So What If I'm Alone Forever?

It’s 2018, and women can be anything they want. So why do we still feel bad about ourselves when asked when we’re going to find a man, settle down, and have babies? Can we ever be 100 per cent okay with being single? Clara How explores the issue and meets three women who wear their singlehood super well.

- Clara How

I’m 29 years old, and all things considered, the world is my oyster. I have fulfilling hobbies. I have a wide social circle. I enjoy my career as a writer. And (because I refuse to say “but”) I am single, and have been for the last four years.

Just shy of 30, I know that I’m on the younger spectrum of adulthood. In 2016, the average age for Singapore women to get married was 28, according to the Singapore Department of Statistics, so I shouldn’t be fussed. But with six weddings and two baby showers to attend this year, at one point I started to feel rattled. Why did everyone seem to be moving on with their lives? Was I being left behind? And then I got frustrated with myself for feeling this way.

I recall a speech that actress and Golden Globe winner Tracee Ellis Ross made at Glamour magazine’s Women of the Year summit last year that resonated with me. Tracee, 45, is the queen we all aspire to be – she’s got a great career, she’s confident and fun, she’s woke and speaks up for women and people of colour, and she’s got what looks (on Instagram) like loads of fun hobbies. She has, as she aptly puts it, built an “incredible life” for herself, and is a woman she’s proud of. Oh, and she’s single. Yet, for a woman who seems to have it all going for her, she too is subject to comments that imply her life would be way more meaningful with a husband and kids. “My worth gets diminished, as I am reminded that I have ‘failed’ on the marriage and carriage counts,” she exclaims indignantly in the video. “Me! This bold, liberated, independent woman.”