Women's Studies International Forum 40 (2013) 2332

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Women's Studies International Forum

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Am I asking for too much? The selective single woman as a new social problem
Kinneret Lahad
NCJW Women and Gender Studies Program, Tel-Aviv University, P.O. Box 39040, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel

a r t i c l e

i n f o

s y n o p s i s
The aim of this study is to provide a cultural analysis of the label of selectiveness as it relates to single women. The discursive expansion of the category of selectiveness as well as the remedies that have been set up to cure single women of their selective traitsas revealed through a textual analysis of web columns written by and about single womenproves to be a fascinating social terrain for exploring the possibilities and limitations of women's quest for self-fulfillment. The notion of selectiveness provides popular imagery with pervasive discursive resources for objectification and normalization. Labeling single women as overly selective acts as a classificatory mechanism with clear guidelines for discerning normative from excessive subjectivity. Furthermore, in many ways selectiveness is configured as a short-lived privilege dependent on one's age and gender. Indeed, the textual analysis reveals that during the transition from normative to late singlehood, single women lose their entitlement to maintain the selective stance. In that respect, this work joins the scholarly literature that addresses current regimes of feminine subjectivity as well as the contradictory role demands in which women today are required to carefully manage their own biographies. 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Available online 25 May 2013

Introduction Everyday language is replete with images and clichs when it comes to describing the single woman, the frustrated old maid, the unhappy and lonely spinster, the single woman obsessed with marriage, and the successful, independent yet overly selective single. Are you still single? and Don't you think it's about time to settle down? are just some of the oft-repeated questions addressed to many single women. One of the immediate consequences of these queries and reflections is that single women around and above the marriageable age are suspected of possessing a somewhat dubious social character. This article offers new ways of conceptualizing what recently has come to be one of the dominant images associated with late singlehood in Israeli society the overly selective single woman. However, this paper asks not only to analyze the labeling process of single women in Israel, but
0277-5395/$ see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2013.04.009

scrutinize and challenge entrenched assumptions about selectiveness, singlehood and feminine subjectivity. In this vein, singlehood and selectiveness are perceived as categories that encapsulate contingent and contradictory sets of meanings rather than merely marking a deviant identity. Such an analysis seeks to demonstrate that selectiveness today is a highly ambivalent notion located within and constituted by a variety of contradictory discursive contexts. In relation to that, this study also examines the discursive process whereby selectiveness is transformed from a confident position associated with self-determination to one which marks a pathology, excessiveness, and loss of self-control. However, the discourse of selectiveness is not confined only to the Israeli discourse. For example, in Singapore single women have been dubbed the graduate woman phenomena (LeyonsLee, 1998), and in Hong Kong single women above a certain age are advised to be reasonable about their expectations (Glen,

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GH., & NG, 2009, p. 111). Indeed, this popular label has evolved into a dominant social category which holds much explanatory and regulatory force worldwide. Drawing on a textual analysis of web columns published in Ynet, one of Israel's popular internet portals, conceptualizations of and attitudes toward selective single women are discussed. My findings reveal that while in certain socio-temporal circumstances selectiveness can be viewed as a clear demonstration of one's unique, individual, and self-regulative capacities, when it concerns single women above the marriageable age, the prevailing tone today also contains an emergent and ubiquitous warning: being too selective can lead to self-destruction, isolation and loneliness, the ultimate social punishments. I contend that the idea of the overly selective single woman puts to the test the assumption that individualized choice and self-determination are valued above anything else. It also poses a significant threat to prevalent heteronormative conventions as it disrupts ideals of womanly behavior and women's expected gender roles as mothers and wives. In this vein, singlehood and selectiveness are perceived as categories that encapsulate contingent and contradictory sets of meanings rather than merely marking a deviant identity. Such an analysis seeks to demonstrate that selectiveness today is a highly ambivalent notion located within and constituted by a variety of contradictory discursive contexts. In this respect, this study also joins scholarly literature which addresses the present-day boundaries of personal freedoms and current regimes of the self (Rose, 1998) as well as the confused settings in which women today are required to construct their own successful biographies. The discussion of selectiveness also offers another case study that allows us to reassess the effects of individualization (Bauman, 2000; Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 1995; Beck & BeckGernsheim, 2002) and, in particular, reexamine what Beck and BeckGernsheim refer to as the process whereby one is endowed with the freedom to choose yet is obliged to standardize one's own existence. Within this context, the discussion of selectiveness also relates to new and old modalities of feminine subjectivity and to some of the contemporary interpretations attached to images of powerful women and successful femininity (Blackman & Walkerdine, 2001; Budgeon, 2010; Gill, 2007, 2008; Gonick, 2004; McRobbie, 2004, 2007; Ringrose, 2007; Ringrose & Walkerdine, 2008; Walkerdine, 2003). From a feminist standpoint, selectiveness can be seen as an interesting modality from which one can further theorize a critique about the construction of postfeminist, neoliberal and therapeutic gendered subjectivities today. I would also like to add another, oft neglected aspect to these investigations, namely the question of social time. Taking the temporal aspect into consideration demonstrates the provisional and situated nature of selectiveness and how discursive conceptions of freedom and autonomy should also be analyzed in relation to societal timetables and age norms. This paper suggests that societal timetables together with postfeminist, neoliberal and therapeutic vocabularies provide potent discursive resources for rearticulating selectiveness as a temporary form of entitlement. Hence, my argument is twofold. First, I argue that selectiveness is a form of short-lived privilege dependent on one's age and

