Being single sucks! Well, that's what everyone says, anyway. Single women over the age of 29 are seen as lonely, miserable, undesirable, and cat-crazy. Family members, friends — heck, even perfect strangers ask, “When are you going to get married?” This book flips the script on what it means to be a single woman in the twenty-first century. With dating horror story anecdotes and advice about online dating, self-esteem, sex, money, and freezing your eggs, Andrea Bain takes the edge off being single and encourages women to never settle.
Being single sucks! Well, that's what everyone says, anyway. Single women over the age of 29 are seen as lonely, miserable, undesirable, and cat-crazy. Family members, friends — heck, even perfect strangers ask, “When are you going to get married?” This book flips the script on what it means to be a single woman in the twenty-first century. With dating horror story anecdotes and advice about online dating, self-esteem, sex, money, and freezing your eggs, Andrea Bain takes the edge off being single and encourages women to never settle.
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Overview
Being single sucks! Well, that's what everyone says, anyway. Single women over the age of 29 are seen as lonely, miserable, undesirable, and cat-crazy. Family members, friends — heck, even perfect strangers ask, “When are you going to get married?” This book flips the script on what it means to be a single woman in the twenty-first century. With dating horror story anecdotes and advice about online dating, self-esteem, sex, money, and freezing your eggs, Andrea Bain takes the edge off being single and encourages women to never settle.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781459739093 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dundurn Press |
| Publication date: | 02/06/2018 |
| Pages: | 176 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.00(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
BEING SINGLE SUCKS
BEING SINGLE SUCKS! Well, that's what everyone tells me anyway. In pretty much every culture single women over the age of twenty-nine are seen as lonely, miserable, and undesirable crazy cat wranglers. Family members, friends, and heck, even my dentist asks, "when are you going to get married?" And if one more person tells me about his third cousin twice removed who met the love of her life online, I'm going to take out my weave and eat it. I recently picked up my favourite magazine and was shocked to see that they had dedicated an entire issue to the "problem." Inside were detailed instructions for women on how to draw men out and hunt men down. Further instructions were provided on how to make him propose once you'd caught him in your trap. Very romantic — not! On the other side of the fence, the marketing department for married life is knocking it out of the park. Doesn't it look awesome? Married people go camping, eat dinner, ride bikes, and seem to have the time of their lives at the Sandals resort in Jamaica. The last time I saw a happy single woman in a television ad, she was marvelling at the absorbency of her new feminine hygiene product.
Seriously, take a look at how the media depicts single women. Let's start with one of our our poster girls, Bridget Jones. Bridget is a chubby, insecure, mid-level journalist who, in a Mr. Bean–like fashion, pursues two emotionally unavailable men while wearing, arguably, the most comfortable underwear. On the other end of the spectrum is Carrie Bradshaw, a freelance writer with impeccable fashion sense, great hair, three amazing friends, and an active social life. She dates myriad great guys but ends up falling for "Mr. Big," a rich older man who pulls up to her life in a black Lincoln Town Car. Big runs over her heart a few hundred times before leaving her at the altar, all because she didn't answer her cellphone and ease his wedding-day jitters. In the end, both Bridget and Carrie get married, which seems to be their raison d'etre. One could argue that these women aren't real and these are just movies, but think about this: Why aren't single men depicted that way? Could you imagine 007 sitting at a diner with his agent friends, crying that the girl he likes hasn't texted him back but had time to post three photos on Facebook? I don't see that happening. The truth is that there aren't any male leads on television or the big screen who spend that much time lamenting about whether or not they'll ever find true love. So what does this gross imbalance say about the way society views single women?
The media is always a great reflection of how society treats successful single women. There seems to be only two categories for us: the angry man-hater who is ready to castrate any man who approaches; or the pitiful single Sally. But what about the rest of us? Is it impossible to imagine that a woman can be both single and happy? Why do we call single men "bachelors" and single women "spinsters"? We have come so far in many ways — women can be presidents, army generals, entrepreneurs — but a single woman's relationship status is still treated like a problem that needs to be solved.
Take pop star Taylor Swift, for example. This ten-time Grammy winner has been so scrutinized for penning songs about her ex-boyfriends that as soon as the press gets wind that she is dating someone new, radio DJs start joking about whether the guy will end up on her next album. Meanwhile back at the recording studio Bruno Mars and Ed Sheeran are crooning about their love lives without becoming morning radio fodder. Jennifer Lopez is a great example of how older women are treated. Whether she's dating rap mogul P. Diddy or her backup dancer, fans and critics are quick to put her in a box: she is either a gold digger or a sugar momma. Her ex-husband Marc Anthony, on the other hand, has been divorced three times and his latest ex-wife, Shannon De Lima, was twenty years his junior, but not once was he described as a sugar daddy or any kind of large predatory feline, so what gives? The rules seem to give women very little room to be their authentic selves. If you date more than five guys, you're a whore; or if you date a younger guy, you're a cougar; and if you embrace your sexuality, well God help us all. Meanwhile Leonardo DiCaprio could start dating a zygote and the worst that would happen is a cute fusion of both their names — Zeonardo.
