Cautionary Tale - American Women........

[Ste]

This appeared on Craigslist....

What am I doing wrong?

Okay, I’m tired of beating around the bush. I’m a beautiful (spectacularly beautiful) 25 year old girl. I’m articulate and classy.
I’m not from New York . I’m looking to get married to a guy who makes at least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but keep in mind that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don’t think I’m overreaching at all.
Are there any guys who make 500K or more on this board? Any wives? Could you send me some tips? I dated a business man who makes average around 200 - 250. But that’s where I seem to hit a roadblock. 250,000 won’t get me to central park west. I know a woman in my yoga class who was married to an investment banker and lives in Tribeca, and she’s not as pretty as I am, nor is she a great genius. So what is she doing right? How do I get to her level?

Here are my questions specifically:
- Where do you single rich men hang out? Give me specifics- bars, restaurants, gyms
-What are you looking for in a mate? Be honest guys, you won’t hurt my feelings
-Is there an age range I should be targeting (I’m 25)?
- Why are some of the women living lavish lifestyles on the upper east side so plain? I’ve seen really ‘plain jane’ boring types who have nothing to offer married to incredibly wealthy guys. I’ve seen drop dead gorgeous girls in singles bars in the east village. What’s the story there?

- Jobs I should look out for? Everyone knows - lawyer, investment banker, doctor. How much do those guys really make? And where do they hang out? Where do the hedge fund guys hang out?

- How you decide marriage vs. just a girlfriend? I am looking for MARRIAGE ONLY

Please hold your insults - I’m putting myself out there in an honest way. Most beautiful women are superficial; at least I’m being up front about it. I wouldn’t be searching for these kind of guys if I wasn’t able to match them - in looks, culture, sophistication, and keeping a nice home and hearth.


THE ANSWER
Dear Pers-431649184:

I read your posting with great interest and have thought meaningfully about your dilemma. I offer the following analysis of your predicament.
Firstly, I’m not wasting your time, I qualify as a guy who fits your bill; that is I make more than $500K per year. That said here’s how I see it.

Your offer, from the prospective of a guy like me, is plain and simple a crappy business deal. Here’s why. Cutting through all the B.S., what you suggest is a simple trade: you bring your looks to the party and I bring my money. Fine, simple. But here’s the rub, your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity…in fact, it is very likely that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won’t be getting any more beautiful!
So, in economic terms you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset. Not only are you a depreciating asset, your depreciation accelerates! Let me explain, you’re 25 now and will likely stay pretty hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in earnest. By 35 stick a fork in you!

So in Wall Street terms, we would call you a trading position, not a buy and hold…hence the rub…marriage. It doesn’t make good business sense to “buy you” (which is what you’re asking) so I’d rather lease. In case you think I’m being cruel, I would say the following. If my money were to go away, so would you, so when your beauty fades I need an out. It’s as simple as that. So a deal that makes sense is dating, not marriage.
Separately, I was taught early in my career about efficient markets. So, I wonder why a girl as “articulate, classy and spectacularly beautiful”
as you has been unable to find your sugar daddy. I find it hard to believe that if you are as gorgeous as you say you are that the $500K hasn’t found you, if not only for a tryout.

By the way, you could always find a way to make your own money and then we wouldn’t need to have this difficult conversation.

With all that said, I must say you’re going about it the right way.
Classic “pump and dump.”
I hope this is helpful, and if you want to enter into some sort of lease, let me know.

[Gator]

Ste,

Good piece of writing.  I like this part, "...you could always find a way to make your own money and then we wouldn’t need to have this difficult conversation."

Such AW are out there. 

RW are more pragmatic, and from what I have heard, a number of "spectacularly beautiful" RW have opted for the lease arrangement.  Unlike this AW, the RW start before 25 and upon approaching 30 can enroll with a marriage agency.   

[USCFAN]

Good post Ste ... and I love the response to the ad 

[Lily]

  recently I found this remarkable Craigslist posting that appeared about last October on the web, and a few replies to it.

Russian internet world caught it pretty soon and made a very good translation in Russian.

Funny dialog indeed  here is how it continued:

MY ADVICE:

Dear Pers-431649184:

I also came across your posting with great interest. I am a 28 year old Wall Street trader who qualifies as an eligible suitor under your $500k/yr rule. In fact, I make over a million and can usher a woman into a comfortable, true middle class lifestyle (not like those 500k lower-middle class chumps who have to make do with the junior two-bedroom).

