I've been a Rebecca Traister fan for a long time, ever since I
saw the feminist political journalist interview one of my idols,
the late Nora Ephron at the 92nd Street Y nearly a decade ago
(could that have been a more NYC event?). Needless to say, I was
thrilled to interview Traister about her new, very fabulous book
All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an
The book is a gritty piece of reporting that took Traister five
years to complete, and I cannot recommend it enough. Pegged on the
news that the 2008 presidential elections were largely influenced
by unmarried women, the book details the history of unmarried women
in the United States, and highlights how, given economic power and
social acceptance, women in large numbers tend to chose life
Reading this book came at an important time in my own life, as I
find I have settled into my single status in a new way. Suddenly, a
long-term, committed, monogamous heterosexual relationship just
doesn't resonate as the Shangri-La of adulthood that it once
did for me — a sentiment that Traister validates with her recount
of centuries of the political and social marginalization of single
women (despite women's inclination to embrace it), as well as
contemporary trends like women initiating the vast majority of
divorces (and being grossly less content inside traditional
marriages than men), the single-mom-by-choice movement, and
the embrace of young women's sexual promiscuity (a
la' Girls and Sex and the
Why the Chicago Tribune, in its review of All theSingle Ladies, honed in so sharply on the fact Traister,
a married mom of two, was a virgin until age 24.
How women have such cooler lives now that we arefinancially, sexually and socially free from the ties of
marriages.
Where do men come into this scene?That, despite my greedy, thrilled consumption of every page ofthis book, I was disappointed that it ignored the topic of
sexuality and motherhood — the last frontier in feminism, in
my (unwritten) book.