I said to Michelle recently that I was self-imposing a moratorium on talking about women being single. I especially don’t ever want to talk about WHY a particular woman is single, or a group of women collectively are single. As an unmarried woman in my mid-thirties, I simply CAN’T STAND IT ANYMORE. I’m tired of defending my life choices to concern trolls inquiring about the state of my neglected uterus and ringless left hand. I’m tired of people telling me I’m missing out, especially when those people are often divorced or unhappily married themselves. And as God is my witness, I will painfully and messily kill the next person who suggests I haven’t gotten married because I’m “too picky.”
But if you’re a single woman and aren’t getting your dose of contempt from nosy relatives and ladymags and reality TV and underminer-y outposts of the blogosphere, guess what? ABC’s got a show for you!
Tracy McMillan’s single camera comedy, “Why You’re Not Married,” was picked up by ABC, according to Deadline.com. Dreamworks will produce the show along with ABC Studios. The comedy explores the current state of modern American love — especially the dynamic between the millions of attractive chicks between the ages of 25 and 45 who want to be married… and the men who seemingly refuse to commit to them.
McMillan has written for “Mad Men” and “United States of Tara”, both shows with intelligent, nuanced female characters and a more enlightened portrayal of gender issues than much of what you’ll see on television. But McMillan’s blogpost that inspired the series is not even remotely nuanced or intelligent. It’s a regurgitation of every poisonous retro stereotype out there—e.g. that women have to be non-threatening so as not to trigger a man’s insecurities, that casual sex is a no-no because women can’t have sex without falling in love—all delivered in a girlfriend-y tone that’s supposed to sound like tough love but actually sounds way more like self-loathing.
Herewith Tracy McMillan’s “Reason’s You’re Not Married”:
1) You’re a Bitch
2) You’re Shallow
3) You’re a Slut
4) You’re a Liar
5) You’re Selfish
6) You’re Not Good Enough.
Someone’s been internalizing cultural misogyny, amirite, ladies? Just a little?
We’ll set aside the fact that there are plenty of women who don’t want to get married. There are plenty who do, and McMillan is very specifically addressing them. But what’s even more fucked up than the list itself is why McMillan thinks we should believe her alleged “expertise” on this subject:
I know why [you're not married]. How? It basically comes down to this: I’ve been married three times. Yes, three. To a very nice MBA at 19; a very nice minister’s son at 32 (and pregnant); and at 40, to a very nice liar and cheater who was just like my dad, if my dad had gone to Harvard instead of doing multiple stints in federal prison.
I was, for some reason, born knowing how to get married. Growing up in foster care is a big part of it. The need for security made me look for very specific traits in the men I dated — traits it turns out lead to marriage a surprisingly high percentage of the time. Without really trying to, I’ve become a sort of jailhouse lawyer of relationships — someone who’s had to do so much work on her own case that I can now help you with yours.
Yes, you read that right.
Tracy is apparently great at getting married. She doesn’t stay married, and by her own admission, she picks the wrong men. So marriage for her has been a catch-and-release program, not a lasting partnership. But she got the ring and the license—three times!—and that’s what matters! That’s what you want for yourself, isn’t it? Let Tracy help you! Because she’s been married and you haven’t!
Unconvinced? I can’t imagine why.
Let’s hope the show never makes it to pilot—for the good of all humanity, not just single women. If you take all those sexist stereotypes and all that ridiculous glorification of getting married no matter what and turn it into a TV show you’d have…what’s already out there. We don’t need any more of it and the networks don’t need to be paying “jailhouse lawyer” Tracy McMillan to dish it for us.
I realize that being queer kinda puts me in an outlier category here … but to be honest, even before I consciously identified as queer I knew SO MANY single women and men in my life who were doing kick-ass things. As a child I passively expected to be married and have kids (’cause that was what my parents did), but growing into adolescence I was surrounded by close family friends who were single, I had an aunt who was single into her fifties and a professional academic, I had female faculty in college who were single and energetic about their work, engaged socially, and in passionate friendships and/or close relationships with extended family.
Today, about half my friends are partnered and half are single, roughly speaking. It’s in no way freakish to be un-coupled, statistically speaking, and I think it’s fascinating that the media continues to ramp up anxiety about it as if the lack of a marriage or partnership is someone’s FAULT.
I agree with Anna’s last point. I am continually frustrated by how the media portrays being unmarried as a fault. It seems as if this is similar to the media’s obsession with unmarried black women. All of this offends me, even as a coupled person.