That being said, have any two single women been under more media scrutiny than actresses Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie? At the time of Aniston's break up with her then-husband Brad Pitt, I was working as an entertainment reporter, and I remember witnessing the way she went from the most envied woman in Hollywood to the most pitied. In case you've been incarcerated for the past ten to fifteen years, let me get you up to speed on the Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt, and Angelina Jolie drama. Jennifer was married to Brad. Brad made a movie with Angelina. Brad and Angelina fell in love while making that movie. Then Brad divorced Jennifer and married Angelina. It was quite a scandal at the time and divided women around the world: you were either TEAM JEN or TEAM ANGELINA. While most people were consumed with the salaciousness of this story, I noticed something far more interesting.
In 2007, two years after Aniston's split from Brad, Forbes ranked her as the tenth richest woman in entertainment. Her net worth, $150 million. Not only was her career skyrocketing, but she also had her own perfume line, had signed an eight-figure deal with Aveeno, and was the face of L'Oréal and Smartwater. KA-CHING! At the same time Aniston was doing charity work for St. Jude Children's Hospital and for Friends of El Faro, which is an organization that improves the lives of orphans in Tijuana, Mexico — but nobody gave a shit. All folks wanted to talk about was poor single Jennifer. If she was photographed standing next to a man, gossip rags and glossy entertainment shows were quick to speculate that this guy might be "The One." Every headline about her found a way to bring up the fact that she was still single, and meanwhile Brad and Angelina had just adopted their seventieth child. In 2015 Jennifer Aniston married actor/director Justin Theroux, ending her ten-year pity party. But wait — I almost forgot — now everyone is on "baby watch." In the summer of 2016 a paparazzi photograph of Aniston on vacation caused a flurry of pregnancy rumours, which prompted a usually closed-mouthed Aniston to rant in the Huffington Post, "[Women] are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child. We get to decide for ourselves what is beautiful when it comes to our bodies. ... We don't need to be married or mothers to be complete. We get to determine our 'happily ever after' for ourselves. If you're not slow clapping what Jen wrote, well, you might be part of the problem.
As for Angelina, she was depicted in far more villainous way. This raven-haired husband-stealing Lolita is best known for wearing a vial of her ex-husband Billy Bob Thornton's blood around her neck and for locking lips with her brother, Jamie, on the Oscar red carpet in 2000. And after Brad left Jen, Angelina was found guilty in the court of public opinion of breaking up the happy Aniston–Pitt home. Her plan was simple: join the cast of Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Her part was originally supposed to be played by Nicole Kidman, but due to contract issues Kidman had to drop out of the movie — Jolie probably orchestrated that, too, 'cause you know how devious single women can be. Then all she had to do was convince a perfectly happy Brad to leave his wonderful wife Jennifer, and voila! Mission accomplished. Anyone who believes that's how it all went down is not only naive but also misogynistic. But I'll get to the belief that attractive single women cannot be trusted later on.
Here is the real story. In 2002 Angelina Jolie admitted to veteran journalist Barbara Walters on the magazine show 20/20 that she was a busy working single mom with no time for dating and hadn't had sex in a year. She had just adopted her first child, Maddox, on March 10, 2002, from an orphanage in Cambodia. At age twenty-eight, she was already pessimistic about ever being wed again after brief marriages to actors Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton. Jolie was transitioning from the wild child everyone knew into a responsible mother and philanthropist. She had her Billy Bob tattoo removed from her body, and she was beginning to see herself as more than just a box office star. But the world ignored that narrative the minute whispers of an affair with Brad were in the air. Overnight she became every married woman's nightmare, the attractive single woman out to take your husband. And she fit the role perfectly — beautiful, sultry, sexually fluid woman, with a great pair of legs. Poor Brad! He had no chance against her feminine wiles, right? WRONG. The fact is that Brad is an adult, and he made a choice to end his marriage and start a new relationship. People cannot be stolen from other people.
Now Brad Pitt, the one person who should have received all the bad press instead of Jolie, got a pass from all the media outlets when it came to his divorce drama. In September 2016 Brad and Angelina announced their marriage and the world was shocked. Soon after, it was revealed Pitt had drug and alcohol issues, and an altercation on a private plane with his fifteen-year-old son, Pax, led to an investigation. GQ did an interview with a gaunt and sad-looking Pitt, which they described as a "raw conversation." Really, it was was a softball chit-chat about how he was coping with the demise of his marriage. It skimmed over his drug and alcohol issues, instead emphasizing his likeability and the serenity of this "human father and former husband." US Weekly, on the other hand, did what the tabloids always do to women: it cast Angelina as the horrible shrew out for blood, even though she never spoke to journalists or sought sympathy in a teary-eyed photo shoot in the Everglades.
So there you have it — two very successful women reduced to their relationship statuses while the man they both loved played the victim, and no one questions it. If this isn't a single girl problem, I don't know what is.
