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THE ARTFUL STRATEGIST

Rules Of Attraction

06/30/08

When I first began writing for the Hartford Business Journal, I assumed that most of the readers were guys.

I know, I know, it was a terrible, piggish, sexist thing to think. There are plenty of women out there, buying short and selling long and trading in pork-belly futures and stuff.

I just had this vision of a guy, sitting at his desk, yelling out to his secretary to hold all his calls, because he needed some time to read that compelling Cohen column in the Hartford Business Journal.

I was wrong. I was wrong, not just as a theoretical, philosophical kind of thing, but I was wrong based on hard evidence. There are tens of thousands of women readers of HBJ.

It’s the marriage proposals. The poor mailroom attendant at the Business Journal can barely stagger out to my mail slot each week with the hundreds and hundreds of marriage proposals. That doesn’t even count the e-mail proposals, some of which are so racy that my software intercepts them and cleans up all the bad language before passing them along.

Wild Women

As Mark Twain once put it, “Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.” He didn’t mean “man” in the collective sense of all humanity. He really did mean “men.” You women are shameless and have no inclination to blush.

Since I have promised to never mention my wife in a column, let us assume for a moment that I have no wife. Do any of you women stand a chance with me?

First, of course, we must determine what it is about me that drives you all wild. Certainly, prose that makes the angels weep with joy is enough for some of you. That’s why even really, really ugly, awkward poets often do quite well in the relationship department.

Next, of course, is the animal magnetism. Look at that photo of me — the tall, lanky blond good looks. I’m as appealing to a businesswoman as a company with a P.E. ratio under 20 and double-digit income growth.

I’m also rich. Ask the Hartford Business Journal. Good columnists don’t come cheap.

Brunettes Nab Billionares

Speaking of rich, let me express my sympathy to all of you redheads who have been coming on to me. You don’t stand a chance. A study by the British-based Lycos dating service has determined that of the 100 male billionaires it investigated, none are married to redheads. Not one.

The brunettes snared most of the rich guys, with 62 percent, while, in a stunning upset, the blondes won only 22 percent.

You blondes shouldn’t get all weepy about your chances in the Cohen marriage lottery. According to a new study in the journal Economics Letters, blondes are better than brunettes at raising money — even if the target donors think both are equally good looking.

Summing up the research, it would appear that I would be most interested in a brunette, unless a blonde began her proposal with a request for money.

As we all know, it’s much harder to be a man than a woman, especially when it comes to this dating-and-marriage stuff. A troubling study last year published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found that women prefer Cohen-like muscular hunks for short-term flings, but switch to more Dean Pagani-like men when they are ready to settle down and get married. What’s a fella supposed to do?

To the women readers of the Hartford Business Journal, I can only say, get back to work. I am a needless distraction in a time of economic uncertainty. Unless you are a redhead. I would like to be the only billionaire married to a redhead.

Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.