Womxn and Romance
By: Agents Of Change
Tags: Single, Women, Relationships, Life, Millennials

Womxn and Romance

Photo credit: iStock

By JD Brant

The first time I was aware that my status as a single woman made people uncomfortable was on a business trip to Boston a year and a half ago. We were nearing the end of our trip and waiting for our return flight home. The gaggle of girls I was traveling with sped up in front of the new hires (there were three of us), and headed for the gift shop at the other end of the airport. One of the lead sales people turned around, and with an agitated snarl, like a cat whose tail just got stepped on, said, “We’re stopping at the gift shop for a minute, because [dramatic pause]…we have husbands and children.” They skipped along their merry way, leaving the team of new people in their dust.

The insult was clearly hurled at me. I was the only single person in the new hire group. It stung. It stung when they rejoined the group later on in the seating area. It stung when we boarded the plane. It stung while I tried to nap on the plane, and couldn’t let go of that mini dagger (I first thought maybe I misinterpreted her comment, but after ruminating on it for a while, I realized that I was pretty accurate in my assumption) hurled at me with calculation. I was a threat — not because I did my job sufficiently, or because I refused to stay up and party in our hotel room (I can’t say the same for the sales team). It was because I was single, and they weren’t.

There’s this stigma that, once a woman hits a certain age, her eggs shrivel and her tits sag. I mean, biologically speaking, that’s true, but being single after 30 doesn’t mean you have to curl up in a ball and die, for real. If you ask me, life begins at 30 (I’ve picked up so many new interests, it’s exciting). Some studies call this unwed and childless state a marker of social infertility, and the trend exists in both womxn and men, for different reasons. Speaking from the womxn’s perspective, I can attest to two narrowly-defined stereotypes we are pegged as over the course of our singledom: the “Long Island Lolita” and the “Cat Lady.”

When I’m introduced to married or shacked-up couples, it’s either one of the two, with the man in the relationship asking me if I carry a lint roller everywhere I go (my neighbor’s boyfriend had assumed that because I was single, that I should probably adopt five cats, since I have all that time to spare outside of all my other responsibilities, don’t cha know) and the womxn in the relationship assuming that Rent-a-Mistress sent me (wherever that is, is it a real place? Not sure). These are two extremely dangerous and idiotic stereotypes that hinder womxn from flourishing during a period of well-deserved (and well-earned) self-growth.

In a world where anxiety and internalized demons often nudge us toward codependency, singledom can also be perceived as uncompromised allegiance to the security of, and faith in, oneself. The more time you spend alone, the more time you have to wrestle with past insecurities, relationship flops, and general inquiries of the soul. This makes a person more steadfast in cultivating the life they truly want to share with another individual, a life of focused resilience.

When both people do this unglamorous but necessary legwork, it makes the relationship healthier in the long run. In doing my own introspective dirty work, I’ve been able to break the horrible habit of romanticizing partners before I actually get to know them past the “mystique” of casual exchanges. This is because I am fiercely independent, capable of loving strongly because I’ve been single for so long. But this is also the number one thing I believe so many adults continue to do while playing the dating game. They tabulate ideals and expectations in a pseudo match that may create resentment in their partner down the road, or, they offer up their love to the wrong person completely, without question. For the people who’ve done both, staying single makes sense.

If you’re 30 and single, it can mean that you’ve investigated yourself. It means you’re not interested in rushing into a situation that could cause anxiety, guilt, or resentment before you’re ready to. It means you’ve developed a love for things outside of a singular idea of love and an idealized concept of romance. More people are choosing to stay single longer, and so I feel that the media should simply back off of casting womxn and men into the “young, single, and sexy” spotlight; even with showers of compliments, there’s an inherent societal pressure thrust upon us to perform for friends, for family, for co-workers. Womxn like Mindy Kaling, an actress who manages to dodge the “hard-ass” career woman stereotype, shouldn’t be interrogated about what it’s like to be a single mother. Neither should feminist allies like Michael B. Jordan. From a journalist’s perspective, we should stop asking our few 21st-century “modern womxn” icons how it feels to be single and just let them live as single people. It’s not a deficiency. Singledom is a lifestyle, a healthy choice for healthy people.

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The story was previously published on The Good Men Project.

About JD Brant

JD Brant is a music and culture journalist hailing from Buffalo, NY. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Eloquent Mag. Her work can be found here: www.jessicahelenbrant.com.