So apparently women would like men to stop doing those six things, like cheezy romantic gestures, being a baby when sick, and not having a plan and all that good stuff.

Well, I'm here to say that you ladies really won't have to worry about what men do that turns you off, because chances are, the supply of desirable men will soon outstrip the demand for them by women soon enough.

As early as 2005, we knew that the gender imbalance on our college campuses was pretty starkly in favor of women.  57% of college students then were female, to 43% male.  That in turn, of course, leads to a growing gap between female earning power and male earning power, as reported by the New York Times:

For instance, the median income of women age 21 to 30 in New York who are employed full time was 17 percent higher than that of comparable men.

Professor Beveridge said the gap is largely driven by a gulf in education: 53 percent of women employed full time in their 20s were college graduates, compared with 38 percent of men. Women are also more likely to have graduate degrees. “They have more of everything,” Professor Beveridge said.

Hum... 53% vs. 38% -- seems strikingly similar to the college figures from 5 years ago....  And the imbalance, in turns out, does some funny things to social interactions:

Jayne Dallas, a senior studying advertising who was seated across the table, grumbled that the population of male undergraduates was even smaller when you looked at it as a dating pool. “Out of that 40 percent, there are maybe 20 percent that we would consider, and out of those 20, 10 have girlfriends, so all the girls are fighting over that other 10 percent,” she said.

Needless to say, this puts guys in a position to play the field, and tends to mean that even the ones willing to make a commitment come with storied romantic histories. Rachel Sasser, a senior history major at the table, said that before she and her boyfriend started dating, he had “hooked up with a least five of my friends in my sorority — that I know of.”

You don't say.  How shocking.

So ladies, here's the deal.

In a few years, with roughly 6 out of 10 college degrees being awarded to women, assuming that 4 of them find other college-educated men (let's discount homosexuality for the time being), that leaves 2 women in the cold as far as college-educated men go.  And our culture being ah... let's just say not particularly encouraging of women "marrying down"... I'm not sure that I see a huge trend in female lawyers going out with male factory worker types.

Supposing that you are one of the 4 that finds a suitable mate, and he buys you red roses for Valentine's Day, whereupon it annoys you so much to say something to him... well, see, he knows that he's single, successful, college educated, perhaps with advanced degrees, and that the supply of people like him is far short of the demand (remember the 2 that got left in the cold?)....

Maybe you won't need to worry about him buying you anything for next Valentine's Day.

It's not all bad news and downers.  Turns out, China is about to have some 32 million extra young men who won't be able to find brides, thanks to the One Child policy combined with gender-based abortions.  I suppose you could possibly import some highly educated, urbane, desirable single men from China who somehow got left out; we import everything else from China, why not boyfriends and husbands?

Of course... China has rather different ideas about dating rituals and social mores... but perhaps you can get used to them and find six other things that annoy you.

-rsh