I am sympathetic to your goal in finding a rich man to marry. The milk needs to be sold by the expiration date. But since this is premium milk, why would you settle for less than premium prices? I would like to address some of the questions that were previously missed by the other gentleman and provide constructive advice on where to find your match.

I also do believe in the efficient market theory, and am surprised that $500k hasn't found you yet. There are plenty of rich lawyers, investment bankers and hedgies to go around in this city. What gives? I think the problem might be that you have not been sufficiently focused in your search efforts.

The culprit, I believe, may be that you are also looking for qualities aside from money - such as looks, personality, and a sense of humor. However, men who have those qualities learn at an early age that they do not need money to attract quality women. As the saying goes, if you can get the milk for free, why pay up for the cow?

What you need to look for is someone who is long money, and short the other aspects. They are not easy to spot, since you are biologically wired to overlook and ignore them. However, the next time that you are at a expensive black tie event, and you are introduced to the short, bald, overweight man who fidgets nervously whilst making conversation with you, pay special attention to him.

Here's an inspirational story for you. An acquaintance of mine who was also an classy and articulate woman as yourself was able to land that guy - who also happens to be one of the top ten guys at Google. This is the type of stuff that gold-digging moms read to their gold-digging daughters at bedtime. Perhaps you need to make a location change to Silicon Valley - miracles like these happen almost everyday in a land where you can randomly throw a rock and hit a rich nerd squarely in his Kim-jong Il glasses.

And as far as his deficiencies go, they turned out to be not so bad. With hundreds of millions in the bank, she's been able to clean him up and give him a little sophistication. Think of it as a fixer-upper project with a massive budget (and yourself as a visionary real estate developer!). Although, I must warn you, it is a fine line you are flirting with - you must not overdo it lest he begins to attract younger women who are hotter than yourself. The trick is, you need build him up enough to be presentable, while simultaneously manipulate him into believing you are the best that he will ever do! That, botox and having kids will be your insurance against your depreciation (or as I prefer to use the term, milk going sour).

I wish the best of luck on your sales project. As for me, I am also available for a short-term lease. However, for marriage I wouldn't consider a woman unless she can bring beauty, brains and self-motivation to the table. I do not want to dilute my gene pool and end up raising a bunch of Paris Hiltons.

[Lily]

Good post Ste ... and I love the response to the ad 

The Wall Street banker's response bears the signature line of Rob Campbell, an actual employee of J.P Morgan Chase & Company's investment banking division, but the company denies he authored it, stating that Campbell merely forwarded the message as received and his email program automatically appended his contact information. This is perfectly plausible given that the same thing happens to "frequent forwarders" all the time, not to mention the fact that the message was already making the rounds before Rob Campbell's name ever appeared on it. A well-known Craigslist prankster has also denied authoring the reply.

[Lily]

..Quoting.. 

Acquisitive Craigslist Post Reddens Faces All Around

By ANDREW ADAM NEWMAN
Last month on Craigslist.com, someone who described herself as a “spectacularly beautiful” 25-year-old placed a personal ad seeking a husband who made at least $500,000 a year, because “$250,000 won’t get me to Central Park West.”

As her post hit the blogs, it received a scathing response from a man who said he fit her description and told her that her proposition was a bad business deal. “In economic terms, you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset,” he wrote, because “your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity.”

Last week, this exchange spilled over into the e-mail world, where the it turned into a popular item to send to friends as a joke. The difference between this and other outrageous share-mail messages, however, was that instead of remaining anonymous, its ostensible author signed his name and the company where he worked, which happened to be the investment banking division of JPMorgan Chase.

This detail, which may have provoked nearly as much mirth as the contents of the exchange, made the correspondence either more or less credible. Would someone with a big job at a prestigious company really have linked his name to a message that read in part: “You’re 25 now and will likely stay pretty hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in earnest. By 35 stick a fork in you!”

The man who is widely credited with writing the response did not respond to a voice message, but the media relations department at JPMorgan Chase confirmed that he worked there and said that he was not the author. Rather, a company spokesman said, he had forwarded the e-mail message to friends, and the signature setting on his e-mail accompanied the response when it wound up on blogs.

By this account, the employee was just an accidental sexist, the latest object lesson in the dangers of e-mail getting into the wrong hands — the Wall Street equivalent of a Pittsburgh Steelers coach who passed along an e-mail message with a sex video to the National Football League commissioner, among others.

