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14

Zeitgeist | Defending Marriage . . . and Singledom

Aug 13, 2009 - Written by Deborah Hymes  |  Filed under: Pop Culture, Quirkytogether, Relationships, Single Life

happiness-buttons-worldmeganYou’d think it was the first time anyone’s ever gotten a divorce.

Sandra Tsing Loh’s recent admission in The Atlantic that she’s divorcing her husband after 20 years (following her own extramarital affair) has ignited a firestorm of high-minded controversy debating the pros and cons of marriage. The story was picked up nationally, with nearly all the major news outlets chiming in online, on air and in print.

The particular point of contention is Ms. Loh’s theory that perhaps the reason we have a divorce culture is because we marry too often. Citing “all the abject and swallowed misery” she observes in modern marriage, she wonders, “Why do we still insist on marriage?”

Then she really gets down to it, ending her polemic with a

“final piece of advice: avoid marriage—or you too may suffer the emotional pain, the humiliation, and the logistical difficulty, not to mention the expense, of breaking up a long-term union at midlife for something as demonstrably fleeting as love.”

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4

Dear Quirkyalone: Advice for Quirkyliving

Aug 09, 2009 - Written by Onely  |  Filed under: Personal Growth, Politics, Pop Culture, Single Life

“Dear Quirkyalone: Advice for QuirkyLiving” is a weekly guest column by the authors of the brilliant blog Onely. It debuts today and will appear every Monday. When you’re making up your own road map for (quirky)living, you need thoughtful advice. We’re here for you. We welcome your questions; send them on to onely AT onely.org.

Dear Quirkyalone,

Besides Oprah, who is a good model of single living in our culture?   –Special K

Dear Special K,

Good question. I think it’s much easier to come up with examples of poor single role models than admirable ones. Momentarily blocked for ideas of my own, I googled “single role models.”  Here’s a sampling from the first page of results:

Using Role Models to Succeed With Single Women

Lack of Male Role Models For Young Children From Single-Parent Families

They Were Single Too: 8 Biblical Role Models, by David M. Hoffeditz

“Oh dear,” I thought, “Surely there must have been a few notable singles since John the Baptist?” With Google apparently hijacked by heteronormatives, I was forced to actually search of my own brain for ideas. Here’s a sampling from those results:

Notable Singles Nowadays

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor:

She is not only a “wise Latina”, but she has supported gay rights, which is crucial for being nominated as Supreme Quirkyalone. Singles, as a (somewhat) oppressed demographic themselves, should be accepting of all kinds of relationships, not just couplings and definitely not just heterosexual couplings.

And speaking of Supremes:

According to this Ebony article, singer Mary Wilson “says that being single has allowed her to develop in ways that being married did not. ‘Now, I can play without asking permission from my husband or parents,’ she says. ‘I like the idea of being able to make my own choices about what to do.’ ”


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1

Wanted: Your Dilemmas for a New Advice Column (+ Win a Copy of Quirkyalone!)

Jul 07, 2009 - Written by Sasha Cagen  |  Filed under: Uncategorized, technology

Dilemmas, conundrums, burning (or mundane) questions about quirkyaloneness and quirkytogetherness: We all have them, and we want to hear yours. What questions do you have about optimum quirkyliving? What’s come up in your life recently where you could use some advice, a pep talk, or maybe even some tough love? We’d like to know, because we’re launching a new quirkyalone (or more broadly, quirkyliving) advice column. It will answer everything you ever wanted to know about quirkyliving and were(n’t) afraid to ask. The advice dispensers will be the lovely and talented writers over at one of my favorite blogs Onely.

We’ll be launching the column this month. Send your questions to onely AT onely dot org.

To sweeten the deal we’re sponsoring a contest for the first question askers. Send a question to the Onely ladies and let me know you have done so by leaving a comment on this post “I asked a question for the new quirkyalone advice column.” Leave your comment by Thursday, July 16. I’ll choose one of you at random; you’ll get a signed copy of Quirkyalone.

We’re ready and waiting to pore over your problems, so bring them on!

