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STFU, Nicole Kidman December 29, 2010

Posted by Onely in Pop Culture: Scourge of the Onelys, STFU Celebrities.
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13 comments

Welcome to the first installment in our new series: STFU, Celebrities, in which we wince and kvetch about Hollywood’s heteronormative, couple-driven culture.

I knew Nicole Kidman gave me the creeps, but I never knew why. Now I do! She is singlist in the most pathetic way–just because she can’t spend time by herself, she appears to take it for granted that everyone feels the same. According to the Daily Mail, Hello Magazine, and other illustrious news outlets, here’s what Kidman said about why she and husband Keith Urban named their daughter ‘Sunday’:

When we were both alone, before we met each other, Sunday was the day we dreaded most, because when you don’t have someone in your life Sundays can be really lonely.

Putting aside the fact that she has denigrated all her other relationships by not considering them “someone”, Kidman also appears to be pronoun-challenged. She should have said: “. . . When *I*, a beloved (except by Christina) movie star with friends and family and hobbies, don’t have someone in *my* life, Sundays can be really lonely”.  Or maybe “When *Keith and I* didn’t have someone in our lives. . .”

Am I harping on colloquial grammarisms, reading too much into an innocuous statement, as the internet trolls might say? I don’t think so. She continues the “suffering single saved by coupling” theme for a whole nother paragraph:

Then when we met, we went from dreading Sunday to really loving it. It was the day when nobody was going to bother you, you could stay in bed, you could do what you wanted to do.

That’s odd–you know why I like Sundays? Because it’s the day when nobody is going to bother me, I can stay in bed, and I can do what I want to do. I appreciate those things, even though I’m (gasp) single.

Copious Readers, how do you feel about Kidman’s statement? How do you feel about Sundays? (Note: A proper reason to dislike Sunday is because it comes before Monday. )

–Christina

P.S. Thanks to bangarang_dudette for flagging this on the Footloose Femails listserve.

Photo credit: muckster

If I Die Young and Freakishly December 23, 2010

Posted by Onely in Food for Thought, Just Saying., Secret Lives of the Happily Single, single and happy.
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8 comments

My dad’s coworker died at 36 of a heart attack in his car after work. Security guards found him after noticing the car sitting, engine on, in a nearly-empty parking lot. People–me included–told the story in sad whispers: “In the car. With the engine on.”

If I die under odd circumstances (“odd” defined as “not passing away in a bed while asleep with a spouse holding my hand”), I don’t want people to harp on the details in a shocked or pitying way. If I go, I go with no regrets. (Except maybe that I never visited Dick Proenneke‘s house, and that my computer is full of revolting first drafts.)

As a Oneler who currently lives alone (“alone” defined as “with two cats”), any of my potential death scenarios–tripping on a cat on the stairs, choking on roast beef, cracking my skull on the bathtub–takes on an extra dollop of “Oh, geez, that’s terrible”: my body would inevitably have to lie there alone for a while before my office sends the dogs after me, or my mom calls the cops to find out why I haven’t phoned her in the last 24 hours to ask whether she thinks the two-week-old stroganoff is still good. Then someone would have to come and discover me, and the grapevine would vibrate with murmurs like, “And they had to break open the door! And there she was!”

Well, so what?

(more…)

@Onelydotorg’s Gone Twitter! December 17, 2010

Posted by Onely in Great Onely Activities, single and happy, We like. . ..
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3 comments

If you’ve visited Onely anytime over the last day or two, you may have noticed the Twitter feed that’s now over on the right side-bar.

That’s right, we’ve been Twitterfied. Or Tweepled. Or, well, I don’t know what those young’uns call it — I just know that I finally got around to figuring out how the whole Twitter thing works after, oh, about a YEAR since Christina first suggested I look into setting us up with an account. (Welcome to the 21st century, right?)

I was none too sure I would like it, but now that I’ve tested the waters, I am thrilled at how easy it is to link to other people’s blog posts and provocative Web pages through a quick Tweet or ReTweet.

So, if you’re already on Twitter, please follow us — @Onelydotorg. We’ll follow you right back!

If you’re not already on Twitter, feel free to follow the links that appear over at the top of the right sidebar (they’ll update automatically).

And if you want to contribute to our feed, feel free to send us an email with links, questions, or anything else that you think our Twitter followers will appreciate: Our email address is onely [at] onely [dot] org, and your subject heading should read TWITTER.

Onward and Upward, with new (tweeting) technologies!

— Lisa (and Christina)

First, Do No Harm: Marital Status At the Doctor’s December 14, 2010

Posted by Onely in As If!, Everyday Happenings, Food for Thought.
48 comments

I walk up to the grandmotherly office manager and explain that I have a 9:30 new patient appointment.  Betty finds my file on the computer and makes last-minute adjustments before checking me in. She looks up and asks,

“Are you married or single?”

