Bachelor Girl_ The Secret History of Single Women in the Twentieth Century - Betsy Israel [123]
And the conclusion: If there was a shortage of men, it was only because so many women out there were female losers. As one man, forty-one, told the New York Times: “All these intelligent, articulate frank strong women…[who are] attractive, beautiful and who now feel so much better about themselves, now look around only to find men suffering from various sexual and psychological dysfunctions? Who’s jiving whom? If you’re not turning us on, baby, check your assets. You really haven’t come a long way. You are boring us.”
On it went, from 1974 to 1980:
Women: “I have lost all patience with men who like little girls.”
Men: “Women want to see your pay stub and your investment portfolio before accepting a drinks date.”
Women: “Aging bachelors can age all on their own, without my assistance.”
Men: “What do women want? They want to be free to do whatever they want, as long as a man pays for all of it.”
Both: “It’s just too hard…I think I’ll stay home…I got an answering machine!”
Columnist Russell Baker, in 1978, questioned the value of so many staying home alone.
The women’s movement attempts to lionize the female bachelor. Newspapers, books, and magazines recite happy tales of women who, having successfully skirted the perils of husbands and nestbuilding, have found contented anchorage in private harbours alone with their TV sets, their books, their wine, their pictures, their telephones, and their self-fulfillment…. you wonder whether we are becoming a race that is simply afraid of people.
There were many women out there in other parts of the country who were not afraid of people, not angry, and not included in this press coverage of the single and her minidramas. Single life as presented in the mass media was a phenomenon of the big cities and the affluent areas in particular. Said one woman in the mid-seventies:
I just laugh when I read about the exciting single life…what wonderful chances there are for a girl alone today. That Cosmopolitan Girl! Wow! I’m a secretary to a man who owns a liquor store—the only other men I meet are married liquor dealers. If it hadn’t been for my kids, I would’ve moved to a bigger town—maybe Detroit, when my husband took off. But I bring home ninety-five dollars a week—before taxes, get that—and my mother takes care of my two little girls while I’m working…. Where is my wild single life? And I am twenty-eight, thank you.
At the same time, no matter their circumstances, all single women had many unlikely things in common.
To speak of the very tangible, unmarried women’s household incomes averaged 60 percent less than two-income (usually married) households; unmarried men, however, maintained household incomes just 15 percent less than those of married couples. Single women paid more taxes than married women—as much as 20 percent more (“America has a severe case of the singles,” said Money magazine in 1976). And there was also the bizarre single world of insurance. For a long time it was hard for single women to buy homeowner’s insurance: because there was likely to be no one home during the day, she was considered a bad risk.
And they shared less tangible things.
Most significant was the fact that women, even if they loved their single lives, were not accustomed to spending so much time by themselves. In Toward a New Psychology of Women (1979), Dr. Jean Baker Miller, a feminist and psychiatrist, addressed this absence of “connection.” She described one subject, a “bright career woman” about twenty-seven or twenty-eight, who was “very active and effective” but essentially depressed. As difficult as it was for her to believe, this woman had found that she could not feel happy without a man around, even briefly, to watch her and approve her efforts. After many years of training