Blogstress Miss Kelly links to this gee-whiz Boston Globe article gushing over a wondrous new demographic development: joyous thirtysomething single women who not only don’t want to get married but denounce as “couplists” those who do:
They’re having babies alone, vacationing alone, buying homes alone. And they couldn’t be happier.
And they’d better be happy–because 54 percent of all Boston men and 45 percent of Boston women have never been married, according to the Census Bureau. And you can’t chalk the high numbers up to a high percentage of gays–for in Massachusetts gay marriage is famously legal.
The Globe article notes:
In 1970, only 7.8 percent of Americans aged 30 to 34 had never married, and 65.4 percent of all men were hitched, as were 59.7 percent of all women. By 2003, the number of never-marrieds aged 30 to 34 had exploded to 27.9 percent. The number of all men who were married had dropped to 55.4 percent, and barely half of all women were wed.
And here’s some of the fun you can have as a “couplist”-denouncing Boston single gal:
On a recent Sunday afternoon, Nancy Howell…sits in her Brighton apartment with another single friend, Tracy Strauss. The plan: dye a blue streak into Howell’s hair. This isn’t some moment of youthful angst or punk expression. It is simply something Howell has included on a list of things she must do before turning 31 this month.
She came up with the idea for the list last year before she turned 30. She wanted to distract herself from the milestone by forcing herself to do things she had never done before – an idea that worked so well, she decided to do it again this year. On the list: ‘Read The Color Purple…. Go to a Chippendales show.’ And then, number 22: ‘Put blue streak in my hair.’
The other tasks have gone well. This one does not. By the time Howell is done with the bottle of dye, there is no blue streak. It’s more like her whole head is bluish black, and she and Strauss stand in the bathroom discussing the problem. Howell laughs. She is not troubled. The dye job will fade, other tasks are on her list, she will be all right, and soon she will be on vacation.
This weekend, she is in Aruba celebrating her 31st birthday on a beach in the sun. By herself.
Doesn’t single life sound like fun? Just having to read “The Color Purple” would make me want to dye my whole body blue and join a remote primitive tribe that had never heard of Alice Walker.
Here’s what Miss Kelly has to say (and she knows whereof she speaks, for she lived through decades of singledom before happily marrying for the first time at age 45):
Advice: Singles should stop pretending they’re happy and OK with being single, admit that your life would be richer with a mate. Tell yourelf that you want a wife or husband, and make that a priority. Drop the New Age ‘soul mate’ obsession (it’s wishful thinking and as baseless as the crushes you had in junior high school.) Develop your personality and strengths so that you are an exceptional person and companion. Relearn how to share and give and compromise. Don’t sleep around, you’re wasting your energies and spirit. Remember where you came from: a married mother and father (for most of us anyway). That institution is the underpinning of our very society, and dispensing with it isn’t likely to be an improvement.