Nine-thirty in the morning is not my best time of the day. I stare at Betty through raggedy, unwashed bangs. I’m here to see a specialist for a (knock wood) non-fatal chronic illness that is nonetheless kicking my ass, and so I’m nervous and cranky, and I really want to just answer her question and go see the doctor. But because I write a blog deconstructing single stereotypes and marriage mythology, I feel obligated to engage Betty further on this topic.

Such is my dedication to you, dear Copious Readers. (more…)

The Great Facebook Relationship Feeding Frenzy December 12, 2010

Posted by Onely in "Against Love"...?, Food for Thought, Just Saying., single and happy, Take action, Your Responses Requested!.
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35 comments

Or, Your Relationship Status Is (Apparently) Everyone’s Business.

To the left, you see the results of a little experiment I conducted recently on Facebook (if the Spanish throws you off, my apologies! It’s how I learn other languages. And you get the point). I’ve been thinking about doing this for some time now: I’m always astounded by the amount of attention other people receive when they really are in new relationships (or engagements or marriages) and publicize the info on Facebook…

My hypothesis: Changing your relationship status on Facebook will garner more attention than anything else you’ve ever posted.

(Tentative) Conclusion: YES.

So I finally did it, and voila! Not only did my relationship-status-change draw the responses you see here (3 unqualified “likes” and 11 comments), but I also received three inquiries via text message, five private messages from friends wanting to know the “scoop,” and even one question about it at the end of an otherwise-serious phone call with my little brother. Considering I only have 130 “friends” on Facebook, that’s a pretty decent amount of attention — certainly much more than I’ve ever managed to solicit from anything else I’ve done on Facebook.

What’s more, two of the private messages were sent from friends who I haven’t seen or spoken to in the last six months, and although I replied graciously and honestly to their inquiries (I told them both it was a joke, sorry to disappoint (!!), told them a little bit about my current life and asked them about theirs), I haven’t heard from either of them since and it’s been almost a week. The message I’m getting from this silence? A relationship-status change is everyone’s business. And if you make it a joke, people will get angry.

It wouldn’t be fair, however, if I didn’t give kudos to many of my friends. You can probably guess from some of the published comments who knows about Onely and who doesn’t (see Carrie, Lisa [not me], Paulina and Kimberly). What’s more, some of the private messages and texts I received were from close friends who actually know me in my everyday life and imagined it was a joke but wanted to be sure I wasn’t hiding a secret life from them.

The problem is, this experiment is flawed because my FB friend base is biased (my real-life FB friends know about and appreciate my pro-single status), and some of them even knew I was thinking about the experiment in advance.

So I’m hoping that you, Copious Readers, will be willing to add to the data by conducting the experiment on your FB pages and report the results here (if we get enough of a response, I’ll write a follow-up post about it).

Here’s what I’d like to know: (more…)

Great Onelers in History and Real Time: Combo Edition November 27, 2010

Posted by Onely in Great Onelies in History, Great Onelies in Real Time, Profiles.
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3 comments

Welcome to the latest installment in our Great Onelers series, where we profile outstanding single people who refused to be marginalized or stereotyped. This special super-bonus ultimate combo post features two women who lived over a thousand years apart. It’s a long post, starting with our present-day Great Oneler. If you’re curious about the historical Oneler, skip to the end.

Our Great Oneler in Real Time is Asra Q. Nomani. You may remember her from Bella DePaulo’s Living Single post, Deleting a Friend to Spotlight a Spouse. Nomani, a good friend of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, was intimately involved in the fallout from his disappearance and eventual beheading. She and his wife were the last two people to see Pearl alive and free. After his disappearance, she held vigil with his wife and was even asked to help track down his dental records. As described in DePaulo’s post, filmmakers deleted her existence from the movie about Pearl, but we here at Onely know more than Hollywood. Nomani is a Great Oneler.

I recently read her 2005 book Standing Alone: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam. Nomani was raised in the U.S. by Muslim parents who immigrated from India. She recounts her struggle to reconcile the true tenets of her religion with the sexism and singlism often perpetrated in the Islamic world, by people who twist those tenets.

In search of answers, Nomani goes on Hajj to Mecca. For anyone not familiar with the logistics of this religious pilgrimage, as I wasn’t, it’s a fascinating look into the culture, rituals, and economics surrounding this time-and-body-intensive trip. But what interested us here at Onely were Nomani’s thoughts, interspersed through the story, on what it was like to partake in this Islamic tour de force as a single woman, with her son Shibi just out of infancy.

