strategy for winning her heart. Finally, and perhaps most inevitably, he’s entreating people to add their encouragement by including #SayYesD on Twitter, Facebook and blogs.

Not-as-romantic: Ehrhart’s agency has put out a press release explaining exactly how all this technology and its various partners came together to “seal the deal” (the PR’s words, not mine) for Fred.

UPDATE: She said yes!

At least, that’s the finding of some new research presented at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting. According to Indiana University researchers, approximately half of the survey respondents they spoke to said the government should mandate that women take their husband’s name.

But did they really mean it, or was it just a gut response? You know, the kind of thing you hope for knowing the wish fairy would never grant it, like, If only people who insulted the weight of female celebrities in the comments section of websites were required by law to post their own full-length photo and weight along with their criticism. That would make life more bearable.

I usually don’t wade into the maiden name debate because I really don’t mind whether other women take their husband’s name or not. In fact, I believe people of both genders should be allowed to maintain, amend, hyphenate or otherwise adorn their own names as they see fit.

It’s the American way to take a new name for a variety of reasons - to seem more culturally integrated, to further your Hollywood career, to sound sexier. But it’s equally American to believe the government should keep their hands off your damn name.

I mean, if we’re going to regulate last names, we may as well pull the plug on offbeat celebrity baby names - and who doesn’t want to see which of the next generation will top Pilot Inspektor?

Anyway, back to the IU findings. People are pretty traditional. Overall, 70 percent of women either somewhat or strongly agree that women should take their husband’s last name when they get married. Only 29 percent say ladies should retain their, ahem, “maiden” names.

Surprising?

UI sociology professor Brian Powell says yes:

There are all these reports and indicators that families are changing, that men are contributing more, that we’re moving toward a more equal family, yet there’s no indication that we’re seeing a similar move to equality when it comes to names.

Personally, I’m not surprised. Anyone who has chosen to keep their name after marriage has encountered at least a few of the most common arguments before:

1. It’s too confusing

I agree. It’s confusing, particularly when a couple has children. Typically, the husband and the kids have the same last name, while their mother has a different last name…she becomes the strange outlier of the family, a living example of the beloved Sesame Street game, One of These Things is Not Like the Other.

And then there is the situation described by Joan Indian Rigdon in Forbes. Basically, she uses her original name professionally and her husband’s name legally. This has raised numerous conundrums, such as which one to use in her Facebook profile.

The best response I have for this argument is that lots of aspects of modern family life are confusing. Take step-children, half-siblings, Brangelina-style families and kids who have two dads or two moms as just a few examples.

1. What are you, some kind of feminist?

Well, sure. But that’s a side issue - at least for me. In my view, not taking my husband’s name is not motivated by a particular desire to rail against the patriarchy. I like my name. It seems counter-intuitive to change it. Sure, there have been centuries of precedent. But just as with gay marriage, sometimes the rules just have to change to make sense with how we see ourselves now.

1. We must preserve family lineage/unity

Again, I understand the reasoning. But I offer a similar response as to argument #1. When I meet a child who has a different last name than one or both of their parents, I no longer blink an eye due to the vast variety of family situations that exist in these United States. Family unity is preserved by deeper bonds than a name.

Plus, I’m skeptical when people offer this reasoning for why women should change their names. In reality, it smacks of the desire to take refuge in the comfortable past and simply opt for the accepted route.

But my main defense for keeping my name is just that - it’s mine and I like it.

Photo by WTL photos