“Your workplace computer does not exist as a tool for forwarding jokey things,” said Will Schwalbe, an author of “Send: The Essential Guide to E-Mail for Office and Home.”

As for the legitimacy of the original posting by the husband seeker, a spokeswoman for Craigslist wrote in an e-mail message that “it does look as if the post was made sincerely.” A message sent to the Craigslist mailbox seeking comment yielded no response.

Craigslist declined to say how many people responded to the personal ad (which asked, among other things, for names of bars, restaurants and gyms where rich single men hung out). And so far, the identity of the responder remains a mystery too.

“I wish we wrote it because I think it’s great,” said John Carney, editor of DealBreaker, a Wall Street gossip site that posted the exchange on Wednesday.

Mr. Carney said that he had received the zinger in an e-mail message from someone other than the author, and his source did not know who wrote it. (The response never appeared on Craigslist itself.)

On Thursday, Howard Lindzon posted it to his blog. After a commenter asked who wrote it, Mr. Lindzon responded “me,” but then said in a telephone interview that he had been kidding. The traffic the posting drew was serious, though. Mr. Lindzon usually gets about 3,000 daily visitors, but popularity-rating sites digg.com and reddit.com linked to the item, drawing more than 100,000 visitors and crashing his server.

Brett Michael Dykes, a blogger notorious for fake listings on Craigslist, said he had received about 40 e-mail messages accusing him of posting the husband-seeking personal ad. But he said he had not written it and was stumped about its provenance.

“I’ve probably read it five or six times, and I go back and forth,” Mr. Dykes said. “Sadly I think it may be real. I have met in New York City that type of girl.”

By now, Mr. Dykes said, a blogger would have taken credit for the listing if it were a hoax, but “who would want to step from the shadows and say, ‘I’m the gold digger’?”

And Mr. Carney said he was not holding his breath that the Wall Street type would step forward. “In the age of ultrasensitivity to sexual harassment, people might think that this guy’s response about women being depreciating assets is not exactly how they want their firm to be perceived by the public,” he said.

[Lily]

This is not the end of the story gents.. here is another funny reply:

Dear Whore:

I appreciate your honesty. At 500K a year, you've tagged your coochie at an astonishing $1369 a day! Quite modest, aren't we! But I admit, I'm still intrigued at what such an astonishing figure might offer. I'd like You a daily rental plan before considering a nominal lease.

But before I commit to a rental though, a few questions, dear.

Having seduced and rented an embarrassingly large number of women, I must say you really need to explain your pricing. You humbly find yourself spectacularly beautiful, but really now, that just your opinion. Just last month at the Novahotel disco in Bangkok, I had 25 different Russian Anna Kournikova look-a-likes offer a rental fee of $150 a night.

As a man, my beautiful meter is far more subjective, the odds are miniscule you're close to as beautiful as them, let alone 10X more beautiful to justify $1369!

So is it your sexual performance? In Thailand I've paid $30 a night to a half a dozen girls who could star in porn today. Are you 45 times better? Hmmmm.

Is your snapper gold plated and does it shoot fire? If it only shoots darts and smoke cigars, I've seen that for free at Long Gun in Bangkok. Maybe you have some magical pink taco that changes tranny fluid, carries my golf bag, baits my hooks, and morphs into a new 21 year old every night? That's surely worth something, I imagine. $1369? Well.

Also, you seem naive to the game. Men don't pay for sex, we pay for women to leave. It sounds like you expect to come back every day! Good grief!! Surely there must be some decelerating price scale as the days add up. Please advise.

Lastly, you don't speak do you? I don't like to talk to whores, and avoid cocky ones like the plague, which you clearly are.

Maybe you're actually some package deal. Do you have a fleet of hot girlfriends that give great BJs or something? So what does a $1369 hummer feel like? Really. I'd like to know.

Warm Regards,

Brett Tate

[Gator]

Lilly,

What was the general reaction among RW Internet participants?

[Blues Fairy]

The funniest thing is, this is probably exactly how an average 19-century girl from a good family wood reason, and nobody would dare condemn her.

[Lily]

Lilly,

What was the general reaction among RW Internet participants?

There are reactions as follows:

- well done replying men; cannot believe that such successful men can really find some time to reply her;

- the girl appently overestimates her qualities; beauties are rare in America;

- the guys are right that some 5 year will pass and this beauty is garbage by then;

- she is a real whore; if I ever get rich, I never marry, women are all b$tches;

- is 500k a year a real middle class in the US? some discussion about the mentioned neighborhoods and NY realities followed

- rich men understand in women and prefer inside beauty to the outside one, they want an equal; wealthy men are anything but stupid not to recognize that b$tch;

- one should look for a soulmate and earn her own living;

- she could increase her assets like bearing his kids, keeping good home, being a great companion for her husband, etc.

