Bella DePaulo is a Visiting Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She's just published a new book, Singlism: What It Is, Why It Matters, And How To Stop It …and I'm one of 28 contributing essayists! (Yay!)
What Bella and I have in common is that we're both determined to chip away at the prevailing thinking that marriage is what grown-ups are supposed to do and that not doing so is, well, just wrong…and weird…and kinda pathetic. Actually, Bella isn't just chipping away at it, she's using a sledgehammer. Singlism is just one piece of a large body of Bella's work dedicated to combatting discrimination and silliness against the Unmarried. She even coined the word Singlism.
And speaking of singlism (the act, not the book), I had dinner the other day with a dear friend, who got married just a couple of years ago. She commented that she was surprised at how her social life has soared now that she's a married woman. Paula has always had a pretty robust social life and now it's even robust-er. She said she noticed that many women who she's known for years (while she was single) have now embraced her and began extending social invitations to her…when they never really had before. Some invitations are for her and her husband, but many are for her. Now that she's a married woman she has been welcomed into "The Club"! This is funny to me…but also a bit silly, don't you think…unless, of course, you're one of the married women who isn't extending invitations to women who aren't married. Geez.
Like sexism and racism, singlism isn't always intentional or conscious. But like sexism and racism, it is very real.
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