Lauren Mayer — Where Are all the Cheating Women?

General David Petraeus is just the latest in a seemingly endless stream of powerful men brought down (or at least dented a bit) by their sexual escapades. You can find articles about what motivates them, about how their power gives them an entitled sense of hubris, about the specifics of their sordid activities, and of course plenty of jokes about Appalachian Trails and sexting – but does anyone else wonder why we never read about a powerful woman brought down by scandal? (Mind you, there are plenty of married women involved in these soap operas – and don’t you love that the Petraeus saga even includes twins? – but the women are not the power players, and we wouldn’t even know their names if they hadn’t slept with someone famous and then spilled the beans.)

While the obvious answer is that there are far fewer powerful women, there are still enough that proportionally there should be at least a couple of publicly humiliating affairs. And it’s not just that highly placed women tend to be way past the ‘babe’ stage – attractiveness certainly isn’t an issue with the guys who cheat, many of whom are downright homely. So my theory is that women who have ‘made it’ had to work twice as hard as men to get to their lofty positions, and even if they felt attracted to an aide or a gushing biographer, they’re too busy, and too exhausted, to start anything.

I’m not in any kind of power job, and yet I can swear that I have never cheated on either of my husbands (I’m not a reverse Mormon, it was one spouse at a time) – but this has nothing to do with my moral purity. Like most working mothers, I barely have time to brush my hair – so when that hunky boxboy at Safeway gives me a leering eye, I’m flattered, but not tempted (it just sounds like too much additional work).

However, I did summon up enough energy to have fun with the rhyming potential of some of these scandalous characters’ names . . . . .