Divisions and Precisions

Budding Feminism, Wilting Self-Image

I keep meaning to write about school. Overall, it's going really well. I love being in school full time, I'm enjoying my classes, my professors are, for the most part, interesting and good. But I made a post last night to a new mailing list for fat feminists that got me started thinking.

Since I turned 30 a couple months ago, I've been thinking pretty regularly about my perpetually single state. (Granted, I'm divorced, but that was eight years ago.) It's been four years since I really even dated anyone, and sometimes I despair of "finding someone", partly due to my size and partly due to my own tendency towards shyness and being a hermit.

No sooner do I start to despair, than it starts to make me angry at how much my self-image seems dependent on having a man. I mean, I have an incredibly full life. I've finally managed to go back to college after being away for eleven years, I'm studying what I love, and I think I have a lot of promise as a writer and teacher. I have friends both online and off, and if I don't go out every night, so what? That's never been something I've been interested in. So... why is it I constantly feel like I have to defend my life because I have no husband or child?

I mean, I understand why. We're being constantly bombarded with the message that women need to "have it all": career, home, family, the works. If you're a woman who chooses anything different, be it a stay at home mom or a single mom or just a single woman, then society looks askance at you. I've reached the age where most of my friends are married and starting to have kids, and I'm really starting to feel like the token single person.

Sometimes I'm not quite sure if I'm still single because I want to be, or just because "I'm fat and nobody wants me". I end up wondering if my stance of "I don't have time for a serious relationship right now" might not be a case of sour grapes. Ultimately, I'm bothered that despite my intelligence, my talent, my wit, and my humor, I still feel somehow imcomplete because there isn't someone around to constantly remind me that I'm physically attractive too.

The weirdest thing about this, is that I don't feel most of these things because of anything anybody says to me. I mean, it's not like my friends are constantly trying to set me up with people (which might actually be kind of cool) or my mom is always asking me when I'm going to get married or have kids. All of this is stuff that I've internalized from messages around me. I've spent the last four years trying to feel complete as a single woman, and until I turned thirty, I was doing a pretty good job of it. Now with that one little number, I'm back to struggling with the same old questions about who I am and what sort of life I really want.

Posted by Lisa at September 15, 2002 07:39 PM