Embracing that single lifestyle
From: The
New York Times
By: Andrew Adam Newman
Published: January 10, 2008
A new Web site for singles, SingleEdition.com, wants nothing
more than to embrace and welcome the lifestyle of single living.
And unlike dating sites that treat being single as a predicament,
this one celebrates flying solo, and offers shopping, financial
and other advice to help them do so with pride.
"If you Google the term 'single,' all that comes up
is dating, dating, dating," said Sherri Langburt, a founder
of SingleEdition.com. "But what we're saying is there's
a whole other realm of things that go on for a single person
that are not dating."
Articles on the site give advice on how to entertain in small
apartments (have cheese- or chocolate-tasting parties instead
of sit-down meals), how to cook for one (try freezing homemade
soup in ice trays to simplify defrosting single portions)
and how to select gifts for other singles (perhaps an audio
book or a GPS device to help a solo driver).
In November, dating sites drew more than 182 million visitors
in the United States, according to comScore, an Internet research
firm. Single Edition offers some dating advice, but it also
serves up rejoinders for meddlers who ask why someone is not
married: "Just lucky, I guess," "It gives my
mother something to live for," and "What? And spoil
my great sex life?"
While newsstands and the Internet are cluttered with publications
about parenting and wedding preparation, Langburt, 35, said
she had never seen a "lifestyle destination that embraces
the culture of single living."
The Web site, which caters to 32- to 45-year-olds, began
Dec. 1. It has yet to sign up advertisers, but Langburt said
traffic- and revenue-generating deals were in the works. She
plans to make arrangements with retailers to put singles-oriented
gift registries online.
(A growing number of chains — including Pottery Barn,
Williams-Sonoma and Home Depot — already make registries
less bridal-centric by highlighting categories like housewarming,
birthday, graduation and, for same-sex couples, commitment
ceremonies.)
In 2006, adults living alone made up 27 percent of households,
more than double their share in 1960, according to census
data; married couples for the first time headed just under
half (49.7 percent) of households in 2005, the last year for
which data is available, down from 52 percent in 2000. With
divorce rates and the age at which couples marry continuing
to climb, the trend toward singledom seems likely to continue.
Political campaigns, especially Sen. Hillary Clinton's, are
aiming at single women — who represent 53 million voters,
or a quarter of the electorate — as the likely deciding
factor in the presidential race.
But marketers, like the culture at large, often pity the
unwed.
"This notion that you can live a full and completely
happy life as a single person is so under-recognized that
people who feel that way are reluctant to say so," said
Bella DePaulo, a social psychologist and author of "Singled
Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored,
and Still Live Happily Ever After."
In it, she coined the term "singlism" for how the
unmarried are given short shrift by employers' spousal health
benefits and the federal tax code. "I think we have untold
masses of silently contented singles," she said.
DePaulo, who serves on the advisory board of Single Edition
and contributes articles, said that even a recent feature
for singles about "getting the dream kitchen you deserve"
was validating.
"I love that phrase — 'the dream kitchen you deserve'
— because it's just the opposite of the stereotype of
singles who neither want nor deserve anything nice for the
kitchen," she said. "And that assumption is part
of the mythology that if you're cooking alone, why cook a
nice meal if it's quote-unquote just for you?"
Sasha Cagen, author of "Quirkyalone," which spawned
a Web site for singles (quirkyalone.net), said Single Edition
seemed like a "great concept," but that "their
challenge is very tricky: There's this edge of pathetic-ness
that you have to be careful not to go that far into."
She gave the example of a coffee maker featured on Single
Edition that brews just one cup. "Products that imply
perpetual singlehood make the user feel like this is it, single
forever," Cagen said.
But a "quirkyalone" — Cagen's term for someone
who "generally prefers to be alone rather than date for
the sake of being in a couple" — still kindles a
romantic notion of eventually finding someone worth running
toward on a beach, in slow motion.
So "any site aimed at singles needs to recognize that
singledom is for most people a transitional state that people
will enter and exit throughout their lives, just like being
married or coupled is now in reality a transitional state,"
Cagen said.
According to a recent study by Packaged Facts, a division
of the Market Research Group, most singles are younger than
45 — and are more receptive to advertising pitches. When
television commercials come on, singles are less likely either
to switch channels or hit the mute button.
Singles also are more addicted to the Internet, the study
said: 11 percent of singles report spending less time sleeping
because of Internet use, compared with 7 percent of wedded
Web users.
Advertisers should increase the visibility of singles in
their campaigns because unmarried people "are sensitive
to couples-centric marketing efforts in much the same way
that blacks are sensitive to all-white casting," the
Packaged Facts study concluded.As for Langburt, an odd thing
happened while she was developing a business plan for Single
Edition: She met Mr. Right and got married. "I don't
think marriage has changed who I am as a person," she
said. "I still coach everyone around me who is single."
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