How single women see themselves Do you think the themes of Fatal Attraction are so 1987? Aren’t we passed the demented, obsessed single woman destroying the perfect life of the beautiful married man and his put-upon, blameless wife? If you think so, then you have not seen Obsessed. The single woman, played by Ali Larter, doesn’t boil anyone’s pet bunny, but she terrorizes poor Idris Elba and Beyonce in every other imaginable way. Single people do not fare well in studies of stereotyping and singlism, perhaps in part because of the ways they are portrayed in popular culture. For example, when my colleagues and I asked men and women of all marital statuses to say what comes to mind when they think of single people, here are the characteristics they mentioned most often: 36 percent — Independent 21 percent — Sociable, friendly, fun 17 percent — Lonely 11 percent — Looking for a partner 9 percent — Shy 9 percent — Flirtatious 8 percent — Unhappy In the current survey, the single women were shown a list of attributes and asked to check the ones they associated with always-single women with no kids between the ages of 30 and 45. (Because they were given a list, the percentages are likely to be higher than in my study, in which people had to generate the characteristics on their own.) Here are the characteristics single women most often actually ascribe to people like them: 77 percent — Independent 54 percent — Confident 49 percent — Responsible 43 percent — Ambitious 42 percent — Strong-minded 32 percent — Adventurous They were given the opportunity to endorse qualities such as immature, insecure, dependent, and quick to anger, but mostly declined to do so. Single women are not buying the negative stereotypes that others are trying to sell them. They do, though, know what they are up against. More than half (57 percent) agree that “there’s an expectation from others that you can’t be happy in your 30s or 40s if you’re single.” Actually, it is worse than that. Several studies have shown that single people
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Photo by Charlotte May
who say that they like being single are judged more harshly than single people who say they want to be coupled. Other people insist that the single people who like their single lives are less happy than the single people who don’t like their single lives. It is as if they are saying to the happy single people, “You are just saying you are happy; you don’t really mean it.” They express more anger toward the single people who are not complaining about their single lives. When single women were given a chance to describe what matters to them, they found that marriage wasn’t so important after all. Living on their own, establishing a career, financial security, and even traveling were higher priorities. Traveling was twice as important as having kids, and establishing a career was named as a numberone priority more than four times as often as having kids. Women “are not sitting around waiting for Mr. Right.” As I could have told them a long time ago, many single women (and men) are living their single lives fully, joyfully, and unapologetically.
- 41 - WINTER 2021
