Single and Fabulous!
As I scan the front covers and pages of women's magazines, there seems to be only one message that is being given to women. That message is do not be single! Articles from how to find your soul mate within the year. How to bag yourself a boyfriend by the weekend, to how to keep your relationship alive. These articles are all well and good handing out advice about getting a boyfriend and keeping him, but life unfortunately is not that black and white and when our Mr. Perfect has miraculously disappeared without even a phone call for the last week, got bored or left us for our best mate, or even if it us who has got bored with our Mr. Perfect. What do women do then? Furthermore what about the women who are single and are not particularly interested in having a relationship or their relationships never seem to work out for them, do these women not deserve articles with advice and information for them.
Women buy these magazines for help and advice and a magazine full of 'relationship gossip' is certainly not beneficial to single women. I acknowledge that there are many women's magazines out there that will from time to time create articles that are full of great information for single women. However somewhere along the page there will be a reference to getting a new man or how to pick up a guy. I myself have discussed with many women about the lack of acknowledgement single women get in magazines and not only in my opinion, but in the opinion of countless other women I have spoken to, there are not enough of these articles in magazines. Which makes me wonder, if there are numerous amounts of women who have openly discussed with me that they feel certain magazines are not passing on helpful and worth while advice and information to single women, there has to be thousands, even millions of other women who believe the same.
In this day and age where there are so many teenage pregnancies, high divorce rates and abusive/ violent relationships, we should be giving out advice and information regarding how young women can get the best start in the careers, how they can manage their finances efficiently , how to get back in to education or further their qualifications. How to strengthen their friendships and how to make new friendship by joining clubs and institutions. Only recently there have been reports in news papers about the W.I (The National Federation of Women's Institutes) where members are telling us that is not just jam and Jerusalem anymore. The W.I is no longer only for middle-aged housewives; on the contrary it is attracting younger members who are more likely to spend their meetings quad biking, pole dancing or discussing world affairs. Although the W.I does not keep records of member's ages, in February 2008 it welcomed its youngest recruit to date. An eleven year old, school girl from Kent.
I myself have recently looked into joining the W.I. It is a great opportunity to meet women by the masses and start new, strong friendships and with so many W.I groups, you're guaranteed to find one relatively close to you. Meeting new women, especially single women and hearing their stories and advice on life can give other single women more confidence as they can see that they are not alone and that being single doesn't automatically make you a leper.
It is so important that single women are told that it is alright to be on your own and that being independent is something extraordinary to experience. Learning to take care of yourself and not depending on anyone else is such a great lesson and so beneficial to life. This is the message we want to be giving out to single women,not encouraging them to get into relationships, as it is creating the assumption that without a boyfriend, women are not worth anything or that in order to be someone or seen as successful you need a boyfriend. A friend of mine recently told me that on an evening out she actually over heard a group of women congratulating each other for finally finding boyfriends. Is this what it has come to? We are actually congratulating each other on finding a man, as if it's some competition and the only way you can get the gold is if you have a boyfriend. What's next, Hallmark making congratulations cards for these women?
Single women need to feel this is no longer a man's world and they can accomplish whatever they want and they certainly don't need a relationship with a man to do that. As the remarkable Oprah Winfreyonce said "You CAN have it all. You just can't have it all at once." So we should be encouraging these women to be independent and to put themselves first and to consider their future. Have amazing careers and becoming happy with themselves and with their lives as single women. Then they have all the time in the world for relationships, plus at this point these women will have total self-confidence that they are secure in relationships and will know exactly what they want from one. These days you see it all too often, especially with celebrities as their lives are put on display, women are completely falling apart when their partner leaves or cheats. Yes, ok I'm not in anyway denying how painful and heart wrenching it must be for them and how betrayed these women must feel, after all I'm a woman who had plenty of hands on experience with break-up's. However, these women should have the self-confidence and self-esteem to stand up and say, "You know what, it was a terrible thing what has happened and it can't be undone, so I'm just going to move on with my life as I'm sure there is someone out there who would love me for who and what I am and will never hurt me."
Yet what we see are fragile, broken women.
For instance all the hype surrounding Cheryl Cole recently, due to a philandering husband. Everybody's got an opinion, which is fine, although shouldn't most peoples opinions, especially the women's be that she should get shot of him immediately, how can she ever trust him again, especially as even more sources have proved the footballer has cheated before and had paid women to keep quiet. Cheryl as we've seen and read is not in a good way because of these stories. Taking him back is suggesting that he can get away with this sort of behavior with her and that it's acceptable, so why on earth would she want him back? Cheryl seems a strong, confident woman although the fact that she is taking him back doesn't seem to fit. Why does she feel the need to stay with him? Money is not a factor; nether is status, as she has got her own career and money. As myself and I'm sure many other women have learnt, love sometimes simply isn't enough. Certainly staying with him will make her life easier now and her pain a little less raw because she still loves him. However, what happens if he does it again? Could she face it? How would she cope? Someone should tell her that, yes it will turn her world upside down to start with and that it will take a great deal to get over it, but once she has, she will be stronger and happier than ever and she doesn't have the worry of possibly coming face to face with these allegations about
Ashley in the future.
Cheryl is not alone I'm sure everyone remembers the David Beckham/ Rebecca Loos situation. David had clearly betrayed Victoria and to make things worse the world found out. Yet she stayed and put up with it. Okay, Victoria and David have children which makes it a little more difficult, but surely staying with him and blaming herself, crying day in, day out, as many staff, friends and acquaintances stated in several magazines and newspapers, is not a good environment for children to grow up in, plus does Victoria really want her boys growing up to think it is acceptable for men to treat women this way and get away with it. Surely not.
However, the most astonishing thing was the fact that everyone blamed Rebecca Loos and David got off blameless, if I'm not mistaken didn't he get more of a tough time when he kicked out at Diego Simeone and got himself sent off in the 1998 world cup against Argentina. Plus he was the married one with children, Miss Loos was a free agent. And Come on ladies, lets face it would any of us have said "No thanks" to David, very few, I'm sure. So why did all the blame lay on Miss Loos? If you put things in perspective Rebecca loos and other women who have come forward to pronounce they have slept with these women's husbands have done them a favour. It should have shown them, these men can't be trusted and no amount of money spent on weddings, magazine photos and declarations of love in public can change that.
In spite of this I will give some men the benefit of the doubt as, there are ladies out there who can wear their men down to get married and this is obviously going to lead to trouble. So we need to stop thinking relationships and marriage is the answer. After all if your heart is not really in the relationship and your just settling because you think being married will make life easier, it's just a piece of paper and remember ladies just because a piece of paper say's your Mr and Mrs it doesn't necessarily mean he's is going to be yours and only yours and you'll get your happy ending. Alas life is not a Disney film.
So bear in mind, as there is so much more to life than having relationships, unfortunately many of us women have found that out the hard way and it's about time that we put a stop to this and thought about ourselves, what we want from life and how we are going to get it.
I'm not for a second suggesting women stay single forever, yes have your dates and go out enjoy yourselves in men's company, but don't get caught up and end up forgetting about what you want or else you will end up back in the same situation. Once you have achieved your goals and ambitions you have all the time in the world to have a relationship. Some of you may be lucky and find your Mr. Perfect when you least expect it and that is the best way, don't force a relationship. If it is meant to be, it will be. Just remember ladies if he is worth it and he's a keeper, then there should be no problem with you continuing with your dreams and ambitious whilst being in the relationship. We don't need a man to get us where we want.