The XX Factor: What women really think.

Is It Really Just A Woman Thing?

Juliet, I also think we're talking about at least two different kinds of fantasies in this sugar-daddy conversation. On one hand, there's the writer's desire for a magical windfall that allows her to pursue her pure-hearted literary dreams unfettered by dirty money business. (And on that point, Virginia Woolf has us all beat by a few decades with her sugar-auntie scenario in A Room of One's Own.) I'm not convinced that that fantasy is particularly gendered, or even generational, though I'm sure it has a lot to do with one's class upbringing.

The other fantasy is about wanting someone to swoop in and take responsibility for all the big, scary, money-related issues that loom in grown-up land: mortgages, tuition payments, health insurance, 401(k)s. And that, to me, has more to do with Americans' seeming inability/unwillingness to face their own economic realities and make responsible financial choices than a failing in American women, specifically. (My mother, a financial consultant who is always trying to convince me that America's days as a superpower are numbered, likes to point out that people in Asia put something ridiculous like 25 percent of their paychecks into savings. The mind boggles.)

On both points, I direct you all to Meghan Daum's excellent essay, "My Misspent Youth," which I think is an excellent cautionary tale for young, creative urbanites, female or otherwise. Daum was a very successful New York-based freelancer who realized, at some point, that she was way over her head in debt and decided to move to Lincoln, Neb., and she's particularly good at illuminating the kind of double-speak and self-justifications creative types make in the face of impending financial doom (and this was written almost 10 years ago).