The Return of the Designing Woman

Brace yourself. Here are some of the things your girlfriend, your lover, the dream chick you haven't even met yet are reading:

• How to Make a Man Fall in Love with You (book).

• How to Keep a Man in Love with You Forever (book).

• "How to Close the Deal: Get Married" (Cosmopolitan article).

• How to Be Married One Year from Today (includes a sample wedding invitation).

Take a deep breath.

Here are some of the things they are being told:

• If a man wants pancakes for breakfast, start flipping. You can always put him on a yogurt-and-bran diet after you're married.

• Set deadlines for the relationship's progress—but don't tell him.

• Laugh a lot, flirt a lot, act cute, never really disagree with him, encourage him to trust you.

• Act as though money doesn't matter.

• Do whatever it takes to find out whether he has big bucks.

• Make sure he understands that the last thing you want is to get married.

If the popularity of such self-help books and articles is any indication, there is a vast new brigade of designing women out there, virtual Rambettes, and they're coming to get you. Now, you may be saying, women as head-hunters seems like a hysterical exaggeration, a throwback to some antediluvian age, such as the Fifties, when every female had her eyes set on a 2.3-carat diamond, 2.3 model kids and a ranch mink.

Ok. You're trying to be reasonable, you're trying to hold down the panic. But let me ask youz this: If you really don't believe that women today have some kind of secret agenda, why does the name Robin Givens send you into a cold sweat?

The last big era for designing women was the Fifties, a time when women approached marriage like a big-game hunt. Watch How to Marry a Millionaire. That's the movie where Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable rent a penthouse—a bear trap, if you will—to lure some seven-figure meat. The object: matrimony, and with it, a legalized expense account. In other words, a long stroll down the bonbon trail.

Over the next three decades, it appeared that women gave up the hunt to pursue other things; they designed loveins, self-awareness, career tracks. Love was free, of the heart, hit-or-miss. Then women became more professionally minded and outwardly directed. They wanted to find themselves, to fulfill their potential, to maximize their abilities; what happened was they went to work. Then they went home and continued to work, for, as it turned out, the men weren't really picking up the slack (or the dishes or the dirty clothes) on the home front.

In the recent past, the ultimate female goal was To have it all: the career, the man, the kids, the lifestyle and the energy to maintain it. If women's batteries ran low, well, maybe they just needed the recharge of better organization. After all, the thinking went, it could be done.

But current research indicates a new trend: Young women today are looking for a role about halfway between super-woman and June Cleaver. And that means they are taking a new, pragmatic approach to affairs of the heart.

David Meer, senior vice-president of the Daniel Yankelovich Group, an opinion-research company, thinks young women are re-evaluating the merits of the workplace, the family and the concept of nurturing. "A big trend is the return of the classical family as an ideal," says Meer. Which means that more women are saying that they want to have children, that they want to have them earlier than this most recent beat-the-biological-clock generation, that they want to spend some time with them around the hearth. And that they're willing to put some kind of temporary cap on their careers, to swap the fast track for the Mommy Track, if that's what it takes.

"And that means that they're probably thinking about the men they're going out with in terms of who is going to be a good provider," says Meer.

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So let's talk about this woman I met named Lorie. She's 25, graduate degree, bouncy, good job, nice looks. Here's her real career path: "I want to get married and have some kids," she says. "So I plan to hock everything I own, get enough capital to move into a very good place, an apartment building with lots of rich guys," she says. "Because when you want someone wealthy, you have to go to him. And you have to look the part. Because if he ever gets a whiff of desperation, then you're sunk. The most important thing is to act like money doesn't matter. That it's dripping off you, so who needs it? Then I'll join the most elite health club around. Go there all the time; rich guys like a tight fanny. And they like someone who looks like she has her own interests. This may sound cold, but what it really is is practical. Looking for a husband and a potential father is like looking for a job. You have to present yourself correctly and check out all the competition."

