​“And we’re the three best friends that anybody could have, we’re the three best friends that anybody could have, and we’ll never ever ever ever ever leave each other…”
 
When I think of The Hangover, my mind immediately jumps to Alan’s ode to his “wolf pack.”  While said members of the pack probably don’t reciprocate his feelings, it brings to mind how powerful friendship can be. 
 
This is the central tenet of Rhaina Cohen’s new book, The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center (I’ll use the acronym OSO for the rest of this post), in which she argues that friendship be placed on the same platform that romance is.
 
I’ve always valued my friendships more than romance.  Thinking back to my college years, I remember a potential girlfriend ultimately rejecting me after unsuccessfully trying to pull me away from a basketball game with my friends to hang out with her.  One could argue that maybe I wasn’t really into her, but I was spending time with friends and I wouldn’t pull away.  As I’ve gotten deeper into Singles Studies, I’ve developed a wide array of friendships that give my life way more meaning than any romance ever has or ever could.

So I was in a state of enthusiasm as I rode the MARC to Baltimore for a discussion around OSO.  I’d hear some discussion around friendship, and I’d get to see Kevin and Alicia.
 
I was initially dismissive of Rhaina when I learned she was married.  How dare you speak down from your pedestal! I thought.  But Kevin had sent me her article, “What if Friendship, Not Marriage, Was at the Center of Life” and he spoke highly of her, so his word gives a mark of credibility.  And she had a lot of good things to say.  Most importantly, acknowledged singlism and Bella DePaulo’s work, so that’s an automatic A+ in my gradebook. 
 
After devouring a tuna sub at the nearby Subway, I snagged three seats.  Kevin arrived first, then Alicia.  The crowd around us varied in age, but appeared on the younger side.  My guess is a lot of students and a few professors from nearby Johns Hopkins University (the dude next to me sported a hat from the crew team). 
 
We started out with an activity, where we were given a post-it.  On the post-it, we’d substitute the words “get by” with a word or phrase of our choosing in the Beatles’ lyric, “I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends.”  I went with “thrive.”  Rhaina ended the event by having one of her friends play the keyboard while we sang “I” and “with a little help…,” while Rhaina reading from our post-it.  “Thrive” made it!
 
In between the “fun” were some great ideas.  My favorite was the idea of the “relationship staircase,” as opposed to the “escalator,” which can be applied to romance and friendship.  I’ve had friendship go through all kinds of high-intensity and low-intensity phases, and they’re none the worse for wear.  Sometimes, we’ll go for months without speaking, but then, we’ll pick up where we were at before the hiatus in communication.  Could romance be like that as well?
 
Cohen discusses the idea of non-romantic life partners, which had me thinking of this clip.  In the Askewniverse, we rarely (if ever) see Jay and Silent Bob apart.  And we fans love their antics and can appreciate their bond.  Samantha Roth, a psychotherapist who engaged with Cohen in the conversation, brought up the idea of “intimate relationships therapy” as opposed to “couples therapy.”  After all, friendships go through rough patches, don’t they?    I loved that she changed the title of a course from “Romance” to “Intimate Relationships.”  The latter is all-encompassing.
 
Rhaina also asked the audience if any of them had ever had “platonic love at first sight.”  I had to think a bit, but my mind flashed back to Mark, whom I met at an Allman Brothers tribute show.  He was having a blast at that show and seemed so cool.  He had gotten me into going back to live music after a long hiatus.  Even though we live a few hours apart, we still hit the occasional DC show together and we hang out when I visit Newport News.  And through him, I met my friend Drew, with whom I have inside jokes about “waiting for the bus” and “special guest” (I’ll go into that in a future essay about my friendship with him).
 
And finally, the idea of hierarchy.  I have lost friends to romantic relationships; amatonormativity’s a bitch indeed.  That being said, that’s the way things are for the moment until ideas like Rhaina’s become more accepted.  So I find it’s important for me to maintain a wide network of friendships.  This way, if I’m lowered on someone’s hierarchy, I’ll have other friends.
 
Cooking and baking are two of my love languages.  I love making food for friends.  So, of course, I brought homemade brownies for Kevin and Alicia.  I had a third for my ride back to DC.  But I had an inkling to hook Rhaina up.  I asked Kevin for advice on that, and he said, “Go for it.”  So I did. I hope she enjoyed it the way I did her talk.
 
