Some Poor Kid's Mom Wrote a Letter to Princeton's Student Newspaper Begging Girls to Date Her Son (UPDATE)
Attention: Women of Princeton.
If you are seeking your ideal life partner—and you are—you now know where to find him. He is the boy stretched out on the cool linoleum of a dusty back aisle in the library, quietly having a panic attack because his mother wrote a letter addressed to every girl he knows, trying to goad them into marrying him.
Susan A. Patton, President of the Princeton University Class of 1977 and proud Tiger Mom, is ready for you to be her daughter-in-law. Move fast, before some other lucky, lusty Tigress beats you to the prize.
On Friday, Princeton University's student newspaper, the Daily Princetonian, published a page-and-a-half letter to the editor that might, in polite circles, be called "intriguing." Everywhere else: batshit crazy and extremely offensive. Also, embarrassing!
Addressed to "the daughters I never had," or, implicitly, the daughters she never ruined, the letter was penned by Susan A. Patton, proud Princeton alumna and mother of Princeton students. She has been writing open letters about her sons since they were in the first grade. (Here, she informs New York magazine that, as the mother of a first grader and, more importantly, personal friend and neighbor of the Giulianis, she approves of Donna and Rudy's choice of school for their children Andrew and Caroline, whom she also knows very well.)
What advice should Susan A. Patton, a successful businessperson and a member of the fifth class of women to graduate from what is undeniably the fanciest collection of buildings in New Jersey, pass down to the smart, driven young women who are her legacy? Should she advise them on selecting a career path? On the virtues of sisterhood? On the importance knowing and respecting yourself?
For most of you, the cornerstone of your future and happiness will be inextricably linked to the man you marry, and you will never again have this concentration of men who are worthy of you.
Perhaps she should apprise them of the importance of spending the rest of their lives fucking one of her sons.
I am the mother of two sons who are both Princetonians. My older son had the good judgment and great fortune to marry a classmate of his, but he could have married anyone. My younger son is a junior and the universe of women he can marry is limitless. Men regularly marry women who are younger, less intelligent, less educated. It's amazing how forgiving men can be about a woman's lack of erudition, if she is exceptionally pretty. Smart women can't (shouldn't) marry men who aren't at least their intellectual equal. As Princeton women, we have almost priced ourselves out of the market. Simply put, there is a very limited population of men who are as smart or smarter than we are. And I say again - you will never again be surrounded by this concentration of men who are worthy of you.
Yes, Princetonettes, one of Ms. Patton's virile young sons is already married, an unfortunate circumstance which cuts in half your chances of having the enchanting Susan A. Patton, President of the Princeton Class of 1977, as a mother-in-law.
But howl not your anguished tiger howls into the jungle night, for all is not lost. There is still one fine Princeton specimen—one red-blooded American male who sprang into existence from one of Susan. A. Patton's outstanding eggs—prowling around the Princeton campus. Or maybe dry heaving into a dorm room toilet in shame.
Track him down and make him your mate and he will sire for you an army of miniature Susan A. Pattons, stumbling around your home (perhaps the "PERFECT 1-BR co-op on fashionable upper East Side" Susan A. Patton was hoping to unload in 1986), offering helpful tough-love advice like, "If you tip the waitress, mother dear, she'll never be motivated to find a better job."
Find this boy now because, as Susan A. Patton explains, the universe of women Susan A. Patton's son can marry is literally limitless. Every year, it expands, as more and more girls are admitted to Princeton. You undergraduates currently studying the gospel of Susan A. Patton are in competition not just with your classmates, but with all future female (male?) Princeton alumnae (alumni?). Some of your competitors lie in wait right now in the ovaries of your classmates. So hurry, by all means, hurry!
Susan A. Patton wraps up her lecture on the importance of eugenics in romance with a grand flourish, in which she emphasizes the bangability of 18-year-old coeds, still wet with high school dew, as opposed to the dried-up old raisins who make up the senior class:
Here is another truth that you know, but nobody is talking about. As freshman women, you have four classes of men to choose from. Every year, you lose the men in the senior class, and you become older than the class of incoming freshman men. So, by the time you are a senior, you basically have only the men in your own class to choose from, and frankly, they now have four classes of women to choose from. Maybe you should have been a little nicer to these guys when you were freshmen?
Although the women of Princeton are, by this point in their reading, shellshocked from the volley of truth bombs Susan A. Patton has just dropped on them, their thoughtful teacher lobs one more big one in her sign-off.
If I had daughters, this is what I would be telling them.
This, perhaps more than any other statement in the manifesto ("My older son...could have married anyone"), rings true: If Susan A. Patton had daughters, she would be encouraging them to marry their brothers, for there is no finer achievement in a woman's life than securing the prized stallion that is a Susan A. Patton boy. The bloodline would already perfected, and there would be no reason to go to Princeton at all.
UPDATE: Gawker alumna Maureen O'Connor spoke to Susan A. Patton for an interview you can read over at The Cut. Turns out she's recently divorced. BECAUSE SHE DID NOT MARRY A PRINCETON MAN.
"He went to a school of almost no name recognition. Almost no name recognition. A school that nobody has respect for, including him, really."
Learn from Susan A. Patton, children.