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On My Own: The Art of Being a Woman Alone by Florence Falk

"Aloneness is an opportunity, a state brimming with potentiality, with resources for renewed life—not a life sentence. Its cultivation should not be an apology but an art. In the space of aloneness—and perhaps only there—a woman is free to admit and act on her own desires. It is where we have the opportunity to discover that we are 'not a half' but a sovereign whole. With that insight, we can then begin to discard the remnant of 'thingness'—the spoiling belief that gives rise to our timidity, insecurity, and fear—so that we can realize true autonomy, with or without a partner."

gone fishing

It is with some sadness that I shut down this blog. I originally intended this space to be the home for a conversation among 30-something single women. While being single can be difficult at times considering the predominance of the married lifestyle as we get older, there also seems to be a growing trend toward acceptance and celebration of the single condition. Being single in your 30s is a lot less entertaining than being single in your 20s, but also a lot more complicated and interesting in many ways. I had hoped to explore some of these ideas here, but it was not to be. After inviting over 50 women to participate and being unable to begin a dialogue, I've accepted this project as a lost cause. Perhaps women don't like to talk about being single. Perhaps akin to the old maternal threat that if you keep making that face it will freeze that way, women hesitate to embrace a state from which they hope to decamp. If someone stumbles by who is intrigued by this site and would like to attempt a resurrection, please feel free to e-mail me at the address to the left.
À bientôt.

as heard on the simpsons

Marge: You'll never get a husband if you keep being so sarcastic.
Lisa: All right. No husband.

singles season

It’s fairly commonplace to despise Valentine’s Day if you’re single, but it actually may be a time to rejoice. You see, Valentine’s Day marks the official end of couples season: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and then the dreaded National Singles Awareness Day a.k.a. February 14. What follows, however, is the opening day of singles season – a lovely time of year spanning most of the spring, summer, and fall and boasting holidays that are actually fun.

First comes the general interlude of spring fever. Even the most jaded among us can’t deny a certain annual stirring when the weather starts to warm, the clothes start to thin, and your step starts to spring. This time of year is all about the new, the fresh…the unattached. So show some skin and get out there.

Once you’ve met that new cherry blossom and things start to get juicy, there’s no better time to get away than Memorial Day weekend. If your spring flings haven’t quite blossomed to the romantic getaway stage, it’s still an excellent time to travel. You may see some families traveling over this long weekend, but for the most part, the kids are still in school and there are elaborate summer vacation plans to save up for. Being single, you don’t need to arrange your travel plans around anyone, so off you go to the destination of your choice.

Summer generally takes this freedom to another level. Whereas parents are now faced with children who don’t have school to attend for a month or three and the demands of providing 24/7 entertainment, you can come and go as you please. If you’re lucky enough to have a job with summers off, you can up and move to another state or another country if you so choose. If you only have weekends to play, you can use your disposable income to rent a beach house. Or you can just spend all day lying naked in front of the air conditioner if you feel like it.

Another fact to recommend summer is that it is generally holiday-free. What you have instead is often a series of weddings. While these events can often be excruciatingly painful, they can also be a hotbed of potential romance or at least a chance to mingle, to travel, and to play the role of glamorous guest that the single woman can vamp to perfection. Then, of course, there’s Fourth of July – the holiday whose symbol epitomizes what some of these marrying couples sacrifice for stability.

When summer ends, it’s time to go back to school – something singles can do without arranging a babysitter or soothing the ego of a neglected spouse. This year alone, my single friends have studied American literature, life drawing, HTML, grant writing, improvisational comedy, print making, furniture design, and Thai cooking. If nothing else – and there’s plenty else to recommend lifelong learning – they are the people you want to meet at a cocktail party.

The rest of singles season brings the holidays that are all about putting your goods on display and making your own adventure: Halloween and Sadie Hawkins Day (November 10). It’s fitting that the singles season ends with a holiday that can be seen as encouragement for women to take charge of their lives – to be proud and choose wisely. By this time, maybe it’s not such a unwelcome prospect to relax and sit the next few holidays out.

what he said

I never fail to smile at a commercial for a new TV show called Rules of Engagement. Patrick Warburton (who will always be the beloved Puddy from Seinfeld but he’s great on Family Guy, too) plays a married man, Oliver Hudson plays the fiancé character, and David Spade plays the single guy.

At one point in the commercial, the three men sit in a restaurant and David Spade gets up to leave, saying, “I’m going to go do whatever I feel like doing – all the time.” Amen.

leading apes in hell*

In mid-Victorian England the custom of sending daintily printed valentines, overflowing with hearts, cupids and poetical posies was generally understood to consist of an exchange of missives between special loving friends... Yet beneath the sweet exterior and tender words of these lace-paper beauties lurked something far more sinister - the comic valentine!

These scurrilous printed sheets, entered into the humour of the common and middles classes, fun and mischief were their elements... In reality they were masterpieces of the grotesque, venomous in humour, spiteful and rude, expressing anything but love.

