Thirty and single... so what?

By Pascale Sawma - Lebanese journalist and author

You will always meet people who make you feel “deficient” and remind you that you are not enough. Not enough to be someone’s choice, not enough for them to keep you in their home, like a velvet sofa sitting in the middle of a living room, or an art piece in a display cabinet, collecting dust or eaten by boredom and loneliness. Even art needs to be acknowledged sometimes and reminded of how valuable and special it is.

You will always meet people who think you are even lesser than a velvet sofa or an ornamental art piece, great for showing off in front of friends. Not one day will pass without someone telling you that it is your fault and that you need to do something about it. Maybe get a haircut or stop going dancing on weekends. Wear a tight dress or cover yourself up. Meet new people. Or quit talking about freedoms and rights! Don’t be too educated. What good does it do a man to marry an educated woman? She might not even know how to do the dishes or raise children. Stop buying books. To many men, books are the greatest enemy.

It is hard to grasp that you have ambition. How would you explain that you would like to be more than just another disposable item in someone’s house? Something that goes out of fashion and is immediately thrown out. It is a daily struggle proving that you are not just another fine home display of a private art collection. You will jump through hoops trying to explain that this is your decision, and only yours. And no, you are not waiting for a marriage that fits in a box. No matter how old you are and how far you get in life, you are forced to repeat time and again that being single in your 30s or 40s is not a shortfall or a weakness. It does not mean that no one chose you. It simply means that you are the captain of your own ship. You are the one who is not quite sold on anyone yet or does not really believe in the idea of marriage in the first place.

This is the typical conversation to have with a single woman in her thirties. You can see her struggling to untangle her words and express what she truly feels. As if it were a public right for anyone to question a woman on why she is still single after turning 30 and pass judgment over her private life.

Was Dalida “deficient” whenever she was up on stage, breathing life into people across generations? Was she “incomplete” when she sang her heart out in Pour ne pas vivre seul (To Not Live Alone) based on her emotional and marital setbacks? The exceptional Oprah Winfrey – who over the time hosted a great number of prominent figures and changed how we think about life, women, and the media - was never married either. Does this make her deficient despite her high-intellect and her gorgeous laugh? Is she deemed incomplete because a man did not keep her in his house? Does Sheryl Crow, the great American singer and actress, have to live with the idea that all of her life achievements are not that important because she is over 60 and still single? Was Jacqueline Bisset, one of the most beautiful movie actresses in the world, not pretty enough to attract a typical tribal man?

Was Dalida “deficient” whenever she was up on stage, breathing life into people across generations? Was she “incomplete” when she sang her heart out in Pour ne pas vivre seul?

Ironically, women are suddenly no longer incomplete when they come from a foreign country and live on the other side of the world. Their freedom is wonderful, but not an example to follow. The free women of the western world have the right to choose, including their love life and sexuality. But in our societies, this is when they blow the whistle.

Women are given the rights that benefit society but are denied the ones that threaten the status quo. In other words, some regimes and societies realized that the education and employment of women have a great economic value. Girls were allowed to go to school and women into the workplace. However, they need not go too far. Men kept earning more money than women and filling more management positions. Society clearly wanted to keep women at bay and stop them from thinking that they could ever achieve gender equality. As the poet al-Farazdaq said: “Slaughter the chickens that dare to crow like roosters”. And roosters believe that unless they crow, the sun does not come up in the morning…

Patriarchal societies found that by accepting women’s total freedom to get married and have children – or not – they lose absolute control over them. A woman is constantly pressured to find a husband who will keep her from scandal, offer her a home and protect her, as if she were an easy prey who always needs a bodyguard or a ‘good’ mafia man at her side. A hero, who will suffocate her eventually all for the sake of protecting her from the bad guys, or in other words, other men like him; for that good mafia man can be the same bad guy in someone else’s story…