Etc, etc..

[Lily]

One RM replied, 'Great girl, I like her approach. One should have some brains in order to make such a big Internet fuss. I'd like to met her in person if I'd be in the States. There are a few things however. First, if her question would be placed on a Russian site, I 'd be 100% sure that the question is not a sincere one but just to make some online fun. But as the girl is American, the question should be real, as I heard that the Americans just tell what they really think. The other thing is that we are not sure whether the question is not posted by some 35- 40yo ordinarily looking but smart university graduate woman who actually makes her 500k and who just want to make fun of her top earning male colleagues who chase 25 yo hotties..'

[jb]

Lily,

Does the term "hoax" mean anything to you?  How about "urban myth"?

[Lily]

jb, no it does not. I copied and pasted those pieces.

[jb]

Lily,

I'm not saying the story isn't out there, I'm just saying I doubt the veracity of where it came from.

[Lily]

Lily,

I'm not saying the story isn't out there, I'm just saying I doubt the veracity of where it came from.

Interesting..why do you think so? How could the word 'hoax' be related to your doubts?

[jb]

Lily,

The story was "supposedly" written by a beautiful young woman in search of a rich husband, my guess is it was written by someone, probably a man, with a warped sense of humor.  Thus it is a hoax.

[Gator]

JB,

The story seems plausible to me except for one point:

Any gold digging woman with "spectacular" beauty has been discovered by 25.

Her ability to write suggests that she is not stupid, so something seems off the mark.  

Yet, to go to Russia and find a wife is probably more far fetched to most Americans than this 25-yo AW searching for a million dollar man.  I can believe it as representative of the interactions between some men and women.


Lilly,

Thanks for forwarding the RW comments.  I like the one, "the girl appently overestimates her qualities; beauties are rare in America."  Hopefully it was sarcasm.

[ScottinCrimea]

The key to any hoax being successful is that it contains just enough truths to make it seem so.  The fact that this one was so successful says a lot about the overall perception of AW.

[BC]

Interesting..why do you think so? How could the word 'hoax' be related to your doubts?

Now that's the kind of remark my wife sometimes comes up with.. really makes me think..

I  RW

[jb]

Her ability to write suggests that she is not stupid, so something seems off the mark.

Thus was my reasoning that it was written by a man.   

[Lily]

 I like the one, "the girl appently overestimates her qualities; beauties are rare in America."  Hopefully it was sarcasm.

That RW told that she was in the U.S. and figured out that some 80% of the American women are below average (sorry cannot find her exact given figures anymore) and only about 5% can be perhaps called beautiful. The same woman further alleged if those 5% American women would for instance get in a Russian metro, they may not appear to be that beautiful if compared with the most of local girls. That Russian woman poster just believes that AW are not that beautiful as RW are. Therefore she put the self-estimate of the initial author under doubt. To me it does not look like sarcasm.

[Lily]

Thus was my reasoning that it was written by a man.   

Some women just happen to be smart. 

[jb]

Lily,

You miss the point.  The advert says she is spectacularly beautiful,,, trust me, a girl who truly is that beautiful wouldn't still be single by the age of 25.  All the girls who meet that description are off the market by the time they are 21.

I was just having a little fun with you here. 

BTW, the most beautiful girls in the USA are all living in Dallas, Texas, not in NYC.

[Gator]

BTW, the most beautiful girls in the USA are all living in Dallas, Texas, not in NYC.

Yeah, NYC is full of "worn out" Russians.   There literally could be women of 50 or more different nationalities.  Who knows if a woman seen in NYC is an AW or not. 

[Muj]

That RW told that she was in the U.S. and figured out that some 80% of the American women are below average (sorry cannot find her exact given figures anymore) and only about 5% can be perhaps called beautiful. The same woman further alleged if those 5% American women would for instance get in a Russian metro, they may not appear to be that beautiful if compared with the most of local girls. That Russian woman poster just believes that AW are not that beautiful as RW are. Therefore she put the self-estimate of the initial author under doubt. To me it does not look like sarcasm.

Considering the subject of a TV show last night was beauty and "curvy" women and they mentioned that most American Women are a size 12, the stats may be accurate.