single girl syndrome

the panic and pleasure of being alone

The only thing less dignified than dating in the modern age is not dating. This is especially true when the early months of summer line up with the last months of your twenties, a dangerous intersection that can only result in collision. You’re dating too much, you’re too picky. You haven’t found the one because you need to stop looking. You’re not doing enough looking and you need to put yourself out there more. Your love life is a car crash that the smug and coupled up can’t help but rubberneck as they continue on to weddings and babies.

It’s not a new concept, this dividing line between the singles and the couples. Women’s media has always toyed with this concept. In Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, we see marriage through the eyes of the March sisters, particularly Jo, as they leave childhood behind in search of something more. Jo March completely rejects the concept of marriage and the financial concerns her sisters share when it comes to seeking partnership. Jo is focused on supporting herself and pursuing her dream of being a writer, but she’s equally focused on keeping the magic alive in her familial relationships where her sisters are the loves of her life. In the 2019 movie adaptation of Little Women, we see Jo plead with sister Meg to ditch her wedding so they can run away together.

“We can leave. We can leave right now.” she implores. “I can make money: I’ll sell stories, I’ll do anything— cook, clean work in a factory. I can make a life for us.”

“You will be bored of him in two years and we will be interesting forever.”

130 years later a brand new HBO show airs called Sex and the City. The dating adventures of Carrie Bradshaw and her group of 30-something friends have been held up as biblical text for modern-day single girls ever since. While you could randomly drop into any episode and find a kernel of wisdom about the haves and have-nots of the single experience, the third episode “Bay of Married Pigs” holds some particular truths. The hypothesis of the episode states that there is a secret war between the marrieds and the singles.

“I hate it when you’re the only single person at a dinner party,” Charlotte starts. “and they all look at you like you’re a…”

“Loser?”

“Leper.”

“Whore.”

It’s hard to face the societal and biological pressures of cohabitation, and it only gets harder with age. In your early twenties, everybody is markedly single, even the girls with boyfriends. There’s something playful in trying different things on and leaning into impermanence. There’s a stretch of time ahead of you where an older, more mature version of you will eventually swoop in and solve all your problems and do it with an engagement ring. So much time has passed since the days of marriage markets, and yet the heteronormative dating world harkens similar values.

There is a disgusting and insidious truth that goes unspoken in today’s modern feminism. You are not living up to your value as a woman if you are not wanted by a man. Yes, it’s blasphemous to say in a time when absolutely everything a woman does, including mewing exercises and sleeping in mouth tape, has to be for herself. You are supposed to be getting baby Botox from a place of empowerment, and you are not supposed to speak badly about your appearance. It’s considered vain to take too many selfies, but you’re meant to spend countless hours and gobs of money on maintaining your female form. If you’re a successful woman who falls outside of the standards of beauty, are you really successful? Isn’t a successful woman meant to be a beautiful woman? If you’re a beautiful woman, shouldn’t you allow yourself to be consumed?

This balancing act is best displayed in Bumble’s widely critiqued rebrand.

“You know full well a vow of celibacy is not the answer.” Bumble plastered to billboards in their latest campaign launch. “Thou shalt not give up on dating and become a nun.” Another reads.

If you’re a single woman people don’t know what to do with you. Especially if you’re a single woman who does not center men in her life. Everybody loves the self-deprecating single, the look-at-my-disaster-love-life single. This neatly puts you in the box of at least striving for male attention. The completely satisfied on my own single begs more questions, causes more unease. Men should stake such a claim in a woman’s life that the absence of men casts a shadow larger than the woman herself.

“2.5 years of celibacy and never been better tbh.” Julia Fox comments on Bumble’s ill-received TikTok.

This version of singledom from an internet it girl was formerly unheard of. We’re used to this type of woman being a beacon for sexuality, or at least the kind of sexuality the public can access. Secrets divulged about the costar who was the best kisser, tearful interviews about the famous musician who broke her heart. It girls are sexy, so of course they should be having sex. Since her statement, she has continued to speak on her celibacy in interviews, and other women have come forward sharing a similar perspective.

“It’s just like getting over anything ― smoking, drugs, whatever it may be. Eventually you just forget and then all that energy that you were putting toward sex, you can put it toward other things.” Fox tells Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live.

Sure many women are doing it, that is not doing it, but are only the hot celebrity ones able to get away with it? This sense of control that Fox derives from celibacy is empowering for the rich and famous, but it’s hard to imagine someone of a lower social status receiving that same praise. It goes back to the hundreds of years of female empowerment that was only found in marrying rich to gain some sort of independence (as much as your husband will allow) and usefulness (as many babies as you can have).