After the talk, Kevin and I made our way across the street to Insomnia Cookies with Joseph, a new friend, who had come to a Childfree Singles Meetup I hosted at Arlington’s Ballston Quarter.  We talked work and housing, particularly the idea that the real estate market, like most other things, is not built for singles.  I am navigating the solo homebuying experience, and it’s a challenge.  But I’m hoping to make it through.  This evening jaunt was refreshing, and made much more fun with friends.

This essay was presented at the Northeast Modern Language Association Conference in Boston, Massachusetts on March 8, 2024.  It is a first draft of a personal essay I hope to submit to a publication.

“Being single as an adult” were the words I typed into that Google search bar that humid Tuesday afternoon.  I had recently been broken up with, yet again, and the anger perforated throughout my body.  I was thirty-six, had completed my first year in a tenure-track position at a university, and had never been married.  Basically, there was something wrong with me.  “You need to find someone.”  “When are you getting married?”  “Don’t you even have a dog?”  As I reflect now, those comments had motivated me to get on Match.com, stick it out through bad dates, and stay in relationships that just didn’t fill my cup.  And this one was no different – but, I just HAD to be with someone.  And I wasn’t.  And it seemed like everybody else was.  They were good, and I was bad.  The academic year had just ended, so I technically had more “time” on my hands to brood about these things.  This brooding led me to a Google search, which led me to an author named Bella DePaulo.

​I saw articles like “Are Unmarrieds Singled Out for Discrimination,” “How Singles are Celebrated and Stereotyped and Shamed,” and “The Many Ways Singles Are Treated Unfairly at Work.”  As I read about the privilege bestowed into people who “tie the knot” (i.e., Social Security benefits, higher salaries, and just general social acceptability), my brooding turned into a combination of righteous anger, solidarity, and the feeling of “being seen.”  

My plans for reading articles about composition pedagogy and writing anxiety were thrown into the trunk as I spent much of the summer devouring the work of DePaulo, in her particular, her 2006 book, Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After, brought to my surface every slight and injustice I’d ever felt when I was single.  Friends leave you when they get married or couple up.  And, even if they invite you along, the coupled make all the decisions.  And there are the stereotypes perpetuated in the media: if you’re a woman, you’re a “crazy cat lady” or a “promiscuous slut.”  If you’re a man, you suffer from “Peter Pan” syndrome, or you’re a slob who uses pizza boxes as furniture.  Even if you do perform the celebratory act of being a parent, you’re “irresponsible” if you dare to do it as a single person.  I marked that book up with notes and highlights, all the while thinking, “Yes.  Yes.  Yes.”

I started my second year on the tenure-track determined to combine my love of writing with my newfound love of what I’d come to learn what was the developing field of Singles Studies.  I started a blog, Soldiering for Singles, in which I wrote musings about single life.  Examples included the unfairness of “solo supplements,” the hypocrisy of “rules” around dating and romance, and, on a more positive note, the value of my platonic friendships.  One thing I’ve also learned: “single” does not mean “alone.”  Around the time I was experiencing this rebirth, Bella had started a Facebook group called Community of Single People (or CoSP for short), a group of single people “who want to live their single lives fully, joyfully, and free of stereotyping and stigma.”  The first sentence on the page’s “About” section is “This group has nothing to do with dating.”  I shared my blogs on that page, and they were met with “likes” and laudatory comments.  I had found some likeminded folks.
 
On a spring break trip to Winnipeg to see a friend, I had the privilege of touring the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, where I learned about the injustices that face marginalized groups.  I got the brainstorm: write a letter suggesting an exhibit devoted to the plight of singles, who face micro-levels of marginalization, such as exclusion from social events, and macro-levels, such as that Social Security law mentioned earlier.  I never received a response from the museum, but I was able to use it as an example of how to write persuasively (even if it didn’t necessarily persuade the museum).

I continued writing, and with the encouragement of a department chair, I themed one of my courses around Singlehood and Marriage, during which students read Singled Out, along with some unfortunately written book that argued marriage was the only way of living (but we did have fun poking at the fallacies made by those authors.  Students were more engaged in this class than they’d been in any other. 

