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Singledom Statistics Warped By Photo July 1, 2023

Posted by Onely in As If!.
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Hiya Copious Readers. We here at Onely have been away for a while, because we’re working on other writing projects (and binging Derry Girls on Netflix). Today I saw an article and photograph in The Hill that reminded me why we started Onely so many years ago, before singles’ advocacy was cool. This article shows how insidious singlism is, and how many assumptions we (well, not ME!) make about people based on marital status. How it just slips into our lives, all sneaky-like. The text of the article itself, by Julia Shapiro, isn’t problematic. The headline is: Share of 40-Year-Old Americans Who Have Never Been Married Hits Record High. It’s based on a recent Pew study and mainly cites marriage statistics, such as:

Men were slightly more likely than women to remain unmarried into their 40s in 2021, with 28 percent of men and 22 percent of women falling into this category, the Pew analysis found.

Good for Shapiro (and Pew) for sharing these important numbers. Her article doesn’t call this no-marriage trend good or bad. It doesn’t have to. We know that the rising number of single people is BAD, because whoever attached a photo to this article in Apple News (not The Hill website) chose a problematic picture. In the photo, a woman sits on a couch staring out a window, one arm curled around her bent legs and the other supporting her chin. Everything about the image screams,

OH WOE IS ME, MY TERRIBLE LIFE CHOICES HAVE LED ME TO BE WITHOUT A MAN (OR WOMAN). MAYBE I CAN FIND ONE OUTSIDE MY WINDOW, TO COMPLETE MY SAD EMPTY LIFE?

The plot thickened when I looked at CNN’s coverage of the same Pew study, A record-high number of 40-year-olds in the US have never been married, study finds.  The photo attached to the phone version of the CNN website also shows a woman looking out a window. In this image, the woman sits with her legs propped up on an open window seat, holding a (I imagine) hot cup of cherry coffee and looking at a view of a rock wall topped with plants, bordering a lawn, or possibly a green pond. Everything about the image screams,

I AM HAVING A NICE RELAXING TIME. IS THAT A FAWN AND A BUNNY FROLICKING IN THE BUSHES? I CAN’T WAIT TO GO TO THE COFFEE SHOP TO READ ABOUT THE HISTORY OF SPICES AND THEN MEET MY FRIENDS FROM BELLY DANCING CLASS. 

Apparently the CNN editor saw the rising number of unmarried people as a progressive, hopeful thing, whereas the Apple News editor was saddened and horrified. (more…)