gender. Indeed, the textual analysis reveals that during the transition from normative to late singlehood, single women lose their entitlement to hold on to the selective stance. Second, postfeminist, neoliberal and therapeutic presuppositions formulate selectiveness as an indication of emotional deficiencies and accordingly prescribe remedies to eliminate selectiveness and place the single woman back on the maternal heteronormative life track. By examining these discursive conditions, contexts and circumstances, I seek to uncover some of the discursive processes that transform selectiveness from what can be understood as an admirable position to a position which is subjected to intensified social scrutiny and denotes emotional and behavioral disorders. In what follows, then, I intend to offer a broader perspective of this prevailing cultural image, explicate some of its cultural sources, and hopefully challenge some of its normative assumptions. Theoretical background Feminist scholars have long been interested in scrutinizing and debunking the widespread attitudes and stereotypes attached to single women. To a large extent, one of these studies' findings is that single women are regularly typecast as desperate, hysterical, childish, irresponsible, ugly or lazy (see, for example, DePaulo, 2007; Trimberger, 2005). This has been a consistent thread dating back to the first sociological works on singlehood (Adams, 1976; Stein, 1975) and continuing in recent studies (Byrne & Carr, 2005; Budgeon, 2008; DePaulo, 2007; DePaulo & Morris, 2005; Gordon, 1994; Hacker, 2001; Hacker, 2005; Reynolds, 2008; Taylor, 2011). Most of these studies demonstrate that despite fundamental changes in family life that have occurred in recent years, most of the historically noted stereotypes of single women are as relevant as ever. This paper draws inspiration from a vast array of feminist literature that examines how women's life choices are complicated by new postfeminist models of successful femininity (e.g. Budgeon, 2010; Gill, 2007, 2008; McRobbie, 2004; Negra, 2009; Probyn, 1990; Taylor, 2011). To a large extent, most of these studies build on scholarly works that reassess the neoliberal celebration of freewill and the related injunctions for self-regulation and self-management (Brown, 2003; Rose, 1990; Rose & Miller, 1992; Taylor, 2011). In current postfeminist and neo-liberal rhetoric the common representation of the single woman is a figure of discursive unease which is grasped simultaneously as a professional success and a personal failure (Taylor, 2011). These assumptions also resonate with contemporary discourses which blame feminism for destroying the family institution and creating unhappy, frustrated and lonely women (McRobbie, 2009). Such an apt example of this cultural climate can be found in Gotlieb's (2008) widely discussed essay Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough, where she claims that single women are trapped in their own selectiveness and urges them to compromise and settle down. One of her main arguments is that single women should settle before it is too late, while they are still young and perceived to be fertile and sexually attractive. Her argument resembles similar post-feminist claims that contend that when women are too choosy and focused on their ambitions it can only lead them to experience personal misery and unhappiness (Negra, 2009; Taylor, 2011).