At the same time, I was developing a global network of friends and colleagues through CoSP.  I’d published a series of articles in Singular, an online magazine published by one of its members. I had been teaching myself how to conduct Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which had led me to write an article breaking down the films Crossing Delancey and Trainwreck, both of which gave the “couplehood is the only way” argument.  Through a friend I had made, I was able to publish this piece, “There Is No Wrong Romance Can’t Right: Heteronormativity in Our Romantic Comedies,” in a journal entitled Feminista Revismos.  I’d also connected with Spark: a 4C4 Equality Journal, where I’d published another, which read “Awww, You’re Not Married?  Why We Need a Singles’ Rights Movement,” during which I interviewed a group of single academics to see how singlism affected their experiences. 

My work grew toward writing books.  One afternoon, a representative from Kendall-Hunt Publishing met with me and my department chair to discuss the possibility of a customized textbook for our first-year writing courses.  During our conversation, I discussed my themed course on Singlehood and Marriage and mentioned an idea I’d be tinkering with: a book for men on how to be single and happy without searching for a partner.  So many books had been written on this subject, but they were all for women.  I was going to address the gap.  And the representative was going to publish it.  As that initial feeling of euphoria lapsed, I got up at 5:30 every morning to spend an hour writing.  And, to me, the feeling of seeing my name on a published book was way better than pinning a wedding ring on someone’s index finger.
That’s not to say I haven’t developed meaningful connections.  During the pandemic, I had monthly Zoom chats with Ketaki Chowkhani, a sociology professor from the Manipal Academy of Higher Education in India.  Through our conversations, we developed the idea to facilitate the world’s first ever Singles Studies conference: a virtual gathering of academics in different disciplines who study singlehood.  And on October 10, 2020, I had the privilege of “meeting” writers whose work I’d studied and admired.  Three years later, Ketaki and I released a collection of essays from these writers; we called it Singular Selves: An Introduction to Singles Studies.

This past August, I rode an Amtrak from Washington, DC to Philadelphia to meet up with Elyakim Kislev, a noted Singles Studies scholar who wrote a book, Happy Singlehood: The Rising Acceptance and Celebration of Solo Living, which I used in a course I taught, “How to be Single and Happy.”  Our discourse lasted three hours and took place in the Philadelphia Convention Center and nearby Reading Terminal Market.  At the end of our conversation, I walked away with an idea for a new project: a book in which I break down and analyze the tropes found in romantic movies and how they reflect couplehood as a hegemonic force.

Becoming immersed in the advocacy of singlehood as a valid lifestyle choice has not only benefited me professionally, but personally as well.  In 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I moved from Newport News, Virginia to Washington, DC; such a diverse city fits me way better than the rural environments in which I had spent time.  As an introvert, I was one of those folks who, when they told us to stay home, I said “What’s the catch?”  I’ve always liked my space.  Singles and couples had different benefits and challenges throughout lockdown; speaking strictly for myself, I would not have wanted to be stuck in a house with another person, no matter how amazing they might be.

Of course, I was ecstatic when things start opening up, because I could finally develop the kind of social network we singles tend to cultivate.  As Bella put it, “Married people have the one, single people have the ones.”  First, I joined our local Childfree group, DMV Childfree.  The organizer had enough space to allow me to host a Childfree group specifically for Singles.  The rules: 1) you must be single, legally and socially; 2) if you couple up, you can stay in the group, but please don’t sign up for events; and 3) it is not a “meet market.”  If you meet someone you like in the group, great, but don’t use it as a dating app.  As of this presentation, the group has been active for one year, and I’ve made a few close, happily single friends in my local area.  These friendships have meant more to me than a romance ever could.

The CoSP group has also been a recent source of friendship.  I currently have two separately monthly Zoom chats with Kevin and Kamran, two happily single men who’ve I met through the page.  We discuss a variety of topics, such as spirituality, philosophy, and classic movies.  To me, this beats talking about lawn mowers, strollers, engagement rings, and juice boxes with the other married Dads. 

Washington, DC is known for its diverse population.  One thing I always tell others is, “No matter who you are or what you’re into, there’s something for you here.”  On September 17, 2023, I got together with seven of my CoSP tribespeople for brunch at a restaurant called Medium Rare.  As I enjoyed a meal of steak, poached eggs, and fries, we talked about being single.  We talked about the freedom with which it comes.  We talked about how policies that currently favor the married will more than likely become more equitable toward singles, as more and more people go the “singlehood route,” whether by choice or by circumstance. 

