How Facebook can affirm a woman's singlehood

Should women actually turn to Facebook for validation? I guess we should support whatever means will uplift a women's self esteem but I hope we can create more role models for young women that allow them to define themselves by what they give to life, rather than the position they hold in it.

Amplify’d from www.salon.com

When you think of a successful woman in her 30s clicking through Facebook photos of her high school boyfriend's wedding or her married friend's new baby, the assumption is likely that she's filled with jealousy and regret. The social networking site has a reputation for feeding envy, after all, and the pressure young women face to get hitched and have kids is the stuff of popular romantic comedies. What's interesting, though, is that I've found the opposite is often true. My friend Katherine is successful, dynamic and fiercely intelligent -- but, unmarried and childless at 32, she feels pressure from some to hurry up and achieve something that really matters: settling down and having kids. There is nothing new about a woman wondering if she's sacrificed her love life for her career -- but what is new is how Facebook is allowing these women to compare how their life choices have panned out with those of their peers, and sometimes it's actually validating. Katherine recently told me, "I go on there and I see these beautiful, intelligent women that I grew up with and they're all married to these accountant types who wear polos and golf on the weekends. Yes, they have kids, a home and a husband -- but it just looks so painfully, unbearably boring." Granted, the whole truth is that she also sometimes feels jealousy -- for instance, when a friend who is married with a baby posts about "drinking a glass of wine and eating oysters with her husband at their cute house with the bathroom they just remodeled themselves." She says, "I can see that I have sacrificed relationships and family for career success, and seeing my peers with their kids on Facebook certainly amplifies that." Despite all the choices available to women today, many still fret that in putting their career first and worrying about marriage and kids later they will ultimately miss out on the latter. There is a biological reality behind these concerns, but there are also plenty of cultural myths and trumped-up anxiety -- the lonely cat lady who dies without anyone noticing and ends up being eaten by her hungry companion, for example -- that serve as cautionary tales. The warning, of course, is that we will be punished for being too ambitious and going against our basic nature. Given the high stakes, it's no surprise that this often leads to comparisons and competition -- and Facebook serves as a virtual looking glass through which to explore the path not taken. Read more at www.salon.com

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