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According to Taylor (2011), the single woman's public/ professional competency equals private/personal incompetence and as such she is an important figure for understanding not only how subjects are governed but how ideas of choice and autonomy are central to this kind of regulatory project. Critics of postfeminist media culture such as Gill (2007), McRobbie (2004) and Taylor (2011), also base their work on scholarship on theories of governmentality. Indeed, Nicholas Rose (1998) has underlined the complicated ways in which the cultural order of neoliberalism has produced new modes of subjectivity and self-governance. From this perspective, such behavioral models place at their center the supposedly entrepreneurial subject, who is increasingly expected to bear full responsibility for one's choices. Such an approach views how personal fulfillment has become a social obligation that makes the self-to-self relationship governable (Cruikshank, 1999). Megan Brown's (2003) analysis of American corporate culture also contributes to my understandings of some of the current normative discursive conditions of neoliberal societies. Brown contends that nowadays the individual is expected not only to display initiative and independence, but also to epitomize adaptability and flexibility and be fit enough to comply with the shifting realities of the neoliberal workforce. Brown's study joins a series of studies that analyze the interrelations between neoliberal cultures and the forms of subjectivity they produce. Some of these studies emphasize the need to reinvent oneself to meet the demands of rapid social transformations in new capitalist times.1 This logic is similarly elucidated in James Gee's (2004) contention that today individuals are not defined through fixed essential qualities, but must come to see themselves as shape-shifting portfolio people (see also Du Gay, 1996). According to this view, the shapeshifting portfolio people perceive themselves as free agents and in that respect are prepared to rearrange their skills and achievements in a creative manner (Gee, 2004, p. 47). In these contexts, I argue that initiative, self-governance and flexibility are perceived as being required not only to ensure one's survival in the workforce but also for success in personal relationships and, in this case, in the heteronormative duty to marry and have children. I suggest that the discourse on selective single women, like the discourse on self-governance and enterprise culture, reflects the myriad contradictions and paradoxes embedded in the current regime of the self. As will be shown later in this paper, these are especially marked in the parallel injunctions of autonomy and flexibility and in the conflicting demands of self-determination versus the obligation to standardize one's existence (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 1995, pp.7). Moreover, selectiveness is produced and regulated by heteronormative beliefs which covey confined conceptions of female subjectivity and hence sanctions those who do not comply with heteronormative imperatives. In this way, marriage and motherhood are rendered as comprehensible forms of subjectivity representing a well-balanced subjectivity. As Taylor (2011) contends, single women are situated in relation and as against to the married single binary and respectively are viewed as figures of profound disparity. These conventions become ever more demanding as single women age. Building on these observations, the discursive expansion of the category of selectiveness as well as the remedies that

have been set up to manage and cure single women of their selective traits, as they appear in these columns, prove to be a fascinating social terrain for exploring the negotiations and limitations of women's quest for self-fulfillment. In what follows, these tensions will be examined along the variable and contingent ways in which autonomous forms of conduct are evaluated as well as the uncertainties, pressures and imperatives they represent and constitute. Methodology This paper extends previous work on the discursive construction of single women in Israeli society today (Lahad, 2012; Lahad & Shoshana, 2012). For the purposes of this study I visited Ynet (www.ynet.co.il), one of Israel's popular daily portals, on a daily basis during the years 20062011, seeking out columns which discuss single women's selectiveness.2 Most of the texts selected for analysis were chosen from a subsection in Ynet entitled Relationships where the issue of single women's selectiveness is discussed. The texts examined were either personal columns written by single women recounting different aspects of their singlehood or texts written by different dating and/or relationship advisers who contribute regularly to Ynet. The columns published on Ynet form part of a flourishing Israeli internet culture in which questions regarding personal relationships, dating and single life come to the fore. I approach these columns as a rich source of data, particularly as this medium is becoming a popular form of expression for both readers and writers. In this respect, I view the columns written by and about single women as forming an important cultural space for interpretation and debate. Drawing on Foucauldian discourse analysis methods (Foucault, 1982) and feminist discourse analysis (Lazar, 2007) my goal here is not only to understand the mechanisms that construct the cultural tag of selective single women, but also to deconstruct some of its underlying premises and regimes of truth. Put differently, my reading of the texts derives from an attempt to locate these cultural schemas in a specific historical moment and understand their wider social and gendered contexts. As Michelle Lazar elaborates the aim of feminist critical discourse studies is to show up the complex, subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, ways in which frequently taken-forgranted gendered assumptions and hegemonic power relations are discursively produced, sustained, negotiated, and challenged in different contexts and communities (Lazar, 2007 p.142). I therefore consider the web columns to be compelling sites for understanding how taken for granted cultural constructs of singlehood are represented and produced. Moreover, the different columns are also considered to be the site of a cultural struggle (Fiske, 1996; Lazar, 2007), which also offers a unique prism for understanding how current cultural meanings of feminine subjectivity are validated or contested. I take the category of singlehood as a contingent notion which varies by gender, age, class, religion, and ethnicity, ableness and sexual orientation. The inquiry into selectiveness and singlehood revolves around an analysis of texts relating generally to the category of single women who present themselves in broad brushstrokes as Israeli, Jewish, secular, not engaged in any long-term relationship and childless. This definition then takes into account a feminist

