This year was the first year of my life that my family started asking about my love life and why I was still single. I had made it 20 years of being perpetually single without the dreaded conversation that just about everyone has experienced throughout their life. Don't get me wrong, I know my family does this out of love and luckily I wasn't the only one asked about it, but this conversation got me thinking. Why do we care so much about relationships and why do we put so much pressure on women to find relationships especially?
This past semester I took a Gender Communications class and one of the things we discussed was how one of the many arbitrary things we define women by is their relationship status. We even read an article where one unmarried woman would still wear a wedding ring to conventions because it felt that it would garner her more respect. This notion was crazy to me because I've never looked at a man who was wearing a wedding ring and respected him more or looked at man without a wedding ring and respected him less.
If anything, our society celebrates and promotes being a bachelor. Men who wait to settle down are seen as wanting to focus on their career and be successful while also waiting to find the right woman to settle down with. He's taking his time and as long as he is happy, then no one really thinks twice about it. However, for women who are single, people automatically assume that there's something wrong with her or that she's completely miserable without a significant other. There either has to be this repulsing quality about this woman that has left her single or because she is also taking her time to find someone she wants to be with, she has to not be happy with her life.
Why can't the woman be happy with herself? Why can't the woman also just be focusing on her own happiness, her career, being successful and being smart by waiting for someone she does actually love? When did society start making this the narrative about women who aren't in a relationship and why are we still sticking by it when it's so blatantly sexist?
This doesn't even begin to touch on the double standard for age either. Single men who are older are seen as mature and more desirable because they've reached a certain age. Older women, however, are seen as completely undesirable due to her age and if she shows any signs of aging either certainly doesn't help either. Women's "expiration date" for their youth, and in turn, her desirability has an even shorter lifespan. My own father, who I love dearly, even asked me just two weeks ago if I was just going to die an old maid since I hadn't found someone yet at 20 years old.
I don't understand why as a society that we can't understand that some women are actually happy on their own without having to worry about how much longer a man is going to desire her. I am so happy with my life right now without a boyfriend. While I am not actively seeking someone out, if someone came along I wouldn't reject them and if someone doesn't come along I'll still be really happy.
While I know there is no cut and dry solution to this, I do know that being aware makes a huge difference. We need to recognize not only this double standard for women, but all the double standards we have for women and speak out against them. It is time to recognize that women don't have to have an expiration date and can be happy with themselves.
