Per this ad pic below the ad shows a woman with arrows and a target with a bullet pointed list of things she needs to get the man she wants, and the obvious metaphor is that she is looking (hunting) for a husband or maybe a one night stand.
I get that the ad’s imagery is based on an old trope, but is it really so wrong that it’s hugely offensive? What exactly is wrong with a determined woman who is tried of being single “hunting” for man who is a potential husband by using friends and being attractive? A lot of advice books for women who are looking to be married advise them to do both those things in a deliberate and strategic manner if they want to achieve their goal. If anything it’s a woman taking charge of her own destiny instead of passively waiting for Mr. Right to come along through chance or magic and discover somehow, someway the perfect flower that she is.
Sure, the LBD (little black dress), and eye shadow, and “Wing Woman” buddy and the right shoes are externalities and don’t touch on your inner soul, but they are externalities with a fair degree of power. Why is acknowledging this humorously so very wrong?
The wife of an old military acquaintance contacted me recently. We weren’t exactly friends during our tour together, and I always considered her a PITA, so was surprised to hear from her on FB out of the blue. She told me how her husband had died of cancer and she’d been thinking about me (turns out she’d contacted my ex and found out we were divorced. My ex neglected to tell her I’d remarried). So I told her I was remarried and retired, blahblahblah. Never heard from her again. Yeah, she was trolling, but I can’t be offended by somebody who is lonely and looking for companionship.
I see nothing wrong with someone hunting for a mate and even looking for qualifications. It will save both parties involved trouble down the line if they meet each others criteria.
I think the addition of “starter” is what makes it (relatively) offensive. It’s essentially the gender reversal of “trophy wife” except that trophy wives aren’t necessarily seen as temporary.
I’m not offended by it, but I think it’s lousy, insulting, and a bit dated. This is an ad I could have imagined running when Sex and the City was at its peak. It feels tone-deaf in the current zeitgeist.
Also, the books OP mentions “teaching” women how to “get themselves a husband” are generally insulting trash written by people trying to take advantage of neurotic or lonely women in their 30s and 40s.
Some are but some like this article get to the heart of the matter. This article pissed a lot of people off, but it zeroed in on the fact that a positive attitude and being realistic about your options will get you a long way down the line if your goal is to be married.
I haven’t looked at the link, but my WAG on some of the points raised is that I think it’s partly because we still have this romantic ideal of how people hook up. It’s supposed to be a chance encounter, the guy’s supposed to be doing something that just happens to incidentally show how strong or caring he is yadda yadda.
And we feel this revulsion if it sounds too cold and calculated.
But that’s the reality of it for most of us. The chance encounter doesn’t happen so you take matters into your own hands.
Back in the day, college towns had LOTS of college-age women from out-of-town.
Not a one of them was enrolled, nor did they have career-type jobs. They were out for their Mrs. degrees. I remember one, distantly related to the Lear of Lear Jets, who was zeroing in on males from her first day one campus (at least she was a student. Don’t know for how long). She tried me on for size - I said "have a nice life!’ and ran. A few months later, in the cafeteria, she came in trailing a male - all he needed was a ring through his nose to complete the look. I didn’t bother getting close enough to see her left hand, but the body language was "I nailed one! Here’s my trophy - eat your hearts out, you SINGLE women.
A couple tried it on me - I took the easy sex, but told them I wasn’t going to get married in any foreseeable future. I can hear their mother’s saying “They all say that - just keep at him”.
Maybe they all say that, but some of us mean it (65 and never married).
My niece (at 17 a fat, not-attractive, not clever, not smart - absolutely nothing going for her except boobs the size of her head). She shared a bit of dating advice from her mother - “Never do it n a car - make him get a room”. She had been sexually active (as in “anything in pants who wants some”) since 14 - her parents were going through mid-life crisis while up in the middle of nowhere on a little asteroid they created to ensure the kids had no outside distractions, and turned to religion. They dragged her along on a trip to a religious gathering in the big city. At 14, she was not interested in God, but a cute butt got her attention. While they were downstairs getting religion, she was upstairs getting nailed.
My older sister (B 1947), the pretty, thin one, was enrolled in a second-rate school. I never knew her major - that is how important her studies were. We did meet the one she hooked.
I think that’s exactly it. We look down on those “getting their Mrs.” and “golddiggers” and “trophy wives” and arranged marriages and brokered marriages and marriages of convenience and green card marriages and even, still, online dating because culturally we want marriage to be the result of love and only love, and love that is miraculous and comes out of the blue, not planned and plotted for.
If we’re talking about what’s wrong with the ad, I think you ought to actually look at it; but I think, as does the blogger in the link, that the phrase “starter husband” is a big part of it.
If we’re talking about the concept of, as the OP put it, “a determined woman who is tried of being single “hunting” for man who is a potential husband by using friends and being attractive,” then there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, but if it involves treating men as objects rather than people (the way some men treat women as sex objects when they go out “hunting”), or if it involves a woman wanting to get married without caring whom she marries, then yeah, I could see a problem with that.