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intersectional methodological approach as it recognizes that selectiveness and singlehood are not merely homogenized categories of identities and are both formed through different positionalities and distinctive structures of oppression (Collins, 2000).3 Indeed, single women's experiences of prejudice and stigmatization are produced and mediated by multiple forms of oppressions such as ageism, ableism, heterosexism, classism and racism. Differently put, the analysis presented does not presume to capture the representations of singlehood as a one-dimensional category and in that respect it takes into consideration the advantages of a class, racial, ableness background of women who are grasped as being too selective. Nonetheless, this paper also asks to contribute towards conceptualizing a more complex gender intersectional analysis by adding singlism (DePaulo, 2007; DePaulo & Morris, 2005), namely the discrimination and mistreatment of single persons as a category of analysis. Lastly, studies exploring online data are often limited in their ability to evaluate the socioeconomic characteristics of their informants (Press & Livingstone, 2006). I regard this not necessarily a limitation but rather a shift in focus. In this vein, the aim of this paper is not to categorize and authenticate the the real identities of single women, but to extract the cultural expressions which are brought out and produced in these texts. Hence, my approach also follows a scholarship that recognizes the need to advance new approaches to the study of cyber sociology and place emphasis on the blurring of the boundaries between the real and the virtual, the true and the fabricated (e.g. Boellstorff, 2008; Hine, 2000; Turkle, 1985). This article also follows studies that recognize the need to develop new approaches to the study of web culture and place emphasis on the blurring of the boundaries between the real and the virtual, the true and the fabricated (Boellstorff, 2008; Hine, 2000; Turkle, 1985). In this respect, one should also bear in mind the new media's gendered effects. For many women these technologies can be an emancipatory force in which they raise gender awareness, and invent new gender identities (Turkle, 1985). However, recent studies have shown that the objectification and stereotyping of women continues also in cyberspace and often replicates and strengthens hegemonic gender norms and roles (Attwood, 2009, 2010; Harris, 2008). Thus, taking these insights into account and after reviewing these columns, a repetition of themes became apparent, generally referring to women who are identified and self-identify themselves as being around or above the marriageable age, Jewish, secular, and not engaged in a long-term relationship. In this study I also refer to what has been termed as late singlehood, or what Jill Reynolds identifies as the Twilight Zone of Singlehood (Reynolds, 2008, pp. 17). Differently put, I will specifically deal with representations of the socio-temporal phase wherein singlehood becomes a problem, a feminized temporal crisis (Negra, 2009, pp. 54) or put differently, when it ceases to be a normative stage preceding marriage and parenthood. I will now further examine the discursive juncture between selectiveness and singlehood in this twilight zone. Singlehood and feminine selectiveness In her review of the term spinster, Sarah Amyes-Hanselm refers to the historical roots of this cultural tag. According to

her, it is still used to imply a certain fussy, prissy, demeanor (Amyes-Hanselm, 1997, pp. 544). Ann Byrne poignantly observes that fussiness is figured as a regrettable characteristic closely associated with and used as an explanation for the single status (2008, 27). From a review of the literature it is suggested that selectiveness should be viewed as a changing concept dependent on a multiplicity of factors and relating to different social realities. For example, we learn from a study of American single women in nineteenth-century New England (Berend, 2000) that at that time, perceptions of selectiveness placed spinsters high on the moral scale. According to Zsuzsa Berend, single women who preferred to wait for the perfect man and not to compromise in their quest for true love were perceived as morally superior and exemplary figures. By contrast, the excerpts analyzed in this study demonstrate how selectiveness among women whom are identified as Jewish, middle upper class single women is endowed with an entirely different set of meanings. In Israel, midlife selective women are called Bareraniot. This adjective derives from the noun Breira, which in Hebrew can mean either an option or a selection. Ravakot Bareraniot (selective single women) in Hebrew slang designates women who have options but are too picky about them. Some of the contemporary interpretations of the term refer to the new kind of single woman: attractive, educated, independent, liberated from traditional constraints, yet overly selective. Part of the reason these women stir so much interest and contempt is that they defy the heteronormative injunctions to confirm to one's expected gendered duty to marry and reproduce. For example in the following column written by a relationship advisor, entitled But He Has a Big Nose, the single woman's mindset is depicted as follows: He is too short, too fat, too thin, too stupid, and too sweaty We [addressing her single women readers] arrive at these dates loaded with criticism with all this negative baggage and exhausting preparation? We are so judgmental, so quick to call it off and not give it a chance In reality, we have thinning hair, we are overweight Tell me the truth [addressing the single woman]: would it be so bad to try to get to know him? But no way! She [the single woman] says: I won't go out and be seen in public with a man that dresses like him Over my dead body; I would rather remain an old maid and not humiliate myself. So, indeed, she stays alone, with her friends, dreaming, hoping, and wasting her best years (Holzman-Bismut, 2007). As the above extract demonstrates, in popular discourse today selectiveness is frequently understood as a new social problem, women being depicted as difficult, hard to please and spoiled. The new single woman is portrayed here as overly fussy, spoiled and selective, traits which due to which she will eventually lose her ability to make a choice at all and lose her agency. These overarching accusations often lead to cynical responses made by single women themselves. Here is an exemplary extract from a column published by a single woman which subverts these attitudes: Congratulations to me! I recently reached the age at which, according to some of the talkbacks, I can be tagged a damaged good or an old single woman who is obsessed with marriage and children. This is the age at which I'm supposed to

