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I'm glad E.J. mentioned the outdated and offensive label "spinster" (evoking the hag cartoon on an "old maid" playing card deck), because recently in news stories describing talent show contestant Susan Boyle, I've noticed the insulting characterization making a comeback. But what is the correct term for unmarried women in the post-feminist world? As Kerry noted recently about sociologist Andrew Cherlin's research, in a culture where "marriage matters more here than elsewhere," in the United States, "only a marriage ring guarantees first-class citizenship."
Meantime, though the term spinster is rude, the condition it describes, unmarried women over 40, is common. I'm very glad Dayo brought up the Mark Regnerus essay on the appallingly short shelf life of women. Like Emily, I married relatively late in life. I was 35 when I got engaged, 25 years ago, and had life experience, a career, and a child. But, as a baby boomer, even at my mid-career age, there were comparatively plenty of single available men. Although I agree with Meghan's assessment that Regernus presents a narrow-minded and patronizing sociological premise, he was not wrong when he wrote, "Marriage will be there for men when they're ready. And most do get there. Eventually." Distressingly, however, somewhere along the line, many single ladies with career and education priorities find they have entered a no man's land. Awkwardly, as Jess facetiously (I think) supports, the geezerish single men my age prefer to date women 10 to 20 years younger.
In the sixth season of Sex And The City, the inestimable Candice Bergen, as Carrie Bradshaw's powerful, glamorous, Vogue editor, scolds the younger woman for dating Aleksandr Petrovsky (played by Mikhail Baryshnikov), one of the infinitesimally few age-appropriate men available. As Enid, Bergen tells Carrie, "There are no men, anywhere. I am a 50-something woman and there's a very small pool, it's very small, it's a wading pool, really." She tells the advice columnist, "so what I want to know, is why are you swimming in my wading pool?"
The answer is that a man shortage also affects women in Carrie's cohort. The character Mia played by Hope Davis in the new season of another HBO series, In Treatment, despairs of ever meeting a "smart, interesting, available man who's over 40." She tells the single, attractive therapist played by Gabriel Byrne, "they're either married or there's a very good reason why they're not...and if they're divorced, they want them young."
It sounds grim, but it's not necessarily so. A close friend much younger than I, who treats my husband and me so nicely that our daughter wrote on her Facebook page "thanks for taking care of bonnie and jim" is a former lawyer in her early 40s, stunningly attractive and funny, who has a gardening and flowers business. Though not lacking in male friends who "shoulda put a ring on it," my friend has never married. Wondering if, as an old married lady, I was poorly attuned to the word's connotations, I asked what she thought of the word spinster. "Sure, I'd like a partner and children" she answered the more general question, "but right now I have neither and I'm still pretty happy." In fact, she told me, "I'm into spinster power."
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Does anyone at XX Factor watch "In Treatment"? I watched last night's episode immediately after watching Obama's magnificent speech on YouTube, and was struck an echo of the speech in the show. It had me thinking about something like the point you made, Dahlia, about having to apologize for one's crazy elders.
Here's the echo: As you all know, every day of the week, Dr. Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) sees a different patient, and we see the session. Well, over the weekend, his Tuesday patient, a black Navy pilot (Blair Underwood), died. He had been struggling to unpack a suitcase full of anguish--guilt over having bombed a madrassa full of teenage boys, gay impulses, the legacy of his father, a harsh sometime civil-rights activist. Then his plane crashed during training exercises. He was considered one of the Navy's best pilots, and it is unclear whether his death was accidental or suicidal. And the father (Glynn Turman), who had emerged during the sessions as not just as a harsh man but as a soul-destroying monster, arrives on Dr. Weston's doorstep. He wants to understand what has happened to his son.
Turman gives a menacing, heart-breaking performance,well worth watching [http://www.hbo.com/intreatment/tuesday/], but his accomplishment per se is not what made me think of Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. That came at the moment when he makes us see the father's side of things. He draws himself up, this thin, erect, bitter man, aware that the doctor partly blames him for the son's death though is too professional to say so, and he narrows his eyes and says (I'll have to paraphrase and make it sound more banal than it was): "I saw terrible things as a child. I understood that only the strong could survive this world. I wanted my son to be strong." And the doctor gently chides him, saying, "Couldn't you see that the world your son was born into was not the world you were born into?" And the father looks around at Dr. Weston's gorgeous office, with its deep sofas and mahogany furniture and picture windows full of leafy views, and says, in effect, "How can you, who know nothing of where I come from, of my culture, dare to judge me?"
The scene volleys our sympathies back and forth many more times before it ends, but I found myself thinking about some of the same people Dahlia did, Robin Morgan and Jesse Jackson and yes, Hillary Clinton, and all those other public figures who saw terrible things and fought bitter battles and said things we couldn't possibly agree with today and may not have agreed with even then--with the result that, as Obama said, and as Dahlia repeated, we can now afford to see things differently. What felt so new about the speech was not that he apologized but the degree to which he refused to, as well as the extent to which--and this was REALLY new--he eschewed derision and ridicule and the very American sin of presentism, of seeing the past through the lens of the present. Like Glynn Turman, he changed the way we see these people. They're not drooling on the sofa. They're battle-scarred, and so will we be one day. Hillary has a deep historical understanding of such matters, I have no doubt, but I am afraid she may lack the political courage required to articulate such complicated thoughts in the heat of a campaign, as well as the eloquence to make us understand them.
PS I have been told that the show reenacts with shocking fidelity its Israeli model, and I can't help wondering whether in the original, the pilot was in the Israeli army and his father survived the Holocaust. It's the only thing that would make sense. Anyone who has seen the original, please let me know.
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I saw HBO's therapy series In Treatment last night, and felt it could be helped by adding a long-married couple to the lineup of patients:
Therapist: Why don't we start by--
Hillary: Have you seen his finger? It's out of control. He's wagging it at everyone. Every time his finger comes out I lose 5 percent of voters.
Bill: I should be in the presidential suite at Davos getting a massage from those Swedish gals they have there. But because I agreed to help my wife, I have to listen to lectures on behavior from Ted Kennedy!
Therapist: How do you feel when --
Hillary: Could you tell him to try to remember to mention my name occasionally when he gives one of his "I'm the greatest" speeches?
Bill: You wanted me to rough up Obama for you!
Hillary: I didn't say you should sound like the ghost of Lester Maddox!
Therapist: Could we --
[cut to: lamp being thrown at Bill's head]