Three months later, Bella DePaulo came to Busboys and Poets in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington, DC to give a reading from her latest book, Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life.  I hosted a Meetup around this event, during which other Childfree singles would gather to hear her read and discuss these ideas with two other scholars before answering questions from the audience.  Kevin drove down from Wrightsville, Pennsylvania, so he’d share the couch with my cat/son, Chester.  And the other CoSPers would pack the room.
My Facebook moniker is “Chazz Pop,” used so my students don’t find me.  “Chazz” is short for Chester, and “Pop” is Dad.  Chester’s Dad.  And once inside the reading, I kept getting the question, “Are you Chazz?”  “Are you Chazz?”  In addition to seeing friends, I had the privilege of meeting those on CoSP I only knew by post, as well as folks on the Childfree group I’d never seen before.  It was validating.

After the reading, about twenty of us took over the back room at nearby Shaw’s Tavern.  The conversation about singlehood, and even some non-singlehood related topics, like movies, what is a real Buffalo wing, and the places we’ve traveled to, flowed.  For that night, in a world that privileges marriage and coupledom, the singles dominated, and the euphoria I felt lasted at least a week.

Current situation: after thirteen years of moving around the country to pursue that tenured professorship, I achieved it this past summer.  And CoSP was the first place I went to announce; if I had been married with a child, for me, that would have been much more difficult to achieve.  And I’m now in the place where I’m ready to “plant some roots” (as opposed to the matrimaniacal phrase, “settle down”).  So I’m venturing into the world of real estate.  And the first place I went to for advice was CoSP.  After all, solo homebuying is different.

While I have considered myself a “lone wolf,” I haven’t been doing life alone.  Again, “married people have the one, single people have the ones.”  The team of people I’ve built through my journey through singlehood has given my life way more meaning than a romantic partnership ever could.  And I’ve had the pleasure of being part of others’ teams, functioning as moral support on others’ journeys and even helping one friend move into her newly bought condo.  And I date sporadically, although I don’t approach or navigate it in a way that is societally accepted.  It is my hope that as more and more people discover happy lives outside of what is considered “normal,” our society, and laws, will reflect these trends.
 

This paper was delivered at the Northeast Modern Language Association Conference at the Sheraton Hotel, Boston, Massachusetts on March 7, 2024.  It is a first draft and part of a much larger project.

Introduction
 
We love romance.  We love it on a structural level, as married couples are given privilege in laws and policies throughout the world.  We love it on a spiritual principal, as marriage and other forms of coupling are often referred to as “holy unions.”  We also love it on our popular culture consumption.  Movies and television series often end with characters coupling up.  Examples that have nearly every character romantically linked include The Big Bang Theory, Friends, and Sex and the City.  Three concepts are exemplified in these representations: 1) singlism, the stereotyping and stigma around people who are not married or otherwise unpartnered (DePaulo, 2005); 2) matrimania, the societal obsession around marriage (DePaulo, 2007); and 3) amatonormativity, the assumption that a romantic union must be placed at the center of one’s live, above all other familial and platonic relationships (Brake, 2012). 

It makes sense that movies and television shows would propagate messages that contain those three elements; many creators are in marital unions, and the general viewing public believes that marriage (or at least coupling) is the key to happiness.  So naturally, they would want the media they consume to reflect those beliefs, and in many cases, provide an escapist ideal for which viewers can hope in their own lives.  The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is a show that challenges these ideas and represents a form of liberatory activism.  Set in the 1950s, it stars Rachel Brosnahan as Miriam (Midge) Maisel, a Jewish housewife who lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.  In the series pilot, her husband, Joel, tells her he wants a divorce and he reveals he’s been in an affair with his secretary.  When she tells her parents, they blame her for the divorce.  “You need a husband, your kids need a father,” her father, Abe, says.  “Do what you have to do to get him back!”

Joel had been attempting to start a career as a stand-up comedian, performing at a small club called The Gaslight.  He appears talented, but it is revealed he’s been plagiarizing jokes from other comedians.  After Joel’s announcement, Midge is in a Dark Night of the Soul moment.  She gets drunk and wanders into the Gaslight, where she had been a patron, supporting Joel in his comedy endeavors.  Distraught and despondent over her situation, she walks up on stage and starts talking about her life and divorce.  The audience interprets it as an impromptu comedy act and loves it.