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internalize the verdict upon me and understand that I'm being punished. If not now, I will be punished in the future for my selective, arrogant, and reckless behavior. This is what happens to a woman who has not married by this advanced age she should understand that she herself has determined her own fate, and from now on she will remain alone. She should take to heart that from now on no man will ever want her. Why should he? He has the option of choosing younger and more beautiful women and of course less selective ones (Friedman, 2009). These voices reflect the growing prominence of selectiveness in discourses of singlehood as well as the attempts to challenge and subvert them. It echoes again and again the limited time frame single women have for experimentation and selfdetermination. As Diane Negra (2009) contends common representations of women depict them as starved for time. According to salient ageist and patriarchal social scripts, younger women have an advantage of beauty and fertility over the older ones. These columns echo voices similar to the ones expressed in Gottlieb's essay in the Atlantic: As long as women can hold to their assets which are youth, beauty and the ability to reproduce they should hasten up and marry, otherwise no man will ever want them and they will remain alone. It bears mention that these assumptions have particular significance when one takes into account Israel's pro-natalist regime which holds motherhood as women's natural and social destiny. Indeed as various feminist scholars have noted, Jewish motherhood in Israel is perceived to be a national mission (Berkovitch, 1997) and also as a primary source for personal fulfillment (Remennick, 2000). Hence, the criticisms on single women also signify the extent to which heteronormative, familial and pro-natal ideologies dominate the Israeli discourse. On this view, viewing motherhood as central to women's femininity and life trajectory is yet another significant constituent within the exclusion and social marginalization of single women. Therefore, the figure of the selective single woman can be linked with what Vint (2007) has termed as a new kind of backlash which alarms women into accepting and performing their traditional and domestic gender roles. Resolving the singlehood puzzle In the next column, entitled She is Thirty Years Old and Still Not Married? She Must Be Choosy, Hani Rose, a single woman writing for Ynet, illustrates two typical everyday life situations: Yossi, my bus riding partner, casually commented one morning that I must be selective; before getting off the bus I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown? Yossi is twenty years older than me; he met his wife in high school? He has no idea what late singlehood is. Every morning he sees this cheerful looking woman with fair hair? friendly? who holds a prestigious occupation? From his point of view, when we are talking about a successful woman that is not married, it's only because she is too selective. (Rose, 2008) The very same sentiment is expressed by a friend of her mother's: When my mother's friend Rachel who has four children, all of them already married talked to my mother, she said

something that associated the writer of this column with the S [selective] word. This is the only possible explanation as to how I have reached the age of thirty, so successful, not bad looking for my age, and still remained single (Ibid.) The above episodes are both excellent examples highlighting the social disbelief of chosen singlehood: What is wrong? Or what went wrong? How did she end up single despite her good looks and successful career? What can possibly be preventing these women from getting married? In this light, the new single woman comes into being as an enigmatic subject for investigation occupying a particularly confusing social position. In a related vein, this kind of reasoning unfolds the interlinking grids of difference demonstrating how selectiveness is a privileged resource which can be ascribed only to certain kinds of single women who are perceived to be more eligible and are expected to get married and have children. In the following column the same writer ironically unfolds this logic: It is a well known fact that a single woman over thirty ve has brought this upon herself. She is the only one to blame for her devastating and pitiable status. This is due to the fact that during her twenties and early thirties she ruled out wonderful and, most importantly, serious men one after the other just for the fun of it. She is exceptionally selective, nothing and no man is good enough for her. She does not know what compromise means; her nose is located somewhere high above the Azrieli towers (Friedman, 2009). 4 The above are representative of a wide selection of texts out of which selectiveness is configured as a new explanatory concept. A beautiful, successful, yet still single woman must be selective. Her selectiveness positions her outside the domains of familiar categories and classifications and disturbs familiar patterns of expectations. If a woman of marriageable age is beautiful and successful then it stands to reason that she is perfectly capable of managing her personal life (i.e., getting married and having children). Allegedly, there is no reasonable and visible reason why she should not attract potential and suitable male partners. I suggest that the discursive construction of selectiveness and in this case the subject position of selectiveness is a relatively highly accessible and convenient explanation. The category of selectiveness constructs a logical, coherent structure of meaning with a discernible cause and a discernible remedy; the crime (selectiveness) and its punishment (late singlehood). Unexpectedly, I suggest, these very women, whose prospects of getting married no one had doubted are suddenly thrust into the center of attention. This new discursive formation construes a new archetypal figure: the thirty-something, independent, successful, yet single woman. In effect, the preoccupation with one's good looks and successful career only augments this social confusion and its attendant anxieties. Thus, the new single woman (Trimberger, 2005) or SPW the single professional women (Berg-Crossi, 2004) comes into view as a puzzling figure, violating social prescriptions with respect to who is more likely, under the social dictates of beauty and success, to remain single and who has better chances of marrying, raising children and living happily ever after.

