Behold:

The above, posted by Gwen at TheSocietyPages.org (and spotted/snapped by one Rachel K. in Toronto), should leave little doubt about how the ringless (and evidently friendless) masses are supposed to feel about themselves. But I’d venture to say it sucks to be the mastermind of an ad campaign that, in addition to being hell on the eyes, makes no sense. So if you buy a ring you’ll meet someone? That seems forward. It also seems capitalistically unwise to be harsh on the unmarried, who might, with another ad on another day, have been encouraged (though there are other reasons I don’t love this gambit) to purchase some sort of splurgy, sparkly single bling.

Anyway, back to Gwen: “…I’d say that what sucks isn’t being “alone,” it’s being told constantly that you must be sad and miserable since you aren’t coupled up.” Rah.

More on the ad, others like it, and “singlism” in general from Bella DePaulo here.

H/T @womensenews.

Single women are still feeling the “stigma” of spinsterhood, a new study of middle class, never married, women over the age of 30 has found. In fact, single women between the ages of 25 and 35 reported feeling both highly visible in certain social situations — like, God help us all, bouquet tosses at weddings — and highly invisible when it came to social status, in almost every situation from consideration by political representatives to expectations in office environments.

Despite the fact that 40% of all adults in The United States were single in 2009, it is women who often feel pressure to explain or justify their single status.

Pandagon goes into more detail about the humiliating catch-22 of the bouquet toss,and also explores the potentially harmful situations the pressure to be married can foster. That is: “men can make higher demands on women in exchange for their validation of women. Sometimes a woman’s devalued position in a relationship merely means she does most of the housework and emotional work, and her sexual satisfaction is a secondary concern. But in the worst case scenarios, culturally created female desperation can be used as leverage by domestic abusers to keep their victims in place.”

A new book by social scientist Bella DePaulo, PhD, Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After
addresses all these issues and more. (The  fabulous bullet list she includes in her post about the book had me yelling, “sing it, sister!” at my computer screen.)

And here’s another antidote for all the single ladies, all the single ladies — and anybody who loves a great self-published comic: the amazingly funny and philosophic story, “My Every Single Thought” by Corinne Mucha. This comic chronicles the author’s attempt to get over an old relationship, and come to terms with a — yes — saucy new label: Single.

Loads of props to Psychology Today’s Living Single blog, an excellent source of pro-single advocacy courtesy of perennial BG fave Bella DePaulo, Ph.D. One of their trusty commenters picked up on the singles-bashing embedded in this recent New York Times article about research out of Australia suggesting that  married women may gain more weight than single women. The study in question, conducted over a ten-year period, found that whether or not they bear children, married women tend to pack on more pounds than their never-married counterparts.

It’s not the findings themselves that slant anti-single; it’s the totally facile, clueless quote that another (female) egghead, asked to comment on the study, got away with. I’ll let DePaulo sum up what sucks about it:

“Before I tell you her answer — which was just a guess — imagine what answer would have been proffered if it were the single women who got fatter. Probably that they are home alone sitting on their couches eating ice cream, in a desperate attempt to sugar-coat that bitter man-less taste in their mouths.”

Buh-zing, DePaulo. Here’s the real quote:

“‘It’s interesting and brings out some important points,’ said Maureen A. Murtaugh, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Utah, who has published widely on weight gain in women. Perhaps, she suggested, a more active social life may help explain why women with partners gain more weight.”

Marrieds have more active social lives? Don’t people usually assume the other way around? Oh wait, I get it… because singles, mortified of revealing their grotesque, table-for-one faces in public, eat tear-soggy dinners under the covers of their twin-sized Murphy beds.

“‘Think of going to a restaurant,’ Dr. Murtaugh said. ‘They serve a 6-foot man the same amount as they serve me, even though I’m 5 feet 5 inches and 60 pounds lighter.’”

Okay, I’m thinking of that… that has nothing to do with being married. And btw, way to sneak in an elbow jab toward us glamazonly-tall girls. And also btw, I’m married, not incapable of asking for a doggie bag when I judge that titanic slab of man-meat I’ve just been served too much for my delicate belly.

As the blog entry notes about studies of marriage in general: “Even when marrying has a bad* effect, it will be attributed to something good.” Lots more juicy stuff here.

*Ever non-fat-phobic, we’d stop short of saying that gaining weight always = “bad.” But point still taken.

Now coming to a close is Psychology Today’s three-part Q&A between author/interviewer Bella DePaulo and author/interviewee Jaclyn Geller about the singles stigma. And here’s our final rundown of this quite illuminating discussion.

— I swear I did not know that DePaulo was gonna name-check that same baby-shower “SATC” ep as I linked to in my most recent post. All the same, I will take this opportunity to remind you what great minds do.

— In other tried-but-true cliches (including the use of “tried and true,” shame on me), Geller eloquently discusses how those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. (Translation: She recommends all those entering marriage to read up on its history.)

— If a Mormon can decide to take the Sarandon-Robbins alternate route to happiness, then change is inevitable.

Last we left our whatevs-to-marriage heroines — authors Bella DePaulo and Jaclyn Geller; the former is running a three-part Q&A with the latter on the Psychology Today blogs — the discussion dwelled on the inequities of wedding registries, “single” v.”married” vocab and the notion that spouses trump friends any day of the week (and, I’m guessing, twice on your anniversary).

And now, our teasers for part deux:

— Singles supplementing couples’ life choices via endless streams of showers should basically just start registering for stuff the day they turn 25.

— Earning one’s M.R.S. degree is, sadly, still a popular college-major choice among coeds.

— Something I’ve never said/written before (not even when I actually was, speaking of, in college): ZOMG I have *GOT* to read me some Plato!

— Double ZOMG: They had road trips in the first century?!?

This is only the first installment of up-with-singles author* Bella DePaulo’s Q&A trifecta with author Jaclyn Geller, author of Here Comes the Bride: Women, Weddings, and the Marriage Mystique, and already I’ve got releases of hundreds of white doves mini-explosions of consciousness-raising going off in my head. To wit:

1. What’s up with all the wedding presents when — now that folks are marrying later — most spouses-to-be already have two of everything anyway? (Shouldn’t all-Freecycle weddings already be the wave of…right now?)

2. “Matrimaniacs” is the new “bridezillas.” Pass it on.

3. If we are going to reclaim the word “spinster” — Geller notes that it wasn’t always an insult — I vote for “noun: a female DJ.”

There’s much more: linguistics (“I don’t like the “single”/ “married” binary. It implies that any unmarried person is a fragmentary half-self awaiting completion in a spouse”), history (prehistoric prenups!), homosocial poetry!

Cliffhanger: In one of the next installments, Geller tells us what she writes on those medical forms that ask whether we’re single or married. (Perhaps she’ll also tell us how not to feel lame when it asks for “emergency contact” and we have to write in our parents?)

* See: Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After

From American Sexuality Magazine, via Alternet: Psychologist Bella DePaulo, author of Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After, takes time out from her busy, fulfilled single life to re-examine the pileup of studies informing the accepted wisdom that married people are happier than unmarrieds. Re-crunching the numbers — such as they are — she finds that while many married people are quite content, it may not be marriage that makes them that way (and vice-versa); at the end of the long, not-so-lonely day, there’s really not much difference in the happy factor between singles and marrieds at at all. To the degree that there is, DePaulo writes, “Single people are not as happy as married people in part because they are targets of stereotyping and discrimination.” Also, zombies.