“Why Buy the Cow?”: John Mulaney on the Pressures of Proposal
In his stand-up comedy routine, John tells men to put a ring on her finger before society makes her beg.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
Every single girl can relate to the pain of having to answer this cringe-worthy question about their relationship status. This is a question they will be asked frequently, especially while seeing relatives during the holiday season, up until the time they get married. People have a tendency to ask a girl questions about her relationship status before they even think to ask her anything else. When the holidays come around, girls can forget about their 4.0 GPA and all their other noteworthy accomplishments because the first question their relatives will ask them is if they have a significant other.
The Office of National Statistics has found that “being married is 20 times more important to a person’s well-being than their earnings, and 13 times more important than owning a home.” This statistic reveals that people are more concerned about having a spouse than having a place to live and money to support themselves. According to a study done by Susan Shapiro Barash in 2013, “80 percent of women, regardless of their current marital statuses, consider marriage a goal.” It is shocking to see how important marriage is, especially to girls, but with the constant societal pressures and the history of marriage, who can blame them?
Comedian, John Mulaney, discusses a woman’s urge to get married in a humorous manner in his Netflix special entitled, John Mulaney: The Comeback Kid. His joke begins by asking the audience if they’ve ever heard the saying, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” He then goes on to state that old saying has lost its meaning as time has progressed. He states, “Now, it’s like, ‘Why buy the cow?’ Uh, maybe because, every day, the cow asks you when you’re gonna buy it.” This joke draws a huge laugh from the audience because of the statement’s truth. Most women are forced to beg their boyfriend to propose to them because they tend to be ready for marriage before their significant other.
“Why buy the cow?” Uh, maybe because every time another cow gets bought, you have to go to the sale and you have to sit next to your cow at the sale, and your cow looks over at you the entire time like *angry cow noise*. And does not enjoy the sale at all… even though she’s the one that wanted to go to the sale. And she’s especially mad because that farmer and cow met, like, eight months after you guys met.
In a segment on Late Night with Seth Meyers, John continues his discussion of a woman’s desperate need for a proposal and how her feelings toward the subject are amplified at weddings. While John is answering viewers questions about weddings, one viewer states, “The garter toss seems like a really weird tradition. Should I still do it?” John answers the question by stating, “That’s an awkward tradition because the guy is probably trying to avoid proposing and it’s not the same as a woman catching the bouquet and then he’ll have a car ride home where there will be a lot of fighting and also tears.” Not only do weddings make girls emotional because they are happy for the couple, but also because it strikes fear in girls’ hearts that they may never find someone who wants to commit to them in that way.
John Mulaney is able to speak from personal experience when discussing the extreme differences between women and men’s interest in marriage. He married his wife, Annamarie, on July 5, 2014. In his interview with Ellen Degeneres, three months after his wedding, he explained he was not involved in his wedding planning by joking, “It was a lovely wedding and my now wife, Anna, planned the entire thing, which was great. I like to say I sat back like a disinterested Shark Tank investor. I was just like I’ll give you the $20,000. I’d be curious to see what you’d do with it.” John’s comment displays that a woman’s obsession with weddings far surpasses a man’s. It is common for girls to plan the entire wedding while the guy does whatever he can to please his future wife. Most men are not as invested in the wedding planning as females are because they have not been dreaming of their wedding day since they were children.
Women are so eager to get married because society has taught them from a very young age that marriage is something they should aspire to have in life. The stereotypical girl has been planning her wedding since she was little and has been told her wedding day is the happiest day of her life. For example, in the movie, Bride Wars, Liv and Emma had been planning their weddings since they were six years old. They planned on being each other’s maid of honor, but when their wedding planning agency accidentally booked their weddings on the same day, it turned into a sabotage-filled war about who can have the best wedding. This is just one of the many movies about a girl’s obsession with getting married. These types of movies not only accurately portray a female’s interest in weddings, but they also teach girls that they should mirror the behavior of the women in the films, if they are not already doing so.
A survey by Interflora found the average single girl starts thinking about elements of her wedding at the age of 13 with one in ten even starting to save money for the big day.
Marriage is viewed as a goal that girls aim to achieve before they reach a certain age. One of the reasons girls feel like they need a man to be happy is because that is what they have been taught since they were born. For example, in many Disney classics like Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Snow White, the film depicts the princess being rescued by the handsome prince teaching young girls to rely on boys to save them. Also, little boys grow up playing with trucks and blocks while little girls are given doll houses and baby dolls. Whether it is intentional or not, girls are being raised to dream of having a family they can “play house” with for real. Times are changing and feminism is on the rise, but that does not change the fact that for many years a woman’s sole purpose in life was to marry a man so she could serve him.
Women have been treated like prizes for centuries especially in arranged marriages and dowries. In the case of arranged marriage, the parent would actually select a man for their daughter to marry because they believed their judgement was far better than their daughter’s judgement. The parent’s goal was to find their daughter a successful man that could take care of her. In fact, Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage, A History, states, “Marriage used to be a very powerful but very rigid institution — powerful largely because it was so rigid. There were few alternatives, since women could seldom earn a decent living and unmarried men and women faced social stigma and discrimination. Gender roles were strictly divided, making it difficult for men and women to appreciate each other as well-rounded individuals, but assuring their dependence on each other.” Through this comment, Stephanie explains how women were reliant on men for financial support and that is why marriage was so important to them and their family.
During the Roman Empire period, dowries were used so the bride’s father could assist the husband with future costs the wife and husband would have throughout their marriage. That may have been the purpose for the dowry, but it appears as if the father actually has to pay a man to marry his daughter because that is how worthless a woman actually is. The father’s money was used to make the his daughter more attractive than the poorer women. In an interview with Stephanie Coontz, the interviewer discusses Stephanie’s book by stating, “Historically, marriage was a political and economic familial alliance. In your book Marriage, A History, you state it was men who were first to embrace marriage for love while women continued to use more instrumental reasoning in choosing partners.” Stephanie further explains this statement by saying, “When the love match first triumphed in the early 19th century, men more often had the luxury of marrying solely for love than did women, who were economically dependent on men and legally subordinate to their husbands once they married and therefore had to proceed more cautiously.” Women were forced to rely on their husband for money because women in the workplace were not as accepted as they are today. This prevented women from marrying solely for love and taught women in future generations that they needed a man to survive. Women’s rights have come a long way since the days of arranged marriage and dowries, but sometimes it feels as if women are being forced to live in the past.
Women are in a rush to get married for a variety of reasons, but the main reasons are “she wants children and is concerned about her biological clock, her family is pressuring her to settle down, marriage makes financial sense, and finally, pressure from society.’’
Tick… tick… tick… do you hear that? That’s your biological clock ticking. Can you hear it? If not, society will constantly remind you. Every day women are reminded that time is running out, and if they wait too long to get married, they won’t have kids and will die alone. This is one of the many reasons women have a tendency to be ready for engagement before men. According to a study done by Zola Wedding Registry, “Seventy percent of brides-to-be in Zola’s survey nudged their significant other toward the ring they wanted and 30 percent admitted to getting a manicure because they suspected the proposal was coming.” These facts show that most women are involved in the engagement ring process, which implies that most men do not propose to their future wife without knowing she’s ready for marriage.
Whether it’s due to societal pressure or simply how a female is raised, it does not change the fact that women are typically ready for marriage long before men. Guys may become annoyed by their girlfriend’s constant nagging, but there is a simple solution to solve that problem: buy the cow!