So what does this mean for the male gender? Maybe that you can no longer count on being judged in terms of who is sexy or adorable or smart. Not even in terms of who's a good dresser. There is no fallback position here; if you can't rely on a second paycheck, then you will have to prepare yourself to bear most of the financial burdens in life. That is, if a woman is thinking about donning an apron, it may also mean the return of the man in the gray-flannel suit. That is the breaking of the last romantic taboo: love in terms of Father Provides Best.

Now, a guy could start to feel used. Begin to worry that he's nothing but a money object, a big bag of Gravy Train.

But let's look at the facts. Great Expectations, a nationwide chain of video dating services, found that 72 percent of single women and 56 percent of single men said they wanted to get married within the year. And 42 percent of women talk about marriage and kids on the first date. In the book 100 Predictions for the Baby Boom, Cheryl Russell wrote that nine out of ten baby boomers say that marriage is the best possible lifestyle.

So get used to it. Commitment and responsibility are in. There was a marriage on Miami Vice. Moonlighting, L.A. Law and thirtysomething were all trying to have babies, seemingly against all odds. Calvin Klein's big perfume used to be Obsession; now it's Eternity. According to The Washington Post Magazine, the terms my husband and my wife have crept back into usage, replacing the use of spouses' first names. So has We-speak, as in "We love the new Scorsese film."

All of this may make you feel like a trapped rat, but buck up. Remember, it's the women who are having problems. In a recent issue of Psychology Today, sociologist Andrew Greeley discussed a new study that examined whether married people today are as happy as they used to be. He concluded that married men are just about as happy now as they were back in the Seventies. The disenchantment was found in young working wives, who feel pressured by the demands of home and family. It's a balancing act for them, the work load of nine to five in the office, followed by the hold chores from five to nine every night. Eventually, some of them start to think, Is this really worth it?

Enter what you could call the new designing woman. Someone who knows what she wants (some security, some flexibility, some vertical options) and what she doesn't want (no more office-then-Endust double duty). Someone who is unwilling to leave the results to chance. Think of her not so much as calculating; rather, as personalizing her life—you know, like the way youbuy accessories for a Filofax. A calendar, some dividers, some blank pages: Shuffle it around and you've set up your own little world.

The world she is organizing is not a world that will exclude her from the work force. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 55.9 percent of all American women work and 56.5 percent of married women with an employed spouse work. So what we are talking about here is a sea change in the nature of love and work for both men and women.

What women are looking for, it seems, are new ways to balance career goals and marriage. At the moment, the most highly touted (and yet unproven) solution is the idea of a Mommy Track. Advanced by Felice N. Schwartz in the January-February issue of the Harvard Business Review, the idea consists of dividing women managers into two groups: career-primary and career-and-family. The career-and-family women opt for a flexible schedule on a slower track.

Which means that someone has to pick up the slack. Probably a husband. And that's potentially scary. Even though most men have been raised knowing that they would work, the concept of signing on as a main breadwinner can feel overwhelming. If girls just want to have fun, and wives just want to create a little flex time between career and home, men just want to feel appreciated. You know, that feeling that is the opposite of being strapped to a yoke and made to plow the fields.

• Here are some other things that scare you about designing women:

• That they've seen Fatal Attraction too many times.

• That the question "How much is enough?" is meaningless to them.

• That Jack Nicholson, in The Witches of Eastwick, has the right idea when he asks, "So what do you think: Women? A mistake? Or did He do it to us on purpose?"

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Granted, life these days may seem to be a new kind of extended Sadie Hawkins Day. But that doesn't mean that you are without options.

There is, of course, the unilateral approach, which I observed recently in a jewelry store. A guy, innocently minding his own business, is checking out the watches, when his ladyfriend calls him over to another part of the store. "Look," she says, pointing through the glass-topped case. "Here's exactly the kind of diamond ring I want."

He looks. "The third one down?" he asks. She nods. "Yeah, well, that's nice," he says. "I hope someone buys it for you."

