I blame Bridget Jones. (Warning - Rant alert!)

How come, ten years after it was published, magazines are still publishing articles on 'singletons' and 'smug marrieds'? I don't know why this bugs me so much (well, actually I do, but I'll get to that), as I don't even read that sort of magazine*, but it makes me so annoyed every time I see a headline like that. I know I'm biased. I realise that. But what sort of stupid generalisation is that? It strikes me as about as weird as racism, sexism, or any other type of -ism. People are people. If you're a smug, horrible person, you're a smug horrible person. You don't change into one because you get married.

Obviously, this is a sore point for me. Partially because I'm never sure why I should be smug, or in what way.

Actually, thinking about it, it's odder than any of the -isms, because these articles are surrounded by other articles on 'How to Please Your Man', 'How to Get That Ring on Your Finger', or 'How to Give Him Better Blowjobs So He Doesn't Leave You' and so on (I may have made that last one up), which tends to suggest that, despite the deriding, marriage is the ultimate goal.

And why isn't it such a 'taboo' (for want of a better word) to have a boyfriend? The world isn't split into married people and single people. What about those in a long-term monogamous relationships? What about that?

It seems depressing that there's a whole self-confessed 'Bridget Jones generation' who liken themselves to the heroine (I use the word loosely) of this book.

None of the single women I know are anything like her, thank god, nor do I think of them as 'singletons' or look down on them. I hope they don't see me as the stereotyped 'smug married', either. I prefer to see people in their own right as, I'd imagine, do they. Seeing as we're none of us depressing, clichéd, one-dimensional characters. Unlike Bridget Jones and company.



*I must admit to reading middle age ladies' magazines like Chat and Bella. Far more puzzles (you know how I like my puzzles) and a far higher chance of headlines like 'Gutted - my lover's son left me for dead'. What I loosely call 'Girls' magazines tend to edge more towards fourteen pages on handbags, and I can't bring myself to care.