In Emma by Jane Austen the clever if not easily vexed Emma Woodhouse is so high ranking in society that she can remove herself from the race. We see this mirrored again in the 90s adaptation Clueless with Cher Horowitz. Both of these characters face outrage from spurned would-be lovers who cannot imagine a woman denying them, but they remain boyless and therefore free. The beautiful, rich, popular girl opting out of the dating scene because she can.

“I shall not be a poor old maid; and it is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public!” Emma Woodhouse claims. “A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable, old maid! the proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else.”

In the modern dating world, there is a movement of women who refuse to accept less than they can provide for themselves. It isn’t enough to be with someone just to avoid being alone. Being with someone isn’t even enough to get married. My friends in relationships are on a spectrum when it comes to the subject. Some of them are getting engaged, or stressing about when the proposal will come. Others are happy to share a house and never get married, and others are reluctant to move in together at all. Even these girls who have mastered the impossible, meeting a nice boy on Hinge, are hesitant to share their lives with them.

Since the dawn of time, women have been defined in relation to men, and perhaps that is the reason we’re seeing the rise of the girl. I mused about this in an earlier newsletter, Girlhood as Magical Realism, where I came to this conclusion. Womanhood represented a responsibility for others, and girlhood a responsibility to self. This is why, in these times where women are rejecting the notion of settling down, we cling to the concept of being ‘just a girl’. Adulthood for women means putting yourself in a chrysalis and reemerging as a series of identities to others. Wife, and then mother, and always those things above all else. It’s no wonder there are thousands of ‘I’m just a twenty-something teenage girl’ statements scattered across the internet. I wish we didn’t have to describe ourselves as children to free ourselves from the pressure, but my God do I understand the desire.

I wonder if there will come a time when it isn’t considered radical to have these thoughts that have existed for centuries. These women who are more keen on building the life they want for themselves than hoping a man will build it for them. If there can be a time when romantic love is a nice to have and not a necessary function of the female body. These sacred texts I’ve referenced, these important pieces of media, have been such an excellent guide for the eternally single. The only issue? In each of these stories, the girl eventually gets the guy. What happens if the same can’t be said in the real world?

.・゜゜・✧ ˚ 　· 　　 .

There was a sick little thought I had recently, right around New Year’s when you’re already panicking about what you’ve accomplished so far and how much more life is left to go. I had a vision of myself as an old woman in one of those hospital beds you can sit in your living room. Probably set up by a nurse who I have hired to take care of me, as in this future I have no children and therefore nobody in my life who loves me. I’m in the hospital bed and the wheels are locked on the most gorgeous petunia pink carpeting whatever town in Florida this is has to offer. Ranch style home, of course, I can’t use stairs. Okay, wait back to the vision.

I’m in this bed with an oxygen mask over my face. It’s taking several machines and hundreds of dollars in electricity a month to keep my feeble heart alive. I never married, never had children, and now I’m fulfilling the prophecy: I am dying alone. Well, not alone I should say, as I’m surrounded by a herd of cats. That petunia carpet is packed to the brim with eau de litter box and is about 60% cat hair. I have one cat now, and as a 29-year-old single girl, it feels like the first jump off the cliff to crazy cat lady. I love her of course so I will eventually get two, and then three, and then I will be smothered in my sleep by one as it curls up on my face and watches me die.

I recently attended a RecCreate Collective class on visual journaling led by none other than illustrator Jordan Sondler. One of the prompts was to draw your fears, and immediately this horrific vision comes to mind. I didn’t even want to write it down let alone draw it. It’s even more humiliating to fear being single than it is to be it. In an act of bravery, I included it in my little diagram of fears, neatly between a safe fear (the dark) and a deep fear (my parents getting older).

When it came time to share with our neighbors the girl next to me laughed at the little cartoon of the sick dying woman and her collection of calicos.

“Is that a fear or a fantasy?”

“Maybe a bit of both,” I agreed.

Seeing it on the page it didn’t seem so awful. It was kind of beautiful in a way, like when a house is abandoned in the woods and so nature overtakes it. Dilapidated and skewed of its original purpose.

There it is again though, that concept of purpose. I struggle with the idea that I am a being made of love and I may never get to place it in one special person. I’m an incredibly romantic friend, ask all the girls I’ve given flowers to, and I’m at my happiest when I’m making the people I love feel special. Some days I feel so overcome by my capacity for love that I worry it will sit in my heart forever, never being shared and eventually turning hard as I’m left to rot.

I’m very determined to keep that from happening, by the way. I am set on keeping an open mind and an open heart regardless of who mismanages it. I know deep down that love is constantly flowing through me, spilling out and then regenerating in an endless stream that cannot be depleted. It surrounds me like a chrysalis and protects me until I am reborn on the other side of a lesson. It cannot be stolen and it cannot be spoiled as it is alive and moving and free.

I will always have enough, and I will share it.

xo,

Julianna