PressEthic

Journalists have been accused of using scare tactics on the public. Perhaps no writer knows how to see into the paranoid depths of our hearts better than the women’s magazine journalist.

Make no mistake; I love women’s magazines. Especially fashion magazines. I subscribe to four of them and can’t wait to hunker down on the couch each month with a cup of tea and the latest news on haute couture, which is completely outside of my price range. I never tire of reading about the latest youth potion being pumped into the faces of Upper East Side “ladies who lunch.”

But my excitement quickly turns to dread when I get to the relationship articles. Particularly alarming are those about older single women. I’m a single, late 20-something woman who just celebrated a birthday, so the topic crosses my mind here and there. At times, these articles make it seem like the worst possible situation to be in. Take this quote from Daphne Merkin in her article “Sex and the Solitary Woman”:

What is it about the specter of a woman on her own, aging on the vine without a husband or lover or child in sight, that strikes fear and self-loathing in the hearts of females of all ages and persuasions—the enlightened and liberated as well as the old-fashioned and clueless? Why is there a mystique to the male loner in all his variegated and uncoupled forms—whether in the guise of a solitary cowboy, the bohemian wanderer, or the intriguing recluse—while the female loner is always a troubling, even freakish apparition, someone who appears to be independent-minded and strong-hearted but turns out to be so desperate for attachment that she is willing, like the Glenn Close character in Fatal Attraction , to go to any lengths, including murder, to hold a man?

Why doesn’t someone just put us all out of our misery?

In her defense, Merkin admits to being divorced in the article and appears to be perfectly fine with her predicament.

Nevertheless, women’s magazines, like all publications, have a responsibility to the audience they serve. In this case, it’s women of all walks of life, some of whom might be completely happy to be single and older. These magazines should definitely publish articles about varying lifestyles and mindsets, but to paint this overarching, bleak portrait seems unfair.

Women have, over the years, taken up the cause against fashion magazines and the unrealistic body images they portray through their models. In the case of unmarrieds, are women’s magazines reflecting what we feel, or perpetuating stereotypes? Perhaps it’s time we “roar in numbers to big to ignore” in opposition to this outdated “aging spinster” image.