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Further to the latter point, the rationalization behind unattractive and unsuccessful remaining unmarried is sound and comprehensible. This, in turn, corresponds with a long tradition of stigmatization of single women as ugly old maids (Byrne, 2008; Macvarish, 2006). Thus, a binary type of classification emerges in which certain kinds of women are more prone to marry than others. In the case of those who almost comply with societal definitions of successful femininity, the binary logic is disrupted. The image of the beautiful and successful single woman does not cohere with familiar discursive templates. These assumptions are based on ability, class and race bias, characteristic of postfeminist culture which excludes women who do not fit with the glamorous, white economically independent liberated kind of women. George Simmel has written that society itself is possible because it is an object of knowledge expressed in social interaction. In this sense, he claimed, we know someone not in terms of his/her pure individuality, but by the general type under which we classify him/her (Simmel, 1908, pp.10). In the same context, the reification of social classifications has long been an important object of social inquiry, as Mary Douglas explains: Communities do not grow up into little institutions and these do not grow into big ones by any continuous process. For a convention to turn into a legitimate social institution it needs a parallel cognitive convention to sustain it (Douglas, 1986, pp. 46). Douglas's and Simmel's observations clarify how this particular combination the beautiful and successful single woman has no cognitive convention to sustain it, and therefore violates normative expectations and attitudes. As Douglas has demonstrated, the classification of many aspects of the world enables us, in many ways, to control it. Things and people we cannot name are frightening and disturbing (Douglas, 1986). In this sense, beautiful and successful single women are out of place, an anomaly that muddles predictable classification systems. Long-established distinctions are disrupted. The single women of today complicate these formerly agreed-upon principles and divisions. They have, in many ways, ceased to have markedly distinctive features differentiating them from others. Nowadays, they are often harder to spot, as apparently they could fit the normative category to which women are still very much assigned: being a wife and a mother. Selectiveness as a pathological dysfunction In the following section, I wish to examine the manner in which selectiveness is read as a symptom of an emotional disorder and incompetence. As various commentators have noted the discursive alliance between the post-feminist, the neo-liberal and the therapeutic discourse view late singlehood as an individual and pathological problem and accordingly single women are required to fix and heal themselves from this pathology (Lahad, 2012; Taylor, 2011).5 Indeed, selectiveness stands at the focus of some of the advice columns addressed to single women. For example, the following column, written by two relationship advisors, frames selectiveness along therapeutic lines of reasoning: Are you still single? It is possible that you are too selective. Are you tired of being on your own? Do you feel you are

doing everything you can and still not nding anyone? It is possible that you should take another look at the checklist that you yourself have created and begin to expand your options (Sela & Kimchy, 2011). My reading of these texts is also inspired by works that examine the effects of the therapeutic discourse on contemporary culture (e.g. Furedi, 2003; llouz, 2008; Moskowitz, 2001; Nolan, 1998; Rieff, 1966; Rose, 1999). Indeed, the implications of therapeutic culture can be traced in the texts under consideration. Their analysis reveals how the therapeutic language creates new forms of knowledge and new practices by means of which the image of selectiveness is diagnosed, inscribed and endowed with new meaning. From this perspective, the single woman is not practicing her autonomy of self and reflexively maneuvering between different selections, but merely demonstrating an emotional disorder. The medicalized and therapeutic lens dictates that the single woman can be free and realize her one true quest (getting married and having a family) only by working upon herself and liberating herself from her selective traits. These viewpoints are echoed in the following column in which the writer, a single woman, cynically criticizes this prevailing attitude: I am the kind of person who could t the prole of the article about single persons who are too selective. I will now break their silence and go on the stand and testify. I'm considered a good catch. I am good looking, intelligent, sociable, have a sense of humor, and I'm spontaneous If I had a dime for all the times I've heard other people as well as the little voice inside my head constantly criticizing me, saying You are selective because you are afraid of intimacy, I could have made a lot of money by now (Friedman, 2010). According to this logic, selectiveness is deciphered as masking a repressed and unattended emotional problem. This form of therapeutic explanation now transforms selectiveness from what could be seen as a determined manifestation of self-governance into a loss of self control which could be cured by hard work, self-discipline and therapeutic intervention. However, these observations are confronted by writers that actively negotiate these fixed regimes of truth and provide new avenues for creative resistance. A different option of resistance is posed by the next single woman: [They ask me] How come such a beautiful, nice, intelligent and sweet woman is still not married?? I have dated many men, yet not one is even close to what I am looking for. Everyone says I am too choosy; what does it mean to be too choosy? Is my wanting to nd a person to whom I am attracted and who will love me and my kids being too selective? Am I asking for too much? (Inrohon & Zimmerman, 2010) Selectiveness is also rearticulated as a problem through the language of excess. Hence, single women are characterized as being too self-determined, too choosy, and overly self-confident, they are asking for too much and exceeding the boundaries of their ascribed place. In her analysis of feminine bodybuilding and prevailing images of femininity, Schulze (1997) contends that women bodybuilders have been called freaks, gross, grotesque and tasteless. For Schulze, this labeling also derives from the fact that female bodies resist the laws of social control

