Notes Introduction 1. See Ringrose and Walkerdine’s work on how the boundaries of femininity are policed, constituting some subject positions – those against which normative femininity comes to be defined – ‘uninhabitable’ (2008, p. 234). 1 Theorizing Women’s Singleness: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism, and the Politics of Popular Culture 1. Lewis and Moon (1997) have observed that women’s singleness is at once glamorized and stigmatized, however I suggest, and explore how, this is a particular feature of postfeminist media culture. 2. As Jill Reynolds argues, ‘the cultural context today incorporates new repre- sentations of singleness while continuing to draw on older, more devalued notions that being single is a problem for women: generally to be resolved through commitment to a heterosexual relationship’ (2008, p. 2). 3. In early feminist studies of how women were represented in the media, the ‘images of women’ style criticism dominated, arguing that women were mis- represented in and through the mainstream media and that such ‘negative’ rep- resentations had deleterious effects on the women who consumed them. This is a position that has been thoroughly critiqued and replaced by more nuanced approaches to both signification and consumption. See Walters’ chapter ‘From Images of Women to Woman as Image’ for a rehearsal of these debates (1995). 4. For example, in her critical text Postfeminisms, Ann Brooks (1997) conceptual- izes it in terms of the intersections of feminism, poststructuralism, postmod- ernism, and postcolonialism. Others have theorized it primarily as a popular manifestation which effectively represents an updated form of antifeminism (Faludi, 1991; Walters, 1995; Kim, 2001). 5. The idea that postfeminism is itself constituted by contradiction, ‘the product of competing discourses and interests’ (Genz & Brabon, 2009, p. 6), has been explored by a number of critics (see Genz, 2009; Genz & Brabon, 2009). 6. The persistence of these ideas can also be understood in psychoanalytic terms, as Joanne Brown argues in A Psychosocial Exploration of Love and Intimacy (2006): ‘[T]he organisation of life around an axis of exclusive coupledom will focus on our entry into life as one half of a mother/father infant dyad and suggest that it is this union (and primary attachment figure and relationship) that we need to restore, in order to live an ontologically secure life’ (203). 7. Catherine Belsey emphasizes how the romance narrative is involved in the work of establishing, and purporting to fill, this lack (1994). 8. In the United States, a political movement mobilizing around singleness appears to be gaining momentum. In this regard, each year in the third week of September, ‘Unmarried and Single Americans Week’ is celebrated. 210 Notes 211 9. As Michelle Hammers argues, both postfeminism and third-wave discourses seek to disavow second-wave feminism around issues of individualism and sexuality especially: ‘Although these discourses hold different positions on the continued relevance of feminism per se, they share a shift in emphasis from collective action directed toward systemic change toward individual action, along with the fact that both these discourses embraced a celebratory attitude toward increased female sexuality and individual expression of that sexuality, provides a fulcrum upon which these discourses can be leveraged to undermine women’ (2005, p. 170). 10. As Leonard similarly posits, ‘Postfeminist culture both assumes and creates a female subject who desires marriage’ (2006, p. 55). 11. As Ahmed argues, ‘Feminists do kill joy in a certain sense: they disturb the very fantasy that happiness can be found in certain places. […] It is not just that feminists might not be happily affected by the objects that are supposed to cause happiness but that their failure to be happy is read as sabotaging the happiness of others’ (2010, p. 66). 12. Although beyond the scope of this study, a number of critics have shown that the ‘single mother’ as a discursive category is also viewed to be espe- cially troublesome. 13. For an analysis of the discursive limits of the married/single binary, see Geller, 2001. 14. Moreover, others have attended to celluloid divorcees in films such as It’s Complicated and Something’s Gotta Give (see Negra, 2009); these portrayals are telling in terms of how mature women come to be visible in mainstream texts. See also Sadie Wearing (2007) on the ageing female body in Something’s Gotta Give and the makeover reality programme, What Not to Wear. 15. The differences between how men’s and women’s singleness has been histor- ically figured is well documented. As Budgeon observes, ‘For men, however, bachelorhood, unlike the term ‘old maid’, carries the connotations of choice and hence these men are granted agency. There is no direct male counterpart to the old maid stereotype and arguably the status of ‘bachelor’ following the logic of the sexual double standard has enjoyed a favourable position in the cultural imaginary’ (2008, p. 308). 