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From Emma Watson’s ‘self-partnering’ to a marriage-averse community in India, 30 essays explore going it alone
In November 2019, the actor Emma Watson was excoriated in the media for describing herself as “self-partnered”. The criticism ignored that a new spirit of positivity about being single was in full flourish, with more women between the ages of 25 and 42 single in the UK and US than ever before. As Rachel Thompson pointed out in an article for Mashable, the label may be new but the movement is not – Marjorie Hillis wrote Live Alone and Like It: A Guide for the Extra Woman in 1936. But it was given a renewed focus with Rebecca Traister’s 2016 bestseller, All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation, in which the American writer described a veritable social revolution, and there has been a steady stream of books in that vein ever since.
“The single positivity movement is here, and this book will turbo charge the revolution” reads the inside jacket of this new anthology edited by journalist Angelica Malin, which explores the nuances of singlehood through 30 short personal pieces. Malin has assembled an admirable and diverse roster of voices, including reality television personality Megan Barton-Hanson, comedian Shaparak Khorsandi and body-image campaigner Stephanie Yeboah. Several of the writers are already known for their writing on singlehood, including Francesca Specter, the author of last year’s Alonement: How to Be Alone and Absolutely Own It (also a podcast), Nicola Slawson, the creator of The Single Supplement newsletter and Annie Lord, who writes an excellent sex and dating column for British Vogue.
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