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(women are not supposed to look like that) and inverts the conventions of the gendered body (p.266). Schulze's proposition can be extended to understanding the excessive tropes attached to single women and how in the discursive contexts discussed here they challenge some of the foundations of normative feminine subjectivity. When selectiveness is framed as a form of excess it denotes that these single women have exaggerated in their choosing practices and self-determination. Theses clusters of images and concepts provide prominent discursive resources for envisioning selectiveness as a disordered conduct that exceeds normative behavioral boundaries. In that respect, the single woman ceases to exercise self-control as selectiveness controls her. As such, these seemingly successful women are configured as irrational and in need of direction and guidance on how to return to familiar and conservative patterns of femininity. It's time to de-select The increasingly common accusation of being too selective is regularly followed by various injunctions to compromise, wake up, grow up, let go and be more realistic. These regimenting expectations are depicted as the ultimate solutions to undoing the selective position and could be seen as another manifestation of the postfeminist rhetoric which views meeting the right man and becoming a mother as the real answers to all unresolved dilemmas and conflicts facing women (Negra, 2009; Taylor, 2011; Vint, 2007). Relatedly, Negra (2009) has convincingly argued that midlife women's lives are predominantly governed by the passage of time and their life stages are defined through the parameters of time starvation and panic. The following discussion attempts to look into how these sets of imperatives are contingent on age-linked expectations calling on women to correct their selective traits and conform to a more essential, couple and maternal oriented femininity. I argue that these exhortations mostly allude to the transition from normative to late singlehood, which accordingly forms new subject positions attached to the thirty-plus single woman. In another advice column, Doron and Bar (2009), the psychologist and dating coacher writing for Ynet, rhetorically ask: Is there an age at which one should stop looking and begin to compromise? Is there a stage when you should begin to listen to friends and family members who think that you are selective? The different advisors have unequivocal answers. For example in the column entitled It's time you stopped dreaming about perfect love? Dr. Zvia Granot, a psychologist writing for Ynet, explains: Every one of us knows that every relationship has its ups and downs, but single women still refuse to compromise on anything less than perfection. Let's grow up, girls, free ourselves of illusions that we are perfect and hook up with partners that are not perfect, just like us (Granot, 2007). The accusation of selectiveness and the attendant command to compromise is also indicative of the process of infantilization to which single women are subjected. Grow up, they are told, learn how to compromise. Selectiveness

has been overturned; for what once might have signified mature self-mastery, the single woman is now accused of being childish and irresponsible. Hers is not a stable and rational stance, but an unstable and disordered one. Drawing on Negra's (2009, p.61) observations it could be argued that she fails to understand that she is time starved and is subjected to her biological clock, her selectiveness could be easily solved by minimizing her ambitions and accepting more traditional models of femininity. This resonates with a long tradition of pathologizing women as irrational, weak, and out of control. Indeed, the construction of contemporary forms of women's selections is deeply embedded within this tradition, which holds that women are in need of guardianship and expert advice. When selectiveness is rearticulated as another form of feminine pathology it gives rise to new forms of self-reflection requiring remedies and therapeutic interventions. The blame is now inverted; the single woman is the only one depriving herself of the opportunity to marry. Critical scholarship on the entrepreneurial, self-governing subject (Rose, 1999; Rose & Miller, 1992) has emphasized that in the current neoliberal climate the subject is increasingly held responsible for determining her biography. Compromising or being more realistic is now rearticulated in terms of the enterprising self, which is expected to display initiative, flexibility and self-monitoring practices. In this light, the single woman should see herself as a shape-shifting portfolio person (Gee, 2004) and accordingly recreate her social skills and self-manage what could turn out to be a risky life trajectory. The collective emphasis on more responsible forms of self-care and self-monitoring is also communicated by some single women seeking advice on how to successfully monitor their own selectiveness. These queries reflect the interpellation of single women by discourses of gender, family and heteronormativity. Hence, through interpellation single women come to recognize themselves as too selective and know what sort of subjects they are and ought to be. This process of self-labeling is quite common. The repetitive questions and self-doubts are often articulated as: am I too selective and/or how can I become less selective? The pervasiveness of these doubts can be understood in the context of what Foucault (1988) referred to as technologies of the self where the self is required to exercise self-governance. This again brings up the discursive relations between selectiveness and excessiveness as well as how they are framed within rigid collective timetables dictating the right to time to marry, have children and un-single them-selves (DePaulo, 2007). In her advice column, Granot articulates these beliefs through the exemplary story of Ronit: [Ronit is] a 30 plus single woman who is convinced that she deserves the best of the best. Nonetheless, like many single women her age, she will continue chasing after a dream, ignore reality and miss her chances of having children in a coupled relationship (Ibid). Granot's column emphasizes well established collective schedules within which thirty plus is figured as a critical time marker. By implication, single women are persistently exhorted to act in accordance with their age status. The emerging tone is unequivocal: at thirty plus, selectiveness is

