@henryracette ends a recent editorial with a plea to “re-establish the idea that women are, once again, prizes to be won by men.” I’m sure Henry means well by this, but women playing the role of men’s sexual prizes strikes me as part of the problem, not the solution, at least where women’s regrets about sex are concerned. Besides the fact that a man who believed he had “earned his prize” might be less inclined to take “no” for an answer, the short story “Cat Person” suggests that women seeing themselves as a sexual prize for men may be yet another prompt for women to “bestow” the “prize” of themselves unwisely, simply to gratify their own image of themselves as men’s “prize”.

Margot is the protagonist of “Cat Person.” Margot, a college student, flirts with Robert, an older man who’s no Master of the Universe. Robert’s not ripped, or powerful, or wealthy, just an ordinary Joe Margot met by chance, a Joe whom Margot knows little about, despite the two of them having struck up an elaborate texting correspondence. Robert, who says he has two cats, is a beguilingly witty texter. In person, though, Robert seems awkward, less than what Margot hoped from their texting. At times, Margot even seems to judge Robert as a loser, and yet she sleeps with him. Why? Chiefly, it seems, because she falls under the spell of her own vanity: she sees herself as Robert’s prize and falls in love with herself in that role.

What arouses Margot most about Robert isn’t Robert himself, but how Robert sees her. It’s not until she believes he has treated her “as though she were something precious” outside a 7-Eleven that she begins to feel “a sparkly lightness… the sign of an incipient crush.” The next moment she feels magic with him in person (and not via text) likewise focuses on how she sees Robert seeing her: