September 24, 2009

多金女約會的苦惱:男性脆弱的自尊

Women With Money Encounter the Fragile Male Ego on Dates
By Alex William

FOR Whitney Hess, a 25-year-old software designer in Manhattan , the tension that

ultimately ended her recent relationships was all right there, in the digits on her pay

stub.
對曼哈坦的25歲軟體設計師惠特妮海斯而言,最後導致她最近一段感情結束的緊繃關係,癥結在於她薪資單上的數字。


The awkwardness started with nights out. She would want to try the latest downtown

chic restaurant, but her boyfriends, who worked in creative jobs that paid less than

hers, preferred less expensive places.
尷尬情況從晚間約會時開始。她想嘗試一家最新的時髦餐廳,從事創意工作、薪水比她少的男友卻寧可選擇較廉價的場所。


They would say, “Wow, you’re so sophisticated,” she recalled. “They wouldn’t want me to see their apartments,” because they lived in cramped surroundings far from Manhattan .

她回憶說,他們會表示:「哇,你真是品味高雅」,「他們不喜歡我去探訪他們的公寓」,因為他們住在離曼哈坦很遠的狹小環境裡。


One of them, she said, finally just came out and said it. “Look,” Ms. Hess recalled him saying, “it makes me really uncomfortable that you make more money than me. I’m going to put that out on the table and try to get over it.”
她表示,其中一位男友最後終於和盤托出。海斯小姐記得他這麼說:「我跟妳說,你賺得比我多,真的讓我心裡不舒坦。我要把一切攤開來講,然後設法忘記你賺得比我多。」


But he never got over it, she said. “The sad thing is that I really liked the guy.”

她說,但他一直無法忘記此事。「悲慘的是,我真的喜歡這傢伙。」


For the first time, women in their 20s who work full time in several American cities – New
York , Chicago , Boston and Minneapolis – are earning higher wages than men in the same age range, according to a recent analysis of 2005 census data by Andrew
Beveridge, a sociology professor at Queens College in New York .
根據紐約皇后學院社會學教授安德魯‧貝佛里吉最近分析美國2005年人口普查資料的發現,紐約、芝加哥、波士頓和明尼亞波利斯等美國幾個大城市的20來歲全職職業婦女,薪資所得首度超越同年齡層的男性。


For instance, the median income of women age 21 to 30 in New York who are employed full
time was 17 percent higher than that of comparable men.
例如,紐約市2130歲全職婦女的收入中位數,比男性同儕高出17%


Professor Beveridge said the gap is largely driven by a gulf in education: 53 percent of
women employed full time in their 20s were college graduates, compared with 38
percent of men. Women are also more likely to have graduate degrees. “They have moreof everything,”
Professor Beveridge said.
貝佛里吉教授表示,這主要是受到教育差異的影響:20來歲的全職受雇婦女有53%是大學畢業,男性只有38%。女性也較可能擁有研究所學位。貝佛里吉教授說:「她們一切條件都比較好。」


Women are encountering forms of hostility they weren’t prepared to meet, and are

trying to figure out how to balance pride in their accomplishments against their

perceived need to bolster the egos of the men they date.
女性遭遇到她們根本沒有預想到的各種形式敵意,力圖想出辦法,以便在因為自己的成就而產生的自豪,以及察覺到須替約會的男性對象做面子之間尋求平衡。

 

“Very, very early in a date,” said Anna Rosenmann, 28, who founded a company called

Eco Consulting LA, in Los Angeles , and earns up to $ 150,000 a year, “a man will drop

comments on how much his sales team had made for the year, which meant his bonus

was blah, blah, blah.” But, she said, “that’s not how we were raised.”
現年28歲的安娜‧羅森曼說:「才剛開始約會,男生就會談他的行銷小組今年已做到多少業績,意味他的獎金如何如何。」不過她說:「我們成長時所受的教養,使我們不會這樣做。」羅森曼在洛杉磯創辦洛城生態顧問公司,每年所得高達15萬美元。


Ms. Rosenmann said that dating considerably older men helps her avoid innuendos from

younger men who feel threatened by her professional success.
羅森曼小姐表示,和年長許多的男性約會,讓她免於年輕男性的挖苦。這些年輕男性覺得受到她的工作成就威脅。

 

The discomfort over who pays for what seems to be not really about money, exactly.

Instead, it is suggestive of the complex psychology of what many of these women

expect from their dates (for him to be a traditional source of financial support) and

what they think they should expect (for him to be a nice guy).
該誰付帳的不自在,其實似乎不在金錢本身。相反地,這讓人想起複雜的心理學,包括許多女性對約會對象的期待(希望他是財力支柱的傳統來源),以及女性認為自己應該有何期待(希望他是一個好人)。 句法分析: who pays for what 是介系詞 over 的受詞,這裡的 what for 的受詞,是「什麼事情」或「什麼東西」的意思。也就是「什麼東西是由誰來付帳」。這句話如果用A來代表的話,這個句子就成了:The discomfort over A seems to be
not really about money
.這裡的 what expect 的受詞,主詞是 many of these women,這句的意思是,這些女性對她們男友的期待到底是什麼,心理似乎是很複雜。這裡的矛盾是,
what they expect from their dates and what they think they should
expect. 

 

On a first date at a lounge in Midtown Manhattan, Thrupthi Reddy, 28, a marketing

strategist, watched her date not even flinch when she handed the waitress her credit

card. Initially miffed, she recognized her own contradictions.
現年28歲的行銷策略專員索露波席‧瑞迪在曼哈坦中城一家酒吧第一次約會時,拿出自己的信用卡給女服務生之際,看到她的約會對象毫無退縮之意。她原本有點生氣,後來又察覺自己很矛盾。

 

“You wonder if you’re being a hypocrite,” she recalled, “because all date long I’m telling him
how independent I was, and how annoying it was that men wouldn’t date strong
independent women.”

她回憶說:「你會懷疑自己是否很虛偽,因為整個約會過程中,我一直告訴他,我有多獨立,以及男生不和強烈獨立的女性約會有多令人懊惱。」

 

Source: 2007 103日紐時精譯

 

前面是一般女性會期待的,後面是做為現代的獨立女性,她們認為她們應該期待的。這和惠冠前面所問的問題類似,有傳統性別刻板和現代女性角色之間的矛盾和衝突。最理想的狀況,當然是兩者兼得,但大部分的情況都是魚與熊掌的問題。

男性是較有有負擔家計的壓力,例如,「成家立業」主要是用來對男性的期許,而不是對女性。現在台灣也漸漸出現這種現象,女性的學歷愈來愈高,要找相對高學歷的男性就愈來愈難。

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