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Some Like It Single: QuirkyEconomist! May 8, 2009

Welcome to the latest installment in our new series, Some Like It Single, where we profile (relatively) small, independent blogs dedicated to exploring what it means to be “single” in American culture and, we hope, around the world.

Today we are looking at QuirkyEconomist. She  describes herself as “a happily single woman simply informed, but not determined, by the fact that I am also an economist“.  How do those two things intersect, you might ask? QE explains:

Economists see the world as a series of choices and we identify the costs and benefits of all the alternatives, but we try to remain neutral (i.e., non-judgmental) about the choices people actually make.

In one post QE provides a small compendium of links to other economists who link love with market fluctuations and even–be still my nerdish heart–game theory! She decries the image of economists as heartless number-crunchers (“children as investment goods”) and points out examples of how dating is not that different from the free market.   

Although as of her 5 April post, she was not actually single in the “uncoupled” sense, she continues to embrace the Onely/QuirkyAlone/Singlutionary mindset. That means she won’t pursue a relationship just to be in a relationship, and also that she supports (to use QuirkyEconomist’s words)

“everyone’s right to be happy being whatever the heck they want to be, without other people making a bunch of assumptions about them.”

Here are more of her thoughts on the definition of single:

If you choose to call yourself single, when you could just as easily say ‘divorced’ or ‘widowed’ or ‘unmarried’ or whatever your options are, that seems to convey two things: 1) you are not currently married, whatever your past status might have been, and 2) you are OK with that. Similarly, I think that people who don’t want single women to call themselves single are partly conveying their discomfort with women who are OK with being single.

Interestingly, QE admits that even while she was single-as-in-uncoupled, she did not “encounter nearly as much singlism in my personal life as a lot of other people.” And that’s one thing that led her to start her blog, as she describes here:

I feel incredibly fortunate to have family and friends who rarely say things that are matrimaniacal, singlist or even pro-baby. My parents have never once said anything about wanting me to ‘settle down’ or asked when I’m going to give them grandkids, and I have a lot of relatives who are in committed relationships without being married. So in some ways, I haven’t had to struggle with the personal pressure that many other singles have to endure. And that’s part of why I wanted to focus my blog on my life as a happily single woman – to any person out there who has friends and family who make you feel like there’s something wrong with you because you’re not married, or don’t want kids, or have chosen some other life that isn’t ‘mainstream’, I wanted to say, “they’re wrong and you’ve got company.”

Thanks QuirkyEconomist!

–Christina and Lisa