The XX Factor: What women really think.

Emily Bazelon And Rebecca Traister Discuss Recession And Gender Roles

Our own Emily Bazelon discusses the Dating a Banker Anonymous fracas, shifting gender roles during the recession, and the pay gap with Salon's Rebecca Traister on Bloggingheads.tv. See video below.

High-End Girlfriends: A Conspicuous Luxury

Commenter jack_cerf posted a follow up to our Dating a Banker Anonymous discussion in the Fray, that perhaps sheds light on the modern urban tragedy of banker-boyfriend breakups:

"Last September Michael Daly of the NY Daily News did a piece on the economic indicator he called the High End Girlfriend Index ("HEGI"). Premise was that one of the conspicuous luxuries of life on Wall Street was to be able to afford the kind of woman who had ignored you in high school. Conversely, the crash led to their being -- very, very reluctantly -- let go. Daly quotes a New York lawyer as follows:

They Ain't Messin With No Broke Bankers

My old compatriots at Jezebel mocked the tone-deaf women behind the blog Dating a Banker Anonymous earlier today.This gaggle of entitled broads (known as DABAs) was featured in a New York Times article. In a nutshell, these women have seen their relationships become difficult because their banker-lovers have fallen on hard times and are no longer the carefree captains of industry they were in the halcyon days of 2006.

Anyway! Their hubris is easy to make fun of, but what struck me was the final two paragraphs in the Times article:

Despite the seemingly endless stream of disparaging remarks and shaking heads, some of the appeal of dating a banker remains.

"It's not even about a $200 dinner," Petrus said. "It's that he's an alpha male, he's aggressive, he's a go-getter, he doesn't take no for an answer, he's confident, people respect him and that creates the whole mystique of who he is."

Maybe I'm reading between the lines too much, but it sort of sounds like these women like bankers not because of the money, but because they're jerks. This suspicion was confirmed by one of today's entries on the DABA site titled, "Ain't Messin' With No Broke Banker."

 "Overnight, he went from unavailable to downright clingy.  He wants to have dinner every night.  By dinner I mean staying in and cooking as Megu is no longer in the budget," laments a sad, sad DABA. "Thanks to the recession, I now have a completely devoted BF, which is exactly what I wanted.  So I should be happy, right?  Wrong.  I’m bored and can’t stop thinking about my perpetually unattainable Euro ex-boyfriend who is recession proof courtesy of an offshore trust account." Is it possible that even if Donald Trump were broke, he'd still be a model magnet as long as he remained emotionally adolescent?

Even though they may date wealthy louts, don't cry for the DABA girls: Word on the street is they've locked down a book deal for their tales of fiscal woe.