The Sentimental Slut

Sentimental single one, what causes thee to weep?
Crying, like a crocodile, and sighing very deep;

O! Say, is it Cupidity, that puts you in a flutter?
“O! No I’m in a dungeon cold, and scarce a word may utter:”
You're in a castle, in the air, and dreaming in broad day;
So, Sentimental Slut, awake, and drive those thoughts away;
“Imprisoned, by an uncle bold, who urges me to marry;”
Imprisoned, for your uncle holds the shawl for which you tarry.
“Red bloody deeds, indeed, he’s done; my loves he loves to stab,”
Read bloody books, indeed, you have; till read has made a drab.
“Sadly the wind it blew and howled, when spectre-warn’d - O! - shocking:”
Sadly you mind to sew the holes you have in either stocking.
“It warn’d, and said; what did it say? it warn’d as it was going”
The fire's out, your love-bird’s dead; and how the water’s flowing.
So, Sentimental Slut, adieu! - no more romantic pine -
For I do seek a lover true, - no dreary Valentine.

*“Leading apes in hell” was the traditional occupation for old maids and spinsters in the Victorian era.

Via Maud Newton

Stay single. Keep your organs.

crouching at death's door

This Valentine's Day, the New York Post warns: Beware the bodega bouquet. Better no flowers than cheap flowers.

It is the last refuge of the desperate or the cheap, $20 that keeps you off the couch. Strapped by a cheap rubber band, wrapped in cellophane, destined to die between the corner and your apartment.

The bodega bouquet: savior of men, scourge of women, a New York Valentine's Day tradition.

When you care enough to send the very best, you don't buy this.

I'd rather these Dead Flowers:

lovers go die

In the Wikipedia entry for Singles Awareness Day, I came across the above photo and tale of the Asian Lovers-go-die Club.

Lovers-go-die club is a club against lovers or couples. The idea comes from the manga Ping-Pong Club. In this manga, one of the members betrayed their fellow table-tennis team members and went on a date with a girl. Therefore, the other team members formed the "Lovers go die" club and tried to break up the couple. Unit Solo has similar meaning in South Korea. In East Asia, it has become a movement against public displays of affection. Some claim that radical supporters have even tried to break up couples.

The photo shows "demonstration activity against lovers in Tamsui, Taiwan on 14 February 2006. The banner reads 'Couples go die!'"

According to Wiki, Korea also has Black Day on April 14:

Black Day (April 14) is an informal tradition for single people (a.k.a. Unit Solo) to get together and eat noodles with black bean sauce in South Korea. The idea is that those who didn't give or receive gifts on Valentine's Day or White Day, can get together and eat Jjajangmyeon; Korean noodles with black bean sauce (hence the name) to commiserate their singledom.

The Korean black day has inspired others around the world to adopt this holiday. A internationally renowned yo-yo player who goes by the nickname of Black has started an annual celebration of Black Day among yo-yo players, who celebrate their single status with black yo-yos and making web-pages around the world black.

get pierced

Evite has plenty of cute Valentine's Day e-cards to send your single friends or secret crushes.

anti-valentine music

For some reason, MSN loves to publish articles on being single. (I think it has something to do with their personals site that I don't think anyone ever uses.) This Valentine's Day alone, we have:

Surviving Valentine's Day Solo
Single on Valentine's? Hooray!
Why I Hate Valentine's Day

My favorite though is probably "Anti-Valentine: The Top 'I Hate Love' Songs of All Time."

Nothing epitomizes the single person's challenge quite like Valentine's Day -- the one day each year that seems defined solely by gestures of romance: the delivery of red roses, thoughtful cards and phone calls, candlelight dinners, et cetera, ad nauseum. So this year, here's a suggestion: You can simply choose to hate love. I mean, really despise the sucker. Wear black. Spit on flowers. Fill your ears not with the sweet nothings of others but with the wails, moans and cries of musicians who have the decency to remind us of love's disastrous qualities.

I don't think we need to be quite so bitter, but I do love that J. Geils Band.

cannibals, crocodiles, and calling cards

In an NPR piece on armchair travel this morning, Nancy Pearl included an inspirational journey by a Victorian single woman extraordinaire. (I have to point out that she was referred to as a 'spinster' in the radio broadcast, but that particular word doesn't make into the transcript.)

