A little inspiration
I was never a fan of Sex and the City. The TV series and subsequent movie portrayed a world that seemed as remote from mine as an asteroid orbiting Jupiter. I don’t think I wanted to admit that SATC actually hit a little too close to home. In the one episode I did watch, the profound sadness that underlay Carrie Bradshaw and company’s shenanigans depressed me, as I slunk toward 50 without a Mr. Big (or Medium or even Small) anywhere in sight.
But when I hatched my plan to fete myself with an “unwedding” party, everyone assumed I had picked up the idea from the SATC episode in which Carrie “registers” at a high-end shoe store in order to make a statement to the friends on whom she has spent hundreds of dollars for engagement, wedding, shower and baby gifts, but who show no respect for her single lifestyle. I rented the DVD and, I admit, cheered out loud at Carrie’s declaration that we singles should not have to put up with being seen as immature, defective human beings whose accomplishments aren’t even worthy of a paper-plate hat covered in tacky bows, let alone a set of china or a $150-a-plate dinner.
Jealousy rears its head—but not the way you'd think
During my thirties, when I bemoaned this married versus single inequity in a college class I was teaching, a young woman put up her hand and declared, “Miss, you’re just jealous!” Umm…d’ya think? But I wasn’t jealous simply because I had to buy my own microwave oven and matching luggage, and, oh yeah, ante up for a down payment on my house — I still don’t have a set of china — while cheerfully subsidizing my friends and relatives as they made serial trips to the altar and the maternity ward. (In fact, they’d be quick to tell you I don’t quite match Carrie’s largesse in the gift department.)
I wasn’t jealous simply because I didn’t have sex on tap or a shoulder to cry on or someone with whom to roam the aisles at Home Depot on a Saturday. I wasn’t even sure marriage would guarantee I got any of those things, anyway.
What I was really jealous of was my married friends’ and relatives’ certain knowledge that they were “normal,” that they had a privileged place in society that deserved to be honoured, celebrated and financially supported while I did not. As a single person, I sometimes feel like one of those nuts or bolts or cotter pins left over after you put together an Ikea shelving unit, or maybe like an appendix or a set of tonsils — something that hangs around but serves no real purpose and sometimes gets in the way.
