Creating a Community of Single Women

Don’t worry, you won’t end up like them

The purpose of this blog post is to praise Mandy Hale and her efforts as The Single Woman. Much has been written elsewhere about the creation of communities online, how the anonymity and immediacy of the online space fosters community in a way that is impossible otherwise. Well, Mandy Hale has created a community of over 500,000 Twitter followers who read her daily affirmations for single women. Although the term single woman could technically apply to any unmarried woman of any age, the tweets have particular resonance to single women of, say, a certain age. Single women past their mid-twenties who face a barrage of “Why haven’t you settled down yet?” and “Why are you so darn picky?” and “Don’t you want to have kids”? find particular resonance in the words that Mandy writes that both commiserate with and cajole the reader to strive for more and to aim higher. It’s a reminder that even when it seems that we are the last single women on Earth (and trust me, I often feel like the last single woman I know), we are not. There are others out there living their lives and facing the same joys and doubts that we 30 something single women face. For me, reading Mandy’s tweets and the many comments they receive makes me feel like I’m part of a community of women who get me.

One minor note of discord: Mandy is very religious and peppers her tweets and new book with quotes from the Bible and prayers for single women. I appreciate that her religious belief is very important to her, but I wish she knew that she had followers who are not religious (I’m sure I’m not the only one). I also cringed when I heard that she would be appearing on The 700 Club, hosted by Pat Robertson, who stated that 9/11 happened because we Americans brought it on ourselves because of “the pagans, the abortions, the feminists and the gays and lesbians”. I shudder to think that someone I otherwise admire a great deal would appear alongside this hateful man.