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ill-timed and simply another indication of the overly extended duration of singlehood. Framed in these terms, selectiveness cannot be viewed outside the socio-temporal order. These instructions emphasize how selectiveness is construed in accordance with age norms that produce their own codes of meaning and systems of knowledge. In the case of late singlehood, being off time requires a reorientation of one's behavior and, in that respect, also a renewed evaluation of one's very capacity to select. At this stage, the privilege of selectiveness is forfeited. In conjunction, these visions accentuate the manner in which age is entangled with entitlement and privilege. Differently put, when single women occupy the thirty plus status, they are no longer entitled to have the privilege of selecting. While in the earlier stages of singlehood their self-determination can be admired and praised, upon reaching marriageable age, and particularly after passing it, single women are grasped as trapped within their own self-regulation. The individualistic rhetoric of blame is clear: she herself is the saboteur of her future happiness and wellbeing. At this point in time, her selectiveness marks an overstepping of socio-temporal boundaries and a disruption of the expected and socially mandated life schedules. Moreover, she has failed to understand the ramifications of these schedules, in particular their future repercussions on her own life. Careful selection of potential partners, then, may mark admirable self-determination in the earlier stages of one's singlehood, but when singlehood is overly extended, one's authoritative position is diluted. Put differently, a single woman's age status reconstitutes her agential capacities and undermines her negotiating stance and the basis of her claim-making. The tropes presented thus far formulate selectiveness as a short-term privilege dependent on age status. Also entangled within the existing set of assumptions surrounding thirty plus single women is the sexist and ageist premise that one's aging diminishes one's overall sexual desirability and therefore undermines one's ability to be selective. This process is well explicated in Granot's column, one of whose sub-headings declares: It's time to wake up. This injunction is followed by a list of mistakes that a thirty plus woman can no longer afford to make. At this point in time you should stop and decide to give up your dreams to fulll what is really important to you. At the age of thirty plus you should consider the possibility of a partner that you are comfortable with and that is ready to engage himself in a relationship and be a father. If you think about it, you will realize two things: A. There is no compromise here, just waking up and adopting a more reasonable stance; B. This is what harmonic relationships should be like after the sparks have settled (Ibid).

By this logic, personal responsibility entails self-awareness of one's age status and acceptance of the attached sociotemporal rules and norms. In this sense, compromising or being more realistic is articulated as a balancing act and required strategy to draw single women back onto the familial life track. Thus, when entrepreneurial and therapeutic lexicons become entangled with social timetables, two interesting observations can be made. First, the single woman's age status determines her entitlement to select and accentuates her diminishing power to determine her options. Second, when selectiveness is framed in entrepreneurial and therapeutic terms it denotes an emotional deficiency that requires improved self-management and rehabilitation. Thereby, both of these discursive processes necessarily lead to the loss of single women's capacity to select, or in other words to their loss of agency. Discussion Webster's dictionary defines selective as being characterized by selection, selecting or tending to select. It is also defined as being highly specific in activity or effect. However, selectiveness can be formed and practiced in different contexts. One can be selective in one's leisure activities, be a selective consumer or a selective eater. In that respect, selective personas are characterized by having high standards and being difficult to please and satisfy. The question that begs to be asked and is particularly pertinent in the context of our analysis is: When can we select? From which position can we select and who can afford to occupy the position of being too selective? Obviously it is beyond the scope of this paper to fully answer these quandaries yet the study of the labeling process of single women can hopefully shed light to the manners in which selectiveness is a multilayered and multifaceted concept. To gain a further understanding of these quandaries, we have a readymade proverb in both Hebrew and English: Kabzanim lo yechulim lehiyot bareranim, or Beggars can't be choosers. Hence, the very ability to select stems from having power, and exercising one's choice is having the privilege to select. Accordingly, selectiveness is a privileged and short-term position. One's social worth needs to be high enough to enable one to select. This perception leads to another query: under which discursive conditions is one tagged as being too selective and selectiveness itself comes to represent excessiveness and a transgression of social gendered norms and boundaries? I now turn more specifically to examining these observations by exploring the discursive resources that re-conceptualize selectiveness as an overriding explanation and accusation. One of the principal conclusