The Ongoing Joke About Women And Money Isn’t Funny Anymore
By Monica Drake
The beauty of the woman in that joke? She makes him feel extremely competent.
My husband has a habit of saying in public that I am “bad with money.” He’ll toss this out in conversation as though it’s common knowledge, expecting to be met with general agreement, not debate. If he were to write this in an essay in one of the college writing courses I teach, I’d scrawl, “unsupported assertion” in the margin, and send him back to collect research or delete the line. In the passing moments of daily life though, nobody asks for evidence.
I’ve stood at his side at children’s birthday parties and literary events when he’s said this out loud to my friends and family. I don’t think he means to be unkind. When he says it, either directly or through implication, it’s like he’s talking about somebody I don’t know. I almost feel sorry for him because he’s married to such a bumbling, financially inept woman.
But the beauty of that woman? She makes him feel extremely competent.
It’s a disembodied narrative embedded into the details of our life, an unoriginal story that isn’t actually about us as particular individuals with accomplishments, financial philosophies, values, and concerns. It’s a…