Then there is this man I talked to; I'll call him Charles. A polished, focused, professional guy on his way up. When we agreed to talk, he was engaged but troubled by what he called his fiancée's lack of ambition. By the time we actually speak, a few days later, he has some news for me.

"I've decided that I can't go through with it," he says. "I've been battling with this for a while. I've got too many problems in my life right now, and she's just becoming one of them. So I am breaking the engagement. I'm telling her this afternoon. My main concerns have to do with career and money issues."

According to Charles, he used to think that "just being in love, drifting along, was enough. But I've discovered that her lack of ambition has affected not only her income but her self-confidence, as well. I need someone strong, someone I respect, who can help me grow, as well. And someone who can help pay the bills."

He says that, yes, they had talked about having kids. But, no, he had not been prepared for her to stay home with the family or even to slow down her career: "I want every able body working.

"A lot of women really want to be taken care of. They're working, but work is not that important to them."

And is that the stuff that love is made of today?

"You bet," Charles concludes. "I don't (concluded on page 146)Designing Woman(continued from page 72) want to take care of anybody. I look at marriage as amerger of two companies that's based on love."

If you're wondering, then, what love has to do with it, you are not alone. On a recent Oprah Winfrey Show about "gold digging," someone raised the question of romance between men and women. A member of the audience set the questioner straight. "It's a business deal and I'm going to get as much as I can out of it," she said. And on the same segment, the authors of a new book called Rich Men, Single Women advised viewers to do exactly what our friend Lorie had in mind: Go to where the rich men are. Don't work in a school or an exterminator's office; get a job in commodities, a law office, big business. Don't play in the public parks; sign up for golf or tennis lessons at the local country club. You'll look rich, you'll see rich.

This is the current state of affairs. Relationships are, evidently, some new form of business with its own style of negotiating. And if you don't want to be cast as the ultimate provider or the sugar daddy, now is the time to compromise, to cut a deal. Picking up your own socks is probably a good way to start. How far will that get you? Who knows? Women, even to other women, remain mysterious, their agendas sometimes hidden. I don't know what else I can tell you.

Oh, yeah. I don't know why, but this moment lingers in my mind. Once, on The Oprah Winfrey Show (something you may want to check out if you want to eavesdrop on opposite-gender mind-set), a woman in the audience stood up and spoke a simple truth. She said, "Women are thinking while men are sleeping."

Enough said.

Best of luck.

What Women Really Want: A Guide For Guys

Are You Man Enough For The Nineties?

Red-blood-cell count: 4,500,000-6,000,000 per cubic milimeter Indicates well-oxygencited blood.

While-blood-cell count: 4500-10,500 per cubic milimeter: Shows no infecticus diseases.

Cholesterol count: 200 or fewer miligrams per 100 milliliters.

HDL (high-density lipoprotein): 40 or more mgs/100mls.

Urine: clear,no sugar, no protein, no evidence of marijuana or other toxis chemicals; no drugs to regulate blood pressore or ulcers, which decrease fertility.

Job: must not expose him to radicition or toxis chemicals that effect fertility. Must pay very much money.

Tax return: open for inspection.

Turn-on: buying nice things for his girlfriend.

Turn-off: using birth control.

Personal strengths: money lots of it.

Heart rate: 65 beats minute.

Blood pressure: 120/80 or lower.

Breathing rate: 14-18 breaths per minute—a minimum of 30 when she's nearby.

Low stressindex figure: below 150 on Holmes and Rohe's Social Readjustment Rating Scale.

Briefs: loose boxers to ensure high sperm count.

Hero: supermom.

Sperm viability (measures sperm's ability to swim): greater than 60 percent.

Sperm density: greater tham 20,000,000 per milliliter of semen.

Ejaclate volume: 5 mls.

Family ambitions: dynastic.

Life-Insurance policy: double indemnity.

What kind of guy does the new designing woman go for? Start with his wallet: thick. His health is primo—so much will depend on him. And, oh, yes, his ability to propagate is highly prized. We've assembled the details here. See if you have what it takes to wind up on the new designing woman's short list.