Mary Henrietta Kingsley was one of those wonderfully intrepid, unquenchable Victorian lady travelers who roamed the earth and wrote lively accounts of their expeditions. In 1892, Kingsley, freed from her responsibilities in England after the death of her parents, set off for the Congo where she fell in love with the place and its people, despite being threatened by both two and four-legged animals. She describes her experiences in Travels in West Africa, which is marked by lively writing, a wonderful curiosity about everything she sees and everyone she meets. Richard Bausch fictionalizes Kingsley's life in a wonderful novel called Hello to the Cannibals. The title from a phrase of Kingsley's, where she describes how she left one African village to go upstream to say hello to the cannibals. There's a heart-stopping scene in the novel where she beats off crocodiles, as well as one describing her climb to the top of Mt. Cameroon — one of the highest volcanoes in Africa — in full Victorian garb (in all that heat!) and leaves her calling card at the summit.

our house

Single women, financially secure like never before, account for more than twice as many home purchases as single men do.

welcome to valentine's week...

...here at Standing by Herself. While this may be a stressful or irritating time of year for the single gal, it's probably better to acknowledge it than try to pretend it's not happening. In this spirit, there will be Valentine posts just for you every day this week.

To start, enjoy the Valentine's Day edition of PostSecret's Sunday Secrets.

insert sexual food euphemism here

I learned the hard way that the route to a man's heart is not always through his stomach, but Rachael Ray begs to differ:

You Won't Be Single For Long Vodka Cream Pasta
Food Network recipe courtesy Rachael Ray

Ingredients
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, once around the pan in a slow stream
1 tablespoon butter
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 shallots, minced
1 cup vodka
1 cup chicken stock
1 can crushed tomatoes (32 ounces)
Coarse salt and pepper
16 ouncespasta, such as penne rigate
1/2 cup heavy cream
20 leaves fresh basil, shredded or torn
Crusty bread, for passing

Directions
Heat a large skillet over moderate heat. Add oil, butter, garlic, and shallots. Gently saute shallots for 3 to 5 minutes to develop their sweetness. Add vodka to the pan, 3 turns around the pan in a steady stream will equal about 1 cup. Reduce vodka by half, this will take 2 or 3 minutes. Add chicken stock, tomatoes. Bring sauce to a bubble and reduce heat to simmer. Season with salt and pepper.

While sauce simmers, cook pasta in salted boiling water until cooked to al dente (with a bite to it). While pasta cooks, prepare your salad or other side dishes. Stir cream into sauce. When sauce returns to a bubble, remove it from heat. Drain pasta. Toss hot pasta with sauce and basil leaves. Pass pasta with crusty bread.

Via Daily Candy

50 boyfriends that could be yours

Some solace arrives just in time for Valentine’s Day in the form of a book titled 50 Boyfriends Worse Than Yours, which could also easily function as a list of boyfriends who could be complicating your life right now but are not. I first saw the book mentioned on Dethroner, where the following types of bad example beaus were listed:

• Star Wars Lover
• Actor/Musician/Applebee’s Waiter*
• Lactose Intolerant
• Better Looking Than You*
• Not Over His Ex*
• Losing His Hair and Sensitive About It
• Friendly Neighborhood Pot Dealer
• One-Position Peter
• Worst Kisser Ever*
• Comedian*

The asterisks represent the ones with which I have personal knowledge. (It’s also helpful to say a word of thanks for the ones with which you’re not familiar.) Any that you’d like to add?

saving the world through sex

Ideal Bite is a daily earth-friendly idea sent to your inbox (highly recommended). Today's tip was dedicated to the single among us.

Hey single Biters: wanna CO2-free way to get your rocks off?

The Bite
Boink your roommate or neighbor. A quickie with zero transit time is a genius way to let off steam without letting off CO2. (Don't even get us started on eco-inefficient trans-Atlantic booty calls.)

The Benefits

• Get some lovin' minus the mileage. If you drive just 10 miles to spread the love, you generate 8 lbs of CO2 emissions.
• Build community. In these crazy times, it's nice to really get to know your neighbors.
• Multi-task. Sex burns 100 calories a pop - get a workout without going to the gym.

Post-coitus, kick 'em out without the guilt - they live right next door. After all, you wanted to sleep with them, not sleep with them.

Wanna Try
Forward this tip to a good-looking, single neighbor or roommate. (If they don't respond, don't sweat it - it's probably just email server problems.)

• Ideal Bite's Self-Love Tip - you know, just in case forwarding this tip to your neighbor doesn't work out the way you'd hoped.

The sidebar also mentions that if 10,000 people were to walk next door instead of driving 10 miles to their next booty call, we'll save the CO2 created by running a vibrator nonstop for 324 years. They make a convincing argument.

single supermodels

Thank heaven for small favors. Pete Doherty says he has no intention of making an honest woman out of Kate Moss.

According to Fametastic speaking after a recent Babyshambles gig in London, before his arrest, Pete told the Sunday Mirror: "I'm never getting married. I don't believe in it. Kate and I are in love - I worship her - but we're not going down the aisle. I'm happy the way it is."

She may not be as addled as she seems. I have a feeling the house she's buying is going to be in her name.

big mistake

If you're feeling particularly hornery about your single status, you can always embrace it and wear this shirt from Busted Tees:

life lesson

Sometimes the only thing worse than not having a boyfriend is having one.