Spinster Nation

Sunshine Mary discovers an unpleasant feminist who thinks we should celebrate singleness rather than marriage:

You know what I like about this BuzzFeed story (h/t The Bitter Babe) about a woman who has started using Facebook to congratulate her friends on being single?  First, I like that it is so obvious that the bad-tempered spinsters are aware of the fact that they have made themselves a really miserable bed to lie in.  Second, I like how very easy it is to see the parallels between their behavior and my four-year-old’s when she doesn’t get that cookie she wanted.  She just pretends like not only did she not want that cookie to begin with, but there is probably something wrong with those cookies anyway and they’re probably gross and I’m probably just trying to trick her into eating something disgusting that she doesn’t want anyway, so there!

As one of the commenters points out, singleness is our natural state, so congratulating someone for being single is like congratulating someone for breathing. I know that St. Valentine’s Day is coming up, and for single people it can be tough seeing the entire world celebrate relationships. But sour grapes are unbecoming. The same effect is seen with obese people. Thin, athletic people are celebrated, and fat people can find that tough. Getting in shape can be difficult, so difficult, in fact, that some people want to end the shame and simply celebrate obesity as a lifestyle choice, as valid as any other. So we end up with bitter fat people who try to tell themselves that it is ok, when they know deep inside that it is not. So it is with singleness.

In completely unrelated news, Hasbro has decided to update Monopoly by removing the iron token and replacing it with a cat. I am not making this up:

In what some might call a ruthless abandonment of the old and others a democratic approach to the new, Monopoly magnates have spoken. The board game’s month-long “Save Your Token” contest ended at midnight, and fans’ least favorite token was officially replaced with a newer model.

From now on, a cat will round the board in iron’s place.

What better symbol of our new national consciousness? Gone is the iron, the stereotypical emblem of marriage as seen in the 1950s housewife. In is the cat, the best friend of single women everywhere.