You see, while she was working as a journalist in Pakistan, she became pregnant by her Pakistani boyfriend. He freaked and left her alone to deal with her growing belly, the disappearance of her close friend Danny, and the fear that the authorities might come down on her if they found out that she had (GASP) gotten pregnant out of wedlock.  (And the filmmakers took her *out* of their movie??!) (more…)

Happy Turkey Day! (Or, to our international readers: Happy November 25th!) November 25, 2010

Posted by Onely in Great Onely Activities, We like. . ..
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4 comments

Caveats about the political incorrectness of the holiday aside, Christina and I compiled the following list of things we are grateful for as single people this Thanksgiving:

1. Private time to eat all the pumpkin bread we want, unjudged.

2. Shared time with friends or family, or friends who’ve become our family.

3. The change in public attitude about marriage (and single people): ever-so-slowly-but-perceptibly for the better.

4. The U.S. Census Bureau, for announcing that over 50 percent of households are now headed by unmarried people.

5. Our pets, for thinking we’re gods.

6. Plumbing, and having the right to use it however we like (well, usually).

7. You, our Copious Readers, for supporting us and contributing your voices to what has become a true online community for singles’ advocacy.

Ever-Attentive and Copious Readers, what are you grateful for this Thanksgiving?

— Lisa (and Christina)

photo credit: flicker

Pop Culture: Scourge of the Onelys, Part 33.5a: Singlist AT&T Commercial November 15, 2010

Posted by Onely in Food for Thought, Heteronormativity, Pop Culture: Scourge of the Onelys, YouTube Style.
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15 comments

I have been bothered by this commercial for several months now, and I’m embarrassed to say that I wasn’t able to pinpoint why until this weekend, when it hit me: OMFG the only reason this guy becomes PRESIDENT is because (besides having AT&T, duh) he met the right girl, got MARRIED, and had kids.

Couplemania at its worst, if you ask me.

Copious Readers, please share your thoughts.

— Lisa

Film Review: Seeking Happily Ever After November 9, 2010

Posted by Onely in film review, Singles Resource, We like. . ..
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4 comments

Seeking Happily Ever After: One Generation’s Struggle to Redefine the Fairy Tale.  Directed and Produced by Michelle Cove; Produced by Kerry David. 2010.

“I keep seeing parts of the movie in my head,” said my friend Monica at dinner, after we saw Seeking Happily Ever After at its DC screening. This is usually the sign of either a very inspiring movie, or a very disturbing one. Seeking Happily Ever After deftly manages to be both.  I hope our Copious Readers get a chance to check it out. If you don’t live near a screening, maybe you can arrange one in your area.

For the award-winning documentary, director Michelle Cove and producer Kerry David didn’t so much “interview” various single women (mostly heterosexual, but including at least two lesbians) as she let them talk–if and why they like their single lives, what “happily ever after” means to them, what their pasts were like and what their hopes are now.  My favorite was the thirty-something woman who said she could imagine herself being perfectly happy as an older single woman with white hair down to her butt, turquoise jewelery, and a bunch of cats milling around at her feet as she sipped a martini with girlfriends (I may be combining one or more interviews, but you get the idea).  The film is full of such gems.

But, like life, it’s also full of nails-on-chalkboard moments of awkwardness and horror. Cove and David don’t whitewash the world of single women. (more…)

Psych Today Post Deletes Comments from Progressive Singles November 7, 2010

Posted by Onely in As If!, Take action, Your Responses Requested!.
14 comments

The 30-percent-offensive post “10 Things You Can Do To Enhance Your Life”  I wrote about recently is one of the five most popular posts on Psychology Today. It was fifth this morning and now it’s number three. Why is this a huge problem? Reasons A-C below, where C is the most disturbing:

(A) As I said in my previous post, three of the ten suggestions assume that the reader has a “mate”.  (Watch a sunset with your mate; go to bed ten minutes early with the one you love, write a thank-you note to your mate.) Presumably thousands of people are reading these suggestions and internalizing the insidious notion that everyone must either have or strive for a mate, in order to lead an enhanced life.

(B) Several people left comments on the 10-Things post, saying how “awesome” and “lovely” all the suggestions are, and presumably thousands more have read the comments and further ingested the notion that it’s “awesome” and “lovely” to watch a sunset with a mate (and, by extension, perhaps less lovely without one).

(C) On the day I composed my original post griping about this, at least three astute Psych Today commenters had left comments challenging the inclusion of the three “mate” items in the list. As of yesterday, and as of today, those particular comments are gone–presumably removed. I don’t have any record of their existence (why would I think I’d need to make one?), but I know I saw them. I also know that Onely made a comment which has since disappeared.

It seems bizarre to me that an author or admin would remove three comments as benign as the ones I read, but I can’t think of what else might have happened. I welcome, and hope for, alternative suggestions.

Otherwise, Copious Readers, please go comment on the 10-Things post and let the author and the many readers of the post know that only seven of the ten items are actually “awesome” and “lovely”.  Your comments may be removed later, but even having them up for a little while might offset this post’s perpetuation of the Mate Myth.

–Christina