Midge’s act also attracts the attention of Suzie, the club’s manager, who sees true comedy potential in Midge and offers to coach her.  This begins Midge’s arc from dutiful housewife to famed comedian and independent woman.  This essay will argue that: 1) Midge is also a Single Person at Heart, a term Bella DePaulo coined to refer to people who live their best lives while they are single, even though she may not recognize her orientation (2023); 2) while singlist and matrimanical comments pervade the show, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel ultimately offers a pro-singlehood narrative, contrary to the messages of most TV shows; and 3) the hatred toward Midge by popular culture writers stems from systemic amatonormativity, which manifests in their lack of acceptance toward her newfound orientation as a single-at-heart person.

Midge’s Growing Independence/Midge as a Single at Heart
 
As the series begins, we see that outwardly, Midge is living a traditional life as a housewife and mother, subject to the gender and matrimanical norms of the 1950s.  Such norms are intersectional with the “colonial gaze,” as Western women existed in relation of subordination to men.  However, her independence starts in the show’s pilot, as she’s influenced by Suzie, who bails her out of jail for an indecency charge, as she bared her breasts onstage.  In telling her she has a gift for comedy, she says, “If you’re still upset about your husband, don’t be.  He’s a fraud and a loser.”  The implication in her blunt statement is that comedy is a much more worthy pursuit for her than romance.  When Midge questions Susie’s position, her response is “I don’t mind being alone.  I just do want to be insignificant.  I want to remembered as something other than a housewife and mother.”  These words function as a theme throughout the entire series, as Midge forgoes the roles of wife and mother to pursue her passion.  On a societal level, they questioned the norms of female roles in that time period, when it was much more common for women to fill the roles of “wife” and “mother” while excluding all other identities.

While under Suzie’s tutleage, Midge learns the ropes of the stand-up comedy world, such as timing her jokes, responding to hecklers, trusting her instincts, and even having a “weird ask,” a quirky request that’s outside the norm, in order to enhance her credibility.  Hers is yellow teddy bears.  However, she learns a great deal more.

One theme in the show is Midge’s growing independence, which runs parallel to a narrative that Midge is finding her way as a comedian during a time period when women generally did not engage in stand-up comedy, and when they did, they had a persona (i.e., Sophie Lennon’s frumpy Queens housewife and Moms Maibley’s toothless old lady).  In contrast to this gaze, Midge is finding a style that is based in storytelling and observation, which succeeds in decolonializing expectations of the female comic.  The opening scene of the series’ second episode has her walking around downtown Manhattan, a far cry from her ritzy Upper West Side life.  She appears dazed and confused as she observes a person urinating on the street, another randomly dumping water out the window, and a dog barking.  She doesn’t know about the current events of her time, such as the Civil Rights Movement, Jim Crow, Ethel & Julius Rosenberg, and the Red Scare.  She also appears to have trouble understanding courtroom etiquette, as she argues with the judge about the double standards men and women are held to.  While such gender disparities are valid and a theme in the show, she doesn’t appear to understand that the judge and court are the authorities in this situation.  When she travels for a gig with Suzie, she also doesn’t understand that in most hotels, there is no bellhop to carry your bags; you do that yourself.  “I’m open to trying new things,” Midge says upon learning this fact.

Midge’s street savvy and worldliness grows as the series progresses, as she grows in her role as a “single at heart.”  Early in the series, she observes a group of activists in Washington Square Park to prevent the building of a nearby road.  She speaks into a megaphone and even gives advice to the organizer.  Later on, she gets her first job, working the makeup counter at a department store.  This feature of Midge’s new life as a single female is intersectional with feminism in that “expenses associated with the consumerist lifestyle forced many middle-class married women into work outside the home, a situation that was compounded by their desire to keep up with the “Happy Housewife” ideal prevalent in popular culture during that time (Kearney, 2012, pg. 5).  While on tour with famed singer Shy Baldwin, she befriends one of Shy’s musicians and learns about how to determine whether a guy is worth having a one-night stand with.  “If his place is dirty, what is the rest of his body like?” is the advice she receives.  She heeds this advice and forgoes sleeping with Lenny Bruce, as he lives in a hotel, at least for the moment.

In the final season, she acquires a job at NBC, writing for The Gordon Ford Show.  The fact that Gordon, a married man, repeatedly tries to sleep with her is a commentary on how, while marriage has a place of privilege in the abstract, many people don’t necessarily take that union seriously in practice, particularly during that time period.  While she initially struggles for respect among the all-male staff, her writing eventually makes her “one of the gang.”  In the final episode, she’s allowed to appear on the show, despite the tradition that writers do not perform on it.  When she’s told she’ll mostly be talking with Gordon about her role as a writer rather than performing her comedy act, as she was promised, she disrupts the tradition by taking the stage and giving her act, which delights the audience and even impresses Ford, despite the fact that he promptly fires her.  This night propels her to stardom.  

