Theorizing Women’s Singleness: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism, and the Politics of Popular Culture

‘I don’t think this woman had anyone in her life’: Loneliness and singlehood in Six Feet Under

“…Here, Emily’s lifestyle is portrayed in pathological terms. As written elsewhere (Byrne, 2000; DePaulo, 2006; Lahad, 2014, 2017; Macvarish, 2006; Taylor, 2011), late singlehood is regularly associated with negative and pathological social connotations. Similarly, David’s remark exemplifies that loneliness is pathologized through a medicalized rhetoric of difference.…”

“…One of the most iconic representations of loneliness could be found in the cliché of the old maid. The old maid, la vielle fille (French), or the veechia zitella (Italian), is a common idiom across cultures, representing the figure of the single woman unable to find a long-term romantic partner (Byrne, 2000; DePaulo, 2006; Lahad, 2014; Macvarish, 2006; Taylor, 2011). Since the old maid ‘failed’ to establish a family of her own (a husband and children, according to the prevalent heteronormative narrative) common wisdom bestows upon her a particularly gloomy future: ageing and dying alone.…”

“…However, these very texts, along with recent studies of singlehood (e.g. Byrne, 2003; Cobb, 2012; Lahad, 2014, 2016, 2017; Reynolds, 2013; Taylor, 2011; Trimberger, 2005), could be reinterpreted as a challenge to heteronormative life scripts. These studies attempt to debunk the plethora of prejudices towards single women, alongside calls to rethink the discursive production of singlehood as merely a social problem and pathology (Budgeon, 2008; Byrne, 2000; Byrne and Carr, 2005; Jamieson and Simpson, 2013; Lahad, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017; Reynolds, 2013; Trimberger, 2005).…”

“…In these scholarly works, being single is framed as an asset; accordingly, women describe their solo life course in terms of individuality and of self-actualization. Contemporary research depicts singlehood as a lifestyle which enables many women to pursue satisfying careers, invest in friendship relations and/or enjoy travelling (Lahad, 2016, 2017; Simpson, 2006; Taylor, 2011; Trimberger, 2005). Here, we argue that despite these important discussions, the almost automatic association of loneliness to long-term singlehood remains surprisingly undertheorized and unaddressed within feminist cultural studies literature.…”

The One with the Feminist Critique: Revisiting Millennial Postfeminism withFriends

“…they have [nonetheless] benefited from the achievements of the second wave” (Hersey Nickel 2012, 30; see also McRobbie 2004; Projansky 2001, 68–70; Tasker and Negra 2007). Elsewhere, in locating the series within postfeminist culture, the one observation that Akass and McCabe do make about it situates Friends as one of a range of contemporaneous media fictions of postfeminism that “perpetuate a narrative of supposedly liberated women desiring romance—longing for a man to complete her,” thus correspondent with the arch narrative of innumerable media fictions of millennial postfeminist femininity (see, for example, Genz 2009, 2010; Taylor 2011, 89–90).…”