The Hot One
A note from my 43-year old neighbor, Jan, who is definitely not upset right now.
In every relationship, someone is the hot one. Right from the start. Objectively hotter. Now I know what you’re thinking, beauty is subjective. Yes! Also I’ve read there’s something about symmetry. Mathematical face equations. How most people inherently know their spot on a scale of 1 to 10 and tend to hook someone tightly within range.
Still, someone is hotter. And when that someone is a young woman, assuming she’s in a regular ol’ straight people marriage with a partner of similar age, she will remain the hot one until exactly 40. Then a strange and disorienting thing will happen: Instantly, overnight, on her 40th birthday, the man will become the hot one.
That’s just how it is! I didn’t make patriarchy!
Suddenly the man she plucked from two rungs down the scale shoots two higher. He’s middle aged now, he makes good money. His grays give him a look of infinite, sexy wisdom, even though he doesn’t know where his kids go to the dentist. A new woman emerges: The type who wants middle-aged, moneyed, newly hotter married men. His wife is no longer the hot one. He no longer needs her to elevate his status; he jumped up just by getting older.
The wife! Oh, she will not realize that she’s no longer the hot one! Not at first. Not until long after she’s been working from home, taking care of kids, cultivating exactly no backup relationships. That’s when it’ll hit her. Her husband will say the whole family must run to a park to show a sad coworker their dog to cheer her up. And then she’ll know. The wife will know, some broad is making a move. After years and years of batting down admirers for this man—oh! The gorgeous, rich flirts she brushed off for him!—Years and years of buying chinos that made his butt look way better than the saggy-bottomed pants he had before, and now another woman has taken notice and wants it. The butt. And more.
And that’s why Beyoncé remade Jolene.