Midge’s Independence and Gender Roles
 
Despite Midge’s apparent naivete and dependence on men, she may just be a single at heart.  When Midge’s despondent mother, Rose, talks to Trina, her fortune teller about Rose’s divorce, Trina responds, “She’s always been her own girl.”  After getting dropped from Shy Baldwin’s tour, Midge takes a job as an emcee at the Walford, a strip club, warming up the audience with jokes before the main acts.  Backstage, she crusades for better working conditions, including preventing the club’s male manager from entering the women’s dressing room unannounced.  She also inspires the people around her to live their most authentic lives, married or single.  Once again, this authenticity in living a single life is intersectional with feminism in Midge’s finding of relatve independence by working outside the home.

According to Brown (2012), “feminine discourse” implies acknowledgement of women’s subordination often expressed in parodic form by making fun of dominant culture (37).  In this case, this parody extends to married life as the dominant culture, as matrimaniacal comments and actions are expressed in a caricaturistic fashion by some of the characters, even though they may not be aware of the challenges of their own married lives.  One such example includes Joel’s mother Shirley attempting to set him up with a woman who’s nine months pregnant; she tells him, “You need companionship, smeone to be with, a good woman makes a good man, where would your father be without me?”  When Joel looks askance, Shirley says, “Don’t start.”

Why the Hatred Toward Midge?
 
Hatred of female television characters is a popular pasttime among some televsion fanatics.  The “I Hate Brenda” anti-fan club launched in the height of Beverly Hills, 90210’s popularity (Amatangelo, 2020).  Skyler White garnered much hatred among Breaking Bad fans for being a “bully” toward her developing drug kingpin husband (Lynch, Doll, Gooding-Nieves, Patton & Loughlin, 2023). 
Similarly, Midge Maisel is unpopular among much of the show’s fanbase for her choices.  One blogger from Writing Without Rules: Deep Dives called Midge “a terrible person.  She selfishly puts her own needs ahead of everyone else, largely ignores her own children, and lies pretty constantly.”  While most people would not condone a person doing those things, we must consider that the matrimaniacal norms of the time period forced Midge into the role of “wife” and “mother.”  And when one takes on those roles, they buy into a system with its own rules.  Midge broke  those rules to pursue her authentic life.  One might question whether she is single at heart due to the fact that she married four times after Joel.  Before one of her weddings, Midge has this exchange with Suzie, in which she says “I don’t love him,” to which Suzie responds, “You didn’t love the last guy either, that didn’t stop you.”  Simply put, Midge is a single person at heart born in the wrong time period, a period where marriage was more compulsory than it is today.  Therefore, she is compelled to marry, even though it isn’t her authentic way of living.

This reading of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel in terms of its position as a form of liberatory activism may not reflect the interpretations of average viewers nor of other media scholars and critics.  Society, particularly the media consumed by it, is not built toward singlehood, especially those who are engaged in happy singlehood.  Bella DePaulo’s recent book, Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life, interviewed people who live their best lives as singletons.  One writer, unprovoked, wrote the following message, cited in her book:

Hi Bella,
 
Just want to let you know that single people are inferior in every way.  They’re worthless, useless, lazy, and stupid.  Ther’s nothing I hate like single people.  Anyone single is completely defective, otherwise someone would love them.

Now, Bella, I know you found some micro/macro agressions there, but I want you to use all of your Harvard skills to understand it’s entirely your fault.  You’re single, therefore you suck.

You suck because you’re single.  Say it out loud.  You are nothing.  Worthless.
 
When the book was released, Bella received a lot of fan mail from people who felt the
messsage spoke to them, but there was one complaint:
 
Obviously you did not interview me.  I am 68 years single and am a poster boy for the conventional thinkers.
 
I wanted to be married, have children and grandchildren.  And even if you are married, you can enjoy the solitude you crave and enjoy.  Singleness is not a guarantee of privacy, fulfillment and complete enjoyment. It may facilitate it but certainly does not guarantee it.  What accomplishments and successes and contributions to society will you have to look back upon at the end of life?
 
