Pop Culture, Scourge of the Onelies: The Bachelor (or Matrimania Gone Terribly, Painfully Wrong) March 4, 2009
Posted by Onely in As If!, Heteronormativity, Pop Culture: Scourge of the Onelys.Tags: abc, cruel and inhumane, matrimania, please stop getting engaged, the bachelor
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To protect my dignity, I must say this right up front: I have not watched The Bachelor in a very long time. I recall seeing parts of the first season, and it took almost no time before it lost its appeal even as a guilty pleasure. Today, even the idea of the show makes me squeamish (Seriously. Just think on that picture you see to your left ). So, I did not watch the now-unfortunately-infamous finale of the most recent season, which aired on ABC Monday night. But apparently millions of Americans did, and I have since watched clips and read this detailed recap, so that I could post about it here: Not only was the finale a true “shocker,” it also underlined our culture’s deep misogynistic and matrimaniacal impulses in horribly unsettling ways.
Another Feel-Good Post: YOUR RESPONSES REQUESTED! February 26, 2009
Posted by Onely in single and happy, Your Responses Requested!.Tags: new links, refreshments please, responsese requested, single and happy, singles resources, site reorganization, updates
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We’re fluffing pillows, people. I mean… As you may have noticed, we’ve been reorganizing, refreshing, and updating some of Onely’s links (scroll down and look to your right!) so as to more accurately reflect our ideological alignments and to highlight blogs dedicated to the practice of being single, as well as Web sites that provide (what we consider to be) important resources for single people. We’ve also tried to include, as often as possible, links to the blogs published by our regular readers (because we love you!).
We wanted to call your attention to this reorganization because we’d also like to solicit from you, Copious Readers, your responses and suggestions for anything we may have forgotten to include and/or missed altogether.We’d also appreciate your suggestions for singles resources (i.e., not blogs) that we have missed, particularly sites that are not designed for profit and are easily accessible to the general public. So, please — plug away!!!
In a related vein, we’ve also decided that we’re going to be profiling some of the blogs you see listed over in the side bar, so as to emphasize our desire for community and dialogue — two elements that are especially valuable when living Onely. We are so appreciative of the readership that has slowly but consistently been growing for us, we want to spread the love as much as possible!
We plan to limit our profiles to independent, non-profit blogs that deal specifically with being single — and are happy to hear any suggestions you have in this regard! We plan to post a new profile once every week or so, and we’ll notify whoever’s next, in case you want us to highlight anything in particular. We’re excited about this mini-project; what do you think?
Eagerly awaiting your responses,
— L & CC
On a (Few) Positive Note(s)… February 24, 2009
Posted by Onely in single and happy, We like. . ..Tags: askmen.com, dining alone, discrimination against single men, etiquette and expectations, LEO Weekly, louisville ky, marsha lynch, positive notes, singlism
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OK, so we know that our readers love us for our witty and (sometimes) snarky prose that aims to raise consciousness about our (unnaturally?) HAPPY lives as singles. And we know ya’ll love us for exposing and resisting the difficult position singles are often put in by heteronormative cultural and traditional assumptions and practices.
BUT — for a change of pace, Christina and I are happy to report on two positive representations of singles in the media that we noticed recently:
Heteronormaholes On the Prowl! Reach out to your congress reps! February 21, 2009
Posted by Onely in As If!, Take action.Tags: being single, benefits of marriage, feral cats, fiction, marriage mythology, national healthy marriage resource center, no friends, Rachel's Musings
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A couple years ago, I fed, spayed, and removed an abcess from the tail of a very scared little tabby kitten whose mama had disappeared. I found a home for Fiction with my neighbors, to whom she is a delight. She also comes by every day for snuggles and I’m sure her purr therapy has had added years on to my life.
So why isn’t there a massive ad campaign to encouraging people to improve their well-being by saving and socializing feral cats? Because this hobby isn’t right or comfortable for everyone! DUH. So why is the federal government funding an ad campaign to promote the hobby of marriage? Because the government is Severely Duh-Impaired, that’s why:
Rachel’s post alerted Onely to the federally funded campaign to encourage marriage, as described in this USA Today article. According to the National Healthy Marriage Resource Center, which is spearheading the campaign in response to falling marriage rates, “Young people want ‘happily ever after,’ but lack skills to make marriage work.”
