Russian Aunt’s Shopping Joke

A couple weeks ago now, but it could have been yesterday- my aunt told me a joke she read off of Facebook.  It was about finding a spouse [I’m paraphrasing even though I’m using quotes- ALSO search “shop for husband joke” to find other ways to tell it: <http://www.thejokeyard.com/sexist_jokes/shopping_for_a_husband.html&gt;, <http://mistupid.com/jokes/page050.htm>%5D.

In a big city, there is an extraordinary store with six floors.  This store sells husbands.  With today’s demand on women to work and run around, there isn’t much time to find a good husband, so this store does very good business.

One woman in particular has been disappointed in her attempts to find a good man.  She saved up her money and visits the store.  On the ground floor are the rules of the store:

1. Each floor holds men for you with certain attributes.  There will be additional attributes as you climb to higher floors.
2. You may not retreat to a lower floor once you have been to the floor above.
3. All sales are final; once you have left, you are not allowed to return to this store under any conditions.

Having read the rules, the woman thinks, “okay, well, I’ll see what there is,” and ascends to the first floor.

The first floor contains men with a good job.  Such men are able to support a family on their income and have good insurance.  The woman appreciates this, but thinks that additional traits may make a more valuable husband, so she goes to the next floor.  On the second floor, she finds out that the men there have a good job and love kids.  She finds this intriguing, but while these two traits are important, she wants more out of a man.

This woman continues through the third and fourth floors the same way, moving past men with good jobs, love for kids, great looks, and a penchant for helping around the house.  At the fifth floor though, the woman pauses.  She considers making a husband out of one of the men who have have all the previous traits and are romantic.  But, the last floor waits above her, and all the traits so far have only added to the value of the man, so she decides to go see what the last addition is before settling on a man to marry.

Turning to the main floor from the stairwell landing, the woman nearly runs into a sign.  The sign announces that she is the 2,375,872nd [arbitrarily large number] woman to reach the 6th floor.  “Sorry,” the sign continues, “you obviously do not know what you want out of a man, and this store cannot help you.”  The woman goes home without a husband.

Across town, there is a similar store for men to shop for a wife.  The rules are the same, but the floors are different.  The first floor contains hot women.  The potential wives on the next floor up also love sex.  No man makes it past the second floor.

It pains me how broken this view of men and women is.  Sure, it’s a joke.  When my aunt asked my uncle and me why we thought no man ever ascended past the third floor, that’s what we told her.  “It’s just a joke.”  There is, however, a real view of men and women that lies under the humor attempted in this story.  I know guys who say they would stop at the second floor of our store because who needs more out of a woman, but I don’t think they actually would.  I cannot believe that guys are actually that shallow and would look to a woman only for sex and physical attraction, or would believe that it is easier to develop traits in a person.  My experience with myself has taught me to take looks into account, but that doesn’t really make me comfortable with my tastes.

I also told my aunt that if the wife store was set up like the husband store, I would probably stop at the first or fourth floor.  The first floor because I don’t trust the next trait to be positive, but if I get past that, I don’t think I would be presumptive enough to think that I deserve someone with traits beyond physical attractiveness, a good job, a love of kids, and the care to help with chores.

In reality though, none of those things are on my primary list of desirable characteristics to look for in a date-able female.  My list follows more along the lines of intelligence, a desire and ability to accomplish valuable goals, curiosity.  When I fulfill all of those criteria, then I’ll start asking more, but I haven’t yet shown myself able to accomplish all the worthwhile goals I desire, so there’s that to do before really judging women.

Also, also, I couldn’t stand going to a store for a spouse- good grief, what a gross, industrial monstrosity.