Thanks,
Steve K
 
These letters, while extreme examples of the hatred toward singles, particularly happy singles, are reflective of societal attitudes toward people who choose to be happy as singletons.  Midge is being lambasted as selfish for her choices.  Sarah Jae Leiber of the Jewish Women’s Archive called Midge an antihero who feels no loyalty to the people who helped her along the way; Midge has, in fact, been very loyal, funding her mother’s matchmaking business, buying back her parents’ house, and even staying connected with Joel.  Maintenance of these ties is an exemplificiation of Elyakim Kislev’s finding that singles are more connected with their families of origin than married people are (2019); yet one can speculate whether she’d receive this same maligning if she had stayed married to Joel.
Conclusion
In these ways, Midge Maisel is subject to the type of singlism that Bella DePaulodefines
and catalogues in her body of work on singles.  Viewing The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel through a
Singles Studies lens raises many important questions about how we look at more conventional
types of shows in which the protagonists sacrifice freedom for romance, such as Gilmore Girls and The Big Bang Theory.  Moreover, such shows have the potential to influence how people approach relationships in their lives, including those that may be detrimental to their well-being out of fear of being alone.  Future research could approach these shows by studying how single protagonists negotiate their own narratives and experience intimacy outside of romance, and possibly influence some to engage in such connection.
 
References
 
Amatangelo, A. (2020).  30 Years after 90210 premiered, it’s finally time to apologize to Brenda
Walsh – and Shannen Doherty.  Paste Magazine.  Web.  6 January 2024.  https://www.pastemagazine.com/tv/90210/brenda-walsh-90210-shannen-doherty   

Brake, E. (2012).  Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law.  Oxford University
Press.

Cooper, B. (2012).  Boys Don’t Cry and female masculinity.  In M.C. Kearney (Eds.). The Gender
and Media Reader (pp. 355 - 369).  Routledge.

DePaulo, B. M., & Morris, W. L. (2005). Singles in society and in science. Psychological
Inquiry, 16(2-3), 57-83.

DePaulo, B. (2006).  Singled Out: How Singles are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and
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​Rosen, C. (2023).  “‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ Reveals Why Joel Went to Jail: ‘He’s Taken
the Blame.’ Goldderby. Web.  3 January 2024.  https://wwrdeepdives.substack.com/p/the-exhausting-mrs-maisel
 
 
 
 
           
 

​“I’m addicted to NeMLA.”

So said Moises, the moderator of the panel during which I read a first draft of a personal essay, “Single Does Not Mean Bad: On Embracing One’s Own Lone Wolf Tendencies.”  And I’d think it’s safe to say I am too.  Elizabeth and I moderated a Singles Studies panel for the third year in a row, and we had some great presentations.  From one, I got inspired to check out Bridesmaids; apparently, there’s a pro-single spin I just didn’t see in my initial viewing of the film.  And some anger-inducing political rhetoric presented by Elizabeth (gotta love that Matt Gaetz).  Two presentations of China’s “leftover women”.  And one about characters in Australian fiction.
 
I don’t typically announce projects I’m working on, but I’m in the embryonic stages of a book about singlist tropes in TV and film, inspired in part by that fateful meeting Elyakim and I had back in Philadelphia.  I wanted to have a paper I could use for the conference and the book, and my mind went to The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.  I had binged on it the prior summer, and found humor and insight in the caricaturistic ways singlism and matrimania is portrayed throughout the show.  I found it easy to make an argument that it was a pro-single show which ultimately satirizes that way of thinking.  So I spent weeks rewatching, taking notes, analyzing, reading, drafting for that magical twenty minutes of presenting.  And I’ll revise again for the talk I’ll be giving on it at my local chapter of the College English Association.  And again at the International Singles Studies Conference in July – once again in Boston, the site of this year’s wonderful conference.
 
I enjoyed and learned from all of the talks, which activated my sense of righteous anger at the pro-couple rhetoric and thinking that pervade our world.  As for my own work, I thought about ways I could enhance it and make it part of a larger argument in my book.  For example, I’ll be interested to look at viewing habits and to see whether it influences the beliefs people have about romance, and consequently, their relationship choices.  A social science twist.
 