CHAPTER 2
CHANGING THE NARRATIVE
I DECIDED TO WRITE THIS BOOK IN HOPES of changing the narrative about single women — in particular, those over the age of thirty. In spite of all the amazing things women are capable of, society still views single women over thirty as damaged goods, like the unwanted stepchild, the pimple on the ass of dating, the runt of the litter. ... You get my point; we get a bad rap. I'm not saying every woman over thirty is a walk in the park, but regardless of our marital status, we aren't any different from anyone else regardless. In my quest to change attitudes, I've also become aware that trying to change people's mindset might be a big waste of time. However, I still feel it needs to be said:
SINGLE WOMEN ARE WONDERFUL. Repeat that five times.
SINGLE WOMEN ARE WONDERFUL.
SINGLE WOMEN ARE WONDERFUL.
SINGLE WOMEN ARE WONDERFUL.
SINGLE WOMEN ARE WONDERFUL.
SINGLE WOMEN ARE WONDERFUL.
The challenge is to get society to disassociate single women from words like crazy, desperate, spinster, sad, lonely, miserable, and any other negative words. Unfortunately, the blame doesn't solely lie on society. Single women are sometimes their own worst enemies, believing a lot of the nonsense that's said about them and perpetuating their negative man-hating stereotype.
Perhaps it's time to redefine what being single means. Sixty years ago, single women were expected only to leave their parents' home for their matrimonial home, and nearly all forewent a postsecondary education in order to find a good husband. The general thinking around single people over thirty back then was that they were either sick or immoral. It was also a coded term for lesbian, as was the term confirmed bachelor for unmarried men suspected of being gay. And suspicion of single people — but especially women — is connected to this institutionalized societal prejudice.
A study conducted by Tobias Greitmeyer in Germany suggested that single people were judged to be less satisfied with their lives, to have lower self-esteem, to be less attractive, to have fewer social skills, and to be more neurotic. There's even a term for this attitude — it's called singlism.
We need an update on what it means to be single in the twenty-first century, and it's time to enlighten folks on the reasons for and benefits of this status. Today we are aware that certain levels of maturity, self-awareness, and experience are necessary in order to have healthy relationships. Therefore, singlehood ought to be recognized as a vital time to learn about who you are, what you like, and how to be self-sufficient, and to tackle your insecurities, resolve any trauma you may have suffered in your childhood, tap into your strengths, and learn how to connect and communicate. Instead of chastising women for not being married and encouraging them to go on wild husband-hunting expeditions, society, family, and friends should encourage women to explore who they are before they find a mate to settle down with. This change in attitude could allow all single women to view singlehood as a much-needed sabbatical. This includes the perpetually single, those who fear being alone, the scorned, and the divorced. Single life is time to heal, breathe, re-establish who you are, and tackle any fears you may still have — all without society, friends, and family breathing down your neck.
The number of single people is growing around the world. In the U.K. 4.1 million people live alone, according to the Office of National Statistics. Women are now able to financially support themselves and create full lives for themselves.
Additionally, an increasing number of people don't see being single as a transitional stage, but rather a permanent state of being. These singles fall into many different categories. There are those who reject the institution of marriage and gender roles; those with demanding careers; and those who have decided that they're not interested in the demands that come with relationships and who don't want to feel guilty about it.
On the other hand, there are some single women who pretend to belong to one of the aforementioned categories but who are really self-sabotaging. Two obvious signs are avoiding any attempt to meet new partners, and having nearly impossible or unrealistic criteria for any potential partner. For any women in that category who are reading this book, I hope it helps you.
For everyone reading, it's time to quit hoping for something magical to change. Happiness will not simply drop into your lap. Try to come to terms with the fact that Prince Charming only exists in fairy tales. Accept that not everyone will love you. You're not perfect, and that's okay. It's more important to love and accept who you are so that no one can affect your self-esteem. Be aware that it's not always about you. Try to stop pointing the finger at others for the bad things that have happened in your life or relationships. Learn that people don't always mean what they say, and they might not always be there for you the way they promised. Stand on your own, and learn how to take care of yourself. Understand that much of the way you see yourself is a result of all the messages you've heard from others. Those words have been ingrained in your head. Forget about everything you've been told about how you should look, how much you should weigh, what you should wear, how you should behave, whom you should marry, or what you owe your family.
I want every single woman who reads this to come to the realization that she deserves to be treated with respect, love, and kindness. I want you never to settle for less. And I want for society to get off our backs! Those are my ultimate goals.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Single Girl Problems"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Andrea Bain.
Excerpted by permission of Dundurn Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction 9
1 Being Single Sucks 15
2 Changing The Narrative 23
3 How Not to Talk to Single People 28
4 Even Disney Gets It 34
5 Why are You Still Single? 37
6 Is Dating Dead? 46
7 My Love/Hate Relationship With Online Dating 54
8 Chasing Your Own Tail 64
9 Settling Is Such an Ugly Word 71
10 Insecure Much? 79
11 Sex: To do it or not to do it 88
12 Why Do Men Cheat? 94
13 Fear of Relationships 100
14 The C Word 110
15 Single Girl Solutions 118
16 Revamped 126
17 The Dating Experiment 132
18 Where are all the good men Hiding? 138
19 The Whole kid thing 144
20 Handle your money, honey 153
21 Single for the Holidays 157
22 It's not only the guys fault 163
Conclusion (Thank you, Chelsea Handler) 170
Notes 173