The hot only get hotter
This isn’t my usual long-format letter. There’s only one point I have to make, which is this - the hot only get hotter. So if you aren’t hot, that ain’t going to change.
If it isn’t already clear, it sucks to be in the marriage market. It especially sucks if you belong to one of the two categories:
Extraordinary women
Ordinary men
The competition is just too intense.
Why?
Simple. Because of a demand supply mismatch. There are more extraordinary women than men, and there are more ordinary men than women. Rather, our bar for what makes someone extra-ordinary is different for men and women.
Now, that’s hardly surprising. So, I am warning you that you may not really learn anything that you didn’t already know. But if you want to just revise, read on.
Women are too picky
He seems a bit short. His family might be too conservative. He was dressed too casual for a date. He doesn’t read. He seems to have always worked in 9 to 5 jobs. He is vegetarian. His mother’s a housewife. He looks different from his picture. He is boring.
So picky, these women. Actually, let me rephrase that…
Our bar for men is really high
Men need to go through several rounds of approval before they come out being extraordinary:
They need to pass the society test - Education, Salary, Looks, Community, Caste, Location, etc.
They need to further pass the parents test - Good upbringing, healthy habits, well mannered mother, father with respectable socio economic status, no unmarried siblings, assets greater than their own so their daughter can lead a comparable life to the one she had back home if not better
Finally, the bride test - IQ, ambition, goals, hobbies, friendships, romanticism, mannerism, spending behaviour and sense of humour, if possible.
I didn’t purposely try to list different things under each round, the harsh truth is that there is little interference between the three rounds, hence, making it a herculean take for most men to pass through all 3 rounds. Optimistically speaking, about 5% of the men in the marriage market at any given point of time come out victorious.
Ok, that’s expected. A lot of things in life do follow power law anyway. But what’s the problem with that?
Imbalance in demand and supply, my friend
While 5% of the men in the market are considered hot, 20% of the women are considered hot at the same level. So, you see, at any given point of time, each hot woman needs to fight off 3 other hot women to get that hot guy. And the imbalance continues. For instance, Kajol had to just fight off one other woman, Rani Mukherjee in Kuch Kuch Hota hai, but she ran away on a train. Imagine if you had to fight 3 other hot women, and potentially even wait for them to die, what would you do? If this isn’t intense competition, I don’t know what is.
Oh, so men can be picky too huh?
Yes, and they are. The general criteria that the average man has (and this includes the top 5% too) are:
Women who look reasonably good
Women with good jobs
Women who have hobbies or interests outside of work
Women who come from respectable families
Women who can run the house on their own
Luckily for men, the society, groom’s parents and the groom are mostly aligned on the criteria which makes selection far easier.
Well, that’s because men listen to their parents. If women also listened to their parents, then we wouldn’t have this problem.
Again, these ambitious girls.
No wonder we have 95% of the men after 80% of the women
We won’t raise the bar for women, no. We’d much rather lower the bar for men. So, the remaining women (80-95%) have to “settle” for boys from the bottom 95%, if they choose to marry that is. That way order shall be restored.
Still, women are picky - You’ll usually only hear the bottom 95% of men saying this, especially the 15% that get leftover. Because it’s true, women have more choice here. Every woman has more than one man to choose from. They can afford to be picky.
So, depending on where you are in the market, the hot get hotter. The ones who suck suck harder.
Moral of the story (Yes, there is moral today): It’s a dog eat dog world. Everyone’s fighting off competition, to be able to have one shot at getting themselves a good partner for life. So, if you think you can sit back and have love chase you, good luck. But if you don’t, I have something to tell you…
Go read your own bio/ about me on every matrimonial site/ dating app. Is that how you want to represent yourself? Would you swipe right on yourself? Would it ever make anyone read on? If not, go change it today. Yes, change it because that’s your only shot at getting someone worthy to come find you. Because you know what, they’ve got 2 seconds for your profile, so you better make it count. If you don’t want to fight, go home. I mean it.