The new spinsters: how single got sexy – Marie Claire.co.uk (blog)

Why more women than ever are choosing to be single

There’s a scene in the 2001 film Bridget Jones’ Diary where our hapless protagonist skulks around her flat wearing pyjamas and eating ice cream to a soundtrack of All By Myself. And it’s not just the hairstyles and interiors that look dated. Thankfully, in 2016, the singleton cliché (needy, wine habit, waiting to be ‘saved’) has been turned on its head and women are redefining what it means to be unattached. Newsflash: we’re not all going to die alone with our ten cats (unless of course we want to).

A 2014 study* stated that the number of people living alone in the UK is growing ten times as fast as the overall population. Plus, a recent poll for a dating app revealed that one third of British women would be happy to stay single forever, and 25-year-old Stephanie Barrett is one of them. ‘I don’t buy into this notion that you’re somehow incomplete until you’re one half of a heterosexual couple,’ says the copywriter from London. ‘Weekends for me involve dinner parties with friends, trips away or studying for my Masters. Stuff for me, basically. I’ve watched friends in relationships lose their identity, and stop having new experiences. 
I think that’s a shame. I’d always rather be single than in an average relationship.’

In her 2015 book, Spinster: Making A Life Of One’s Own, cultural critic Kate Bolick explains that the term ‘spinster’ originated in 15th-century Europe to describe unmarried girls who spun thread. From the 18th century, the term was negatively slapped on any woman who wasn’t married by 23. Today, the average British woman gets married at 32 and in 2014, half of 20-year-olds stated they would never marry. ‘For me, “spinster” was an internalisation of the attitudes 
I was seeing in pop culture,’ says Bolick. ‘If women are only seeing sad-sack versions of singledom, they’re not seeing themselves reflected. Luckily there are now more complex single women in TV and films.’

We are part of a generation that increasingly refuses to define our gender or sexuality by labels, and our relationship status deserves the same fluidity. ‘A number of my friends are in open relationships,’ adds Barrett. ‘I regularly use dating apps and see people casually, so it’s not like I don’t have sex. I just don’t want to get bogged down with the other constraints of relationships.’

Far from being lonely, single women today feel liberated and their friendships are richer. Indeed, researchers at the London School of Economics, who spent three years recording the ebb and flow of 50,000 people’s moods, found that most were happier when they were with their friends than they were with their partners.

‘It’s not so much that women are rejecting marriage out of principle,’ says academic Rebecca Traister, the author of All The Single Ladies: Unmarried Women And The Rise Of An Independent Nation. ‘It’s that we know how hard it is to meet somebody who enhances your life and there are other ways to make it wonderful. Not long ago, women were dependent on men and marriage for economic stability, social currency and access to non-risky sex. Now, all kinds of new freedoms have enabled privileged women to live their adult, romantic, sexual and familial lives however they choose.’

But there are some negatives to being single, Barrett acknowledges: ‘I’d be more likely to be able to afford to buy my own home if I had somebody to combine my income with. However, women my age don’t see that as a life goal any more. Luckily, I know I don’t want kids so I don’t have biological pressures either, but I have one friend who just had her eggs frozen at 33 because she knows she wants a child one day but isn’t fussed about meeting a guy.’

In her book, Bolick quotes the critic Vivian Gornick who, after leaving her husband in the early 70s, wrote: ‘The idea of love seemed an invasion. I had thoughts to think, a craft to learn, a self to discover. Solitude was a gift.’ Today, solitude isn’t just a gift, for many it’s the new happy ever after.

*Data taken from 2011 census for England and Wales.

from Hairstylez http://cityhairstyle.xyz/the-new-spinsters-how-single-got-sexy-marie-claire-co-uk-blog/