I’ve been compelled to get some of my CoSP tribe together in person, inspired by that outing we had at Medium Rare back in December, and amplified by that night Bella came to Busboys and Poets, followed by us singletons taking over the back room at Shaw’s Tavern.  I have friends from different facets of my life, but when I’m with my fellow singletons, I’m truly at home.  So, naturally, I talked to Karen about getting some of us together in Boston.  So she made the reservations at Union Oyster House (the oldest restaurant in the US), and we coordinated getting some of us together.  And the conversation flowed: books, movies, public transit, the psychological blocks that keep people from New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts from crossing state lines, and, of course, singlehood.  Our waitress was a character too; upon observing the empty plate, which had once consisted of scrod and mashed potatoes, she remarked, “Your Mom would be proud.”  She hasn’t met my Mom, but she’s probably right.
 
Friday morning would be the real test – reading about how I found my journey into Singles Studies and happy singlehood in a personal essay, “Single Does Not Mean Bad: On Embracing One’s Own Lone Wolf Tendencies.”
I had written a version of this in How to be a Happy Bachelor’s opening chapter, but I’d never actually read it to a live audience.  Presenting academic work, no problem now.  Getting personal was another story.  I’d done this in front of Singles Studies audiences before, but taking it outside raised some questions: would I have to bat down microaggressions?  And how I would do so professionally?
 
Fortunately, that didn’t happen.  In a panel based around the Impostor Syndrome, Moises talked about the marginalization of creative panels at academic conferences; most organizers only want “academic” work, which can make creatives feel like impostors.  And I hadn’t even thought about that; even though I still dabble in creative writing, my Ph.D. work has mostly transferred my writing energy into academic work.  So he got it, as indicated in his presentation of the struggles many of his students face as they navigate academic discourse, which can ignite the impostor syndrome.
 
I’ll post my essay in the next few days (bear in mind, it is a first draft).  After Moises finished his talk, he called me up to the stage, where I read.  And it got laughter in a few spots and some head nods in others; hearing that always puts me at ease.  My favorite bout of laughter came when I discussed how my students critiqued the fallacies made in that unfortunately written book, The Case for Marriage.
 
The last presenter, Nicoletta, shared about her experience as an impostor in different identity negotiations, such as a writer/student over the age of 50, a parent to a son with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and a female teacher in a state that just doesn’t value them as much as they do males.
 
What I recognized is that even though these other two presenters are married with children, they face “othering” in different ways.  Very few of us are immune to it.  Some of us may just be better at hiding it than others (no pun intended there).  Singlehood is just the filter through which I view the world, and it’s where I feel I can do the most good by myself and by others.
 
I recognized this as my fellow panelists and I answered questions about our ideas presented.  I talked about the conflation of single men with the MGTOW and Incel movement (folks, we’re not all incels or MGTOWs!).  One audience member brought up a question about how the discussion of Singles Studies intersects with conversations about aromanticism and asexuality (short answer, they don’t as much as I’d like to see, but they will eventually).  Another wanted to know about how to connect with other happily single folk that don’t necessarily want to change their relationship status.  I spoke of the blessings of social media (CoSP did that, primarily).  I am blessed to have moved to DC, a diverse city where I often joke “whoever you are, whatever you’re into, there’s a place for you.”  Many folks who live in suburban or rural areas don’t have immediate access to such likeminded people, so they need these Internet spaces. 
 
I walked away from both presentations invigorated.  I had gone old-school with the Maisel talk (just reading a paper), but between the time the presentation ended and the time I’d meet up with Elizabeth to head to the restaurant, I placed my main talking points into a slideshow, with fun images included.
 
With the creative piece, I had thirty minutes to check out of my hotel room and three hours to spend before commencing with the eight-hour Amtrak ride back to DC.  So I went on the culinary suggestions of singletons Liz (Falafel King for a chicken kabob roll-up) and another Karen (Mike’s Pastry for a to-go box consisting of a mint chocolate chip cannoli and a peanut butter one). 
 
So now I sit on this train, the blues stylings of Selwyn Birchwood piping through my headphones as I write this piece.  Two notes: 1) the blues is so ideal for train travel; and 2) I have Sam, who I met while traveling solo to a concert last week to thank for that recommendation.  I’m feeling a bit sad to have to leave that space of intellectual discourse, creative juices, and, best of all, pro-singlehood ideas.  But I also remember that I’m heading back to the urban landscape of DC, where I have some great peeps and will continue adding to the pro-singlehood discourse, both in an academic and creative manner.
 
Still, I’ll be looking forward to NeMLA 2025 in Philly, just a two-hour jaunt from my door.