I grew up with a single mom, so it never occurred to me that it was not a chosen thing. I married and divorced young, was single for almost a decade before remarrying. I loved being single, didn’t bother me for a minute to tell people I was quite content. Trust me, the stupid questions don’t end with marriage. They move on to asking when you are giving birth-which I happen to find even more offensive. People are just rude. Period. Someone will find something to pick at you about no matter what your choices are. You’d think we’d all learn to revel in our differences. I justify my decisions to very few, certainly not a stranger inquiring about my partner or uterus.
All I’ve learned from 20 yrs with my spouse and 2 kids is that relationships and kids are so complex I should NEVER imply I know what the right choice is for someone else. I see the benefits in every kind of life.
Why I’m Not Married: Because I Don’t Want To Be. It’s not a goddamn prize, it’s not the pinnicle of adulthood, and I certainly don’t need a pastor (or anyone else) to give me permission to fuck.
I’m willing to have that conversation as often as it takes.
I stayed single (well, unmarried) until I was 25. The biggest single reason for that was my parents. My parents got married at 17 – not because of any pregnancies or anything, they just wanted to be married. But they always emphasized to me that they did not want me to marry at 17 (or 18, or 19, or 20…) because they came from a different situation and that they wanted more for their children. But I always liked being able to say “I’m not married because my Mama told me not to!”
And I’m tired of the false dichotomy between single and married. There’s such a vast choice of relationships in between. Plenty of people are wonderfully committed and unmarried. The whole “single vs. married” debate completely erases them (and I used to be one!) and it sucks.
@TJ – The when and how will you give birth questions offend me as well. I tend to avoid people who engage in natural vs. c-section or breastfeeding vs. formula debates. There is entirely too much judgment in those conversations.
Look, if you single women don’t get married, how are the rest of us supposed to ask you why you don’t dump that loser already?
This country has turned into a bunch of scolds. We could all use a healthy dose of MYOB.
I find this stuff utterly bewildering – perhaps especially when she’s had three failed marriages. Someone who married their childhood sweetheart and lived happily ever after might be naive enough to imagine that it’s the best choice – and a simple choice – for everyone.
I’d like to say that in the UK we don’t get this sort of thing, and certainly there’s a lot less emphasis on marriage, but then only last week we learnt that every woman in her late thirties – every one, no matter what you say – is a potential sperm thief.
@MM — I agree *completely*.
Liz Jones is a bit bananas though, Goldfish!! I fear her.
I’ve got cool friends, relatives and acquaintances so I don’t get this kind of shit from them, so it’s doubly annoying to get it from the media. Gah. First the crappy series of Atlantic articles and now this.
I guess the ‘mommy wars’ and ‘slutty teens’ stories weren’t doing so well so they had to mix it up a bit.
Dear Media,
Please STFU about women’s work, personal and reproductive choices.
Love,
Annimal
@the Goldfish: Es is right, Liz Jones is bonkers. I think the Mail pays her to provide a spectacle…her misogyny and neuroses (some internalized and some not) are so flagrantly out there that they seem like a type of performance art. I sometimes wonder if she’s secretly the work of a clever writer satirizing the Mail’s penchant for hiring women to write articles that undermine or degrade women.
I’m in a de facto relationship. On two occasions, I have been grilled by US customs officials about why I am not married. They couldn’t understand why my spouse and I would possibly want to live and travel together without being married.
I totally agree with Drahill about the stupid single/married dichotomy. I think a lot of people have this ridiculous idea that as soon as you get married, something magic happens and your relationship transforms into something. (These are probably the same people who end up divorced 5 years later.)
I hope Liz Jones really is performance art. That would be brilliant.
As a woman who does want to get married and have a family, but would like to actually enjoy my husband and children, Liz’s ability to marry people with whom she is incompatible does not impress me. And not to sound judge-y, but I’m not sure a thrice divorced woman should be handing out such snarky relationship advice.
I agree with Ms. M – the learning to take away from 25 years of marriage is that this is complex stuff. It’s one possible, with upsides and downsides. Works for me, but I’m certainly not going to pretend I know what’s right for others.
From the sound of it, Tracy McMillan fails to understand the complexity of long-term relationships. the effort requires, or does not want to accept the cost or compromises. So, while she might be born knowing how to *get* married, she apparently does not know how to *be* married – and while I can see why one might have “being married” as a goal, “getting married” is an absurd goal if you’re then not willing to invest what it takes to be married after the wedding.