2 From the Second-wave to Postfeminism: Single Women in the Mediasphere 1. For other historical overviews of the single woman in modern popular cul- ture, see Genz, 2009; Kingston, 2004. 2. Siegel (2002) also argues that these claims regarding the ‘triumph of the Single Girl’ have been overblown. 3. The use of the term ‘new femininities’ is not without significant limitations; see my critique, 2003. 4. In drawing upon these articles, I concur with Negra’s comments that ‘While individual popular press articles are imperfect indices of the complexities and contradictions of a broad and diverse culture, they can be important and resonant snapshots of the state of play on key issues such as gender and class’ (2009, p. 1). 212 Notes 5. Citing interviews with Cynthia Nixon (Miranda), Kim Cattrall (Samantha), and Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie), Deborah Siegel notes that this gesture of the SATC actors disassociating themselves from their characters in the popu- lar press is common (2002, p. 8). 6. The question of how single women are constructed as consumers through various advertising campaigns is beyond the scope of this study but is wor- thy of further critical attention. Perhaps the most prominent campaign has been the marketing of the DeBeers right-hand ring for single women (see Henderson, 2009). See also Gennaro for an analysis of consumption and ‘perpetual adolescence’ (2007). 7. This term comes from Masahiro Yamada’s book, The Age of the Parasite Single (1999). 8. As Angela McRobbie notes, among all newspapers, the Daily Mail has the highest number of women readers in the UK, despite the fact that it com- monly displays a hostile stance in relation to feminist issues (2009, p. 23). 9. Though this article foregrounds Diaz and Minogue, Jennifer Aniston in par- ticular would offer an important case study into the figure of the (pitiable) celebrity single (see Hills, 2010). 10. The so-called ‘enfreakment’ of the single woman has been explored by DiCicco (2010). 11. Gillard’s decision not to mother became the subject of heated media debate in 2006 when she – then the deputy opposition leader – was negatively described by a political opponent as ‘deliberately barren’. One article rather unsubtlely featured an empty fruitbowl in her kitchen as a metaphor for ‘barren’ womb. 12. The choice not to reproduce remains coded as an aberrant one for women, by and large discursively constructed as a failure. A woman who actively chooses not to have children is routinely described pejoratively as selfish and self-absorbed, her choice devalued and her agency disavowed. The sin- gle woman without children, then, is seen as especially problematic in the mainstream cultural imaginary. 13. A revisioning of that film, Down with Love, representing a further fictionali- zation of Brown, was released in 2004. The film was replete with multiple intertextual allusions, including through the casting of Renee Zellweger, who had played the quintessential single girl in the form of Bridget Jones, in the lead role (see Taylor, 2010). 14. The role of Cosmopolitan in constructing the independent single woman as its addressee should not be underestimated. As Imelda Whelehan argues, ‘even though the relationship of Cosmo to feminism has been ambivalent, it has for decades headed the field of women’s magazines in championing the image of the independent and successful career woman’ (2002, p. 29). 15. See Siegel (2002) for a comparative analysis of Sex and the Single Girl and Sex and the City and their ambivalence around women’s singleness. As she makes clear, these perpetual anxieties make it difficult to celebrate these ostensibly ‘new’ representations of single women. 16. Feminist response to the sexual revolution was, unsurprisingly, ambivalent (see Jeffreys, 1997). 17. Hilary Radner has recently reconceptualized Brown’s impact on modern popular culture, through she calls neo-feminism, see ‘Chapter 1: Neo- Feminism and The Rise of the Single Girl’ (2010). Notes 213 18. While its politics are laudable, Faludi’s ‘backlash’ relies upon the idea that the media operates as an amorphous patriarchal machine, with little pos- sibility for feminist intervention let alone pleasures for women as audience members. 19. Significantly, in 2006 (5 June) – 20 years following its initial publication – Newsweek published what was in effect a retraction, stating its grim predic- tions that an educated, white, 40-year-old single woman was more likely to be ‘killed by a terrorist’ than marry had failed to play out (McGinn, 2006). However, in the New York Times Jessica Yellin argued that the damage had already been done (4 June, 2006): ‘For a lot of women, the retraction doesn’t matter. The article seems to have lodged itself permanently in the national psyche … A number of experts and publications eventually challenged the magazine’s conclusions, but the message was out. It wasn’t just Newsweek. The so-called marriage crunch study on which the article was based was widely reported across the country, and the terminally single woman – another magazine’s term – became a popular trope.’ 20.