Pop Culture, Scourge of the Onelies (cross-listed as Guilty Pleasure no. 72x.5): Millionaire Matchmaker February 20, 2009
Posted by Onely in As If!, Dating, Heteronormativity, Pop Culture: Scourge of the Onelys.Tags: bravo tv, compulsory heterosexuality, guilty pleasures, heteronormativeholes, match THIS!, millionaire matchmaker, nature/culture, nostalgia, we love being single
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On Wednesday, Christina wrote a confessional post — and now it’s my turn: Ladies and Gentlemen, I must confess that sometimes, after a long Thursday, when I just want to kick back, have a beer, and relax in front of the TV, I watch Bravo’s The Millionaire Matchmaker.
OH I KNOW — you can stop throwing tomatoes at your computer screens (seriously, STOP – your computer will crash and I want you to read the rest of this post!)… I admit it, I’m horrible!! But it’s like … looking at the sun: The show just oozes with so many god-awful heteronormative-hole assumptions, I can’t muster up the strength to look away!
MEA CULPA: Onely Commits Couplism February 18, 2009
Posted by Onely in Bad Onely Activities, Everyday Happenings, Food for Thought.Tags: couplism, nintendo, scottish society of paranormal investigation and analysis, singlism, SSPIA, wii
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Hailes Castle Confessional, from SSPIA
Bless me, Copious Readers, for I have sinned. I have committed egregious acts of couplism and heteronormativity, of the kind that we here at Onely love to decry and make fun of when they are committed against us.
A security officer at my work, whom I knew to be divorced, was telling me about how his daughters got a Nintendo Wii for Christmas and how they spent his day off playing with it. I made some comment about how his girls won’t want to go home now–because I was assuming that they were staying at his house on vacation and lived with their mom the rest of their time. He corrected me right quick, saying “No, actually I have custody.” Um. (more…)
Onely’s Evil Twin February 16, 2009
Posted by Onely in As If!, I want to....Tags: heteronormative, lonely lady, misspellings, onely.com
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We don’t know how many of our copious readers stumbled upon our blog by accident, but we imagine there may be one or two. After all, our name is a (purposeful) mispelling of – and play on – the words “Lonely,” “Only,” and “One.” We are currently the first site that pops up on Google when anyone happens to mispell one of those words – but recently we noticed that we have an Evil Twin – a doppelganger, if you will, who already owned our site address before we started blogging: Onely.com. (more…)
Let’s Get This Over With As Quickly As Possible Day February 13, 2009
Posted by Onely in "Against Love"...?, As If!, Food for Thought, Heteronormativity, single and happy, Singled Out, Your Responses Requested!.Tags: feminist, hallmark, international quirkyalone day, LGTOWAQAP, new year's resolutions, nut sucking, progressive, singles awareness day, take our poll!, valentine's day, we love being single
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This is Onely’s first Valentine’s Day! Pt-oo! And that is us spitting on the Hallmark and De Beers mudworms who warped the holiday into its current overcommercialized incarnation.
What can Onely say about V-day, aka Let’s Get This Over With as Quickly As Possible Day, that hasn’t been said already? “The holiday is insulting to singles”; “not insulting to singles”; “worth celebrating”; “not worth celebrating” — blah, blah. (more…)
Sexist Slumdog Millionaire: Tell Celador Films They Botched It February 11, 2009
Posted by Onely in As If!, film review, Pop Culture: Scourge of the Onelys.Tags: book into movie, Celador films, danny boyle, dev patel, feminism, freida pinto, loveleen tandan, movie sexism, simon beaufoy, slum dog millionaire, vikas swarup, weak female character
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(Greg Hernandez, Wikicommons)
Did anyone on the Oscar committee, or anyone voting for the Oscars, actually read the book on which the movie Slum Dog Millionaire was based? I sincerely hope not. Because if they did read the book, and they are still generating Oscar buzz after having read it, then gratuitous sexism is more frighteningly ensconced in our pop culture than I realized.
In the movie, Jamal’s love interest Latika is shuffled around at the behest of first one evil man, and then another, battered and sexually assaulted and used for her looks. Finally, her ultimate rescue is facilitated first by Jamal’s brother Salim, and then by Jamal.
But in the excellent book, Q&A by Vikas Swarup, although Latika is abused by the men in her life and suffers all sorts of injustices, in the end–guess what? She shows up at the end of the movie as a high-powered lawyer who swoops in and saves Jamal when the game show producers are beating him and accusing him of cheating.
Was that ending not exciting enough for the SDM producers? (more…)
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