the good, the bad, and the ugly

An initial motivation for this blog was to examine the ways in which various media portray single women over 30. Digging beneath the stereotypes (slut/spinster) is the first step toward something more positive. Unfortunately, we’ll have to arm ourselves with powerful shovels. Here is the first installment of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

The Good: This is old news, but it’s worth listing here in our inaugural edition. According to the American Community Survey data, released by the Census Bureau in October, 51.3% of households are helmed by the unmarried – the first time this balance has tipped to the other side. Granted, a significant portion of these households are made up of unmarried partners, but 27% consist of people living alone. The more being single is considered “normal,” the less being single will imply some type of deficiency.

The Bad: A recent plot line in the primetime drama Criminal Minds featured a serial rapist who preyed on young Christian virgins in an effort to create some kind of delusional family. (The script had the characters repeatedly refer to him as a “power-reassurance” rapist so many times that I thought his identity would eventually be uncovered through looking up “power-reassurance” rapist in the criminology encyclopedia.) When one of the virgins becomes pregnant and commits suicide, he realizes that his theory that any baby he created with them would never come to harm is flawed. The rapist then has the brilliant idea to change his victim profile and, through some shady access to fertility clinic records, target single women in their late 30s who have decided to pursue pregnancy through insemination. He implicitly reasons that such a woman is so desperate for a baby that she would welcome one as the product of rape. Lovely.

The Ugly: From the website Overheard in New York:

Guy: Man, if a girl is hot enough that you want get with her, and she's single... You know she's gotta be fucked up in the head.

--C train