Why do I, and my cadre of intelligent, sympathetic, well-educated, 20-something male friends, have such great difficulty finding significant others? Why do I have friends and acquaintances with degrees from Ivy League schools—decent-looking fellows, with good personal hygiene and even moderately respectable incomes, who can converse equally well on the works of Cicero and the works of Kevin Smith—who still can't find love? Isn't half the population supposed to be female? Isn't a flat 10% of both sexes, according to Kinsey, supposed to be gay? And hasn't God or Mother Nature or Dame Evolution—or whatever makes the birds and the bees and the orangutans screw like bunny rabbits—invested the female of the species with similar urges to the male?

I'm not the first one to notice that nice guys finish last. Countless books have been written about the subject. Steve Martin made a fine movie about it. But a bigger mystery, I feel, is what has happened to all the eligible bachelorettes. Last I checked, convents were not a booming business.

Being the sort of person I am, I set out to try to analyze the problem in a scientific fashion. Now, I'm fully aware that wise American, Mark Twain, once said, "There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." However, since we're dealing with science here, we're going to need a starting point. And, so, with an eye towards science, I opened that paragon of journalistic excellence, the New York Times, and turned to the personal ads in search of the answer to my question. I am sorry to inform my readership, but what I found there has led me to believe that feminism has been an utter failure.

On the particular week I conducted my survey, the Times featured 54 women, with an average given age of 48. For the women who specified an age for the partner they were seeking, the average was 52. Conversely, there were 24 men—less than half the number of women—who gave their ages as an average of 54.5. The men sought partners with an average age of 50. So far, everything seems copasetic: The Times caters to a slightly older crowd, with more disposable income. Plus, you'd have to be pretty desperate to put an ad in the Times.

But those numbers are deceptive. I also discovered that men were far more likely to give their age than the women were. In fact, only about two-thirds of the women gave their age; almost all the men did. And, it should be said, men were not ashamed to seek women decades their junior. Women were more likely to specify a general age range for a potential partner.

But the real mystery is what happened to all the men of a certain age. Why were there 24 lonely men set against 54 women? Are our Vietnam casualty figures all skewed, or was there a war that the history books neglected to mention? And, to return to our original question, what happened to all the young, eligible women? Was there a female infanticide fad in the '70s, somewhere between fondue and punk rock, that the current nostalgia chroniclers have missed?

Perhaps the answer lies in personal ads in a very different paper from the Times. If you open the Village Voice, you'll find ads like these:

Exotic 22 y/o wants older, attractive very successful man to spoil her,
Loves fine dining, theatre & the pursuit of beauty. Very curvy, sensuous, & an interesting conversationalist

DADDY'S LITTLE GIRL
Extremely feminine & helpless 21yo, blonde/blue eyes, 5'6", 95lbs, looking for a much older extremely successful man.

Very Attractive brunette seeks mutually beneficial arrangement with generous executive. No D/D. Me: 31, 5'11", w/model looks. U: know how to offer a woman "the finer things in life."

Looks like the old double standard's alive and well, doesn't it?

Next: Evolutionary Psychology