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28

The Truth About Me and Quirkyalone

Jun 21, 2009 - Written by Sasha Cagen  |  Filed under: Quirkytogether, Relationships, Single Life

Transparency is a major buzzword in Internet circles these days. It’s about sharing who you are through YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, enough to make you seem more real and a little vulnerable. Transparency is said to bring us closer together. In business and government, transparency theoretically makes institutions more accountable.

It’s strange to be a nonfiction writer who has always specialized in writing about culture through the prism of my own life now that everyone is sharing tidbits of their lives online. I’m suspicious of the belief that we should all be transparent. I know how carefully I and other nonfiction writers and memoirists consider which stories and details to share. We don’t tell them in real-time. It’s impossible to predict how careless sharing will haunt us in the future, whether in the workplace or a relationship.

But now I feel blocked, I decided to give the whole transparency thing a try. What’s the worst thing that can happen?  If there’s anything I’m passionate about, it’s honest communication.

I have decided that it might be interesting to be more transparent at this moment about my tangle of ambivalence  regarding quirkyalone ten years after originally writing an essay defining the term (and five years after publishing my book).


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  • Sasha Cagen
  • Deborah Hymes

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    Deborah Hymes

    Website: http://writervixen.com
    Email: Contact Author
    Bio: I'm an occasional contributor to Zeitgeist: Quirkyalone Pop Culture. Zeitgeist explores how pop culture reflects us back to ourselves—in ways funny, interesting, frivolous and profound. I’m a committed quirkyalone and a pop culture addict who should probably be committed. Pop culture is my hometown, the street where I live, the air that I breathe. It’s where new ideas, fascinating people, trends, and innovation, meet the movies I love (new and classic), the TV I watch (from 30 Rock to Weeds), the Internet I haunt (from Perez Hilton to Salon), and the pile of magazines I read regularly (from The Atlantic to Wired to New York magazine). Professionally, I'm a storyteller, media maven and entrepreneur—the owner of WanderNot, Inc., a Bay Area creative communications company. I also write personal essays, feature articles and profiles, as well as the weekly blog Writer Vixen Explains It All. Quirkyalone Status: Currently happily single and happily open to quirkytogetherness.

  • Onely

    View posts by Onely →

    Onely

    Website: http://onely.org
    Email: Contact Author
    Bio: Onely is a blog that deconstructs stereotypes of singlehood. It's for singles who enjoy being single but remain open to a variety of romantic relationships, either for themselves or for others. Onely comprises two people: Lisa and Christina. Christina has an MA in English and an MFA in creative writing, but she still struggles with her participles and a tendency toward semicolon abuse. She has bravely persevered against these obstacles in her work as one-half of the Onely writing team. For most of her thirty-odd years she has been Quirkyalone, but she also has experience as a Quirkytogether, a Lonelyalone, and--most terrifying--a Lonelytogether. Currently she is contentedly single, balancing a left-brained day job that feeds her cat with right-brained writing projects that feed her soul. In Dear Quirkyalone, she hopes to share her lessons learned with other readers who want to understand and embrace Quirkyliving. The secret? Always listen to Lisa. Lisa has an MFA in creative writing and is about halfway through a doctoral program in Rhetoric and Composition. She loves writing about singles issues on Onely because it gives her a break from what she writes in “real life,” and she loves giving advice on QA because – as most academics do – she thinks she’s always right. Lisa owns a dog named Kitty, loves Judith Butler and Michel Foucault, and undertakes long road/camping trips as often as possible. She apologizes in advance for her language taking “academic” (not to be confused with “epic”) proportions, and advises readers first and foremost to always heed Christina’s advice.

  • Elline Lipkin

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    Elline Lipkin

    Website: http://www.korepress.org/bios/lipkin.htm
    Email: Contact Author
    Bio: Elline Lipkin grew up in Miami, FL, and attended Wesleyan University. She received her MFA from Columbia University in 1994 and her Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston in 2003. She has worked as an editor in both New York City and in Paris. Her book about Girls' Studies is forthcoming from Seal Press in the fall of 2009. Elline has written about online dating and the mating game for Salon.com. Elline is also a recently married quirkytogether, a fact that she considers "a miracle."