In a rare burst of self-improvement, I’m making an effort to be less judgmental. Really, I mean it. I realize that the human propensity for passing judgment on every act of our peers is one of our most repulsive communal traits. The only thing foiling my attempts is that I truly believe that I know everything, and therefore have a right to determine the intelligence of other people’s actions. Ridiculous, perhaps, but it’s a habit I’m not ready to let go of quite yet.

So it’s been difficult for me to watch scores of women make what I consider fundamentally moronic life decisions. I grew up surrounded by proverbially “strong” female figures. A mother and grandmother who fought it out in traditionally male careers and eventually earned the respect of their peers, a tightknit group of intelligent and enlightened friends from my “progressive” all-girls high school; these were females who decried lives of financial and emotional dependence, preaching post-colonial feminist ideals and yelling Gloria Steinem from the rafters. As teenagers we chopped our hair with plundered art-supply scissors and recited mantras about how men were royal pains in the ass and took each other as dates to dances rather than conform to the socially-decreed convention requiring that we ask one of the pimply, ego-laden braggarts populating the boys’ school.

But as we got older, I began to notice conspicuous changes. Bras were pushed up and padded to the point of providing bullet protection, meek and submissive tones adopted in the presence of males, conversations suddenly dominated by gossip sessions about current boyfriends rather than career aspirations. Questions like “So how is your thesis coming along?” evolved into “So have you met ‘the one?’ ” And suddenly, I look around and half of my beautiful young Sandra Hardings are working part time in jobs they don’t care about, just to avoid having to say they don’t work, and have married “safe” (aka painfully uninteresting and high income) former frat boys who “don’t approve of their wearing strapless dresses in public” or “don’t like it when they meet people alone for dinner without calling to check in at least every hour or so.” It’s as if we’ve all been living out a conventional mathematic equation: good education + mediocre job to pass the time before meeting husband + high income white collar man willing to marry you = socially acceptable and comfortable, if highly unexceptional and potentially unfulfilling, life.

I figured when I got to law school, everything would change. Here I would find women who were determined to forge a fulfilling, lucrative career and not simply find a rich husband. And at first I wasn’t disappointed; I met girls who blew me away with their brilliance, work ethic and drive. But after a few months I took a look around and sighed. While 50% of the class was female, everyone at school seemed to just accept that a huge percentage of the women would not still be lawyers after the first five years of practice. We would get married (probably to other lawyers), get pregnant, buy the requisite house in Westchester and drop out of the race. A few girls openly acknowledged it; I remember eavesdropping on a conversation at a Thursday night Bar Review, one girl had just gotten engaged to another law student and her friend asked whether they would try to work at the same firm after graduation. “No, I don’t really want to do that,” she shrugged. “After all, I want him to get a good reputation at the firm, I don’t want to drag him down if my work isn’t as good. Plus I’ll probably only do this for a few years anyway, but he could maybe do the whole partnership track.”

And it’s not just law school. A few months ago I had one of my final conversations with a since-divorced friend (meaning that she and I have officially obtained a “Friendship Divorce” due to irreconcilable differences, and no longer speak at all, which is sad I realize). She’s a science whiz, top of her class in college, and currently in med school. But I knew that the relationship had no future after this exchange:

“Hey O, what’s up?”

“Hi [Friend], how’s it going.”

“Oh my God, I’m so exhausted, my class schedule is killing me, and I have a four-hour endocrinology final in 6 days.”

“Ugh, that sucks, I’m sorry. But overall it sounds like you’re kicking ass and enjoying your classes, right?”

“I don’t know, I just… This is so much work.”

“I know, I can’t even imagine, there is no way I could handle becoming a doctor, seriously.”

“Actually, you know to be honest, I’m realizing something. I never want to actually practice medicine or any of this. I really just want to meet a good guy in my class, and marry a nice doctor.”

(long pause on my end) “Umm, yeah. Oh sorry, we’re about to go through the Holland Tunnel, I’m going to lose you, gotta run.”

Later I met her current boyfriend. To call him a neanderthal would be kind, the guy needed help tying his shoes (but had no problem openly groping all her friends at the first opportunity). I knew he was a Keeper when we were out on a deck of a party and he was playing a rousing round of beer pong while she watched rapturously. His cell phone rang (the ring tone was some version of Mexican Hat Dance on Crack, that alone should be grounds for dumpage) and he looked at it in irritation.

“Fuck, my phone is ringing. Who’s calling me in the middle of a game? [Friend], go grab it.”

[Friend]: “What? Sorry, I’m in the middle of a conversation, hold on honey.”

“Christ woman, are you listening to me? Answer my fucking phone!”

My grandmother (the nonworking one) never collected a single day’s wages; she never received a college degree, balanced a checkbook or glanced at an investment statement. She enjoyed nothing more out of daily life than trips to the beauty parlor and preparing June Cleaver-esque feasts for her ravenous brood. When I visited her, our discussions usually consisted of serial grillings about my current boyfriend – she never could grasp why I maintained only one at a time (I didn’t have the heart to tell her that dating multiple men at once may have indicated a woman’s desirability in her day, but now would probably lead to the charming label of Big Dirty Slut). Her life may seem unenlightened by modern standards, and it’s easy for me to label her existence antiquated or overly subordinate to a husband. But my grandmother would have made any man curse evolution itself for resulting in his own creation if he ever dared yell at her: “Answer my fucking phone.” These days, sure, we’re doctors and lawyers, but how have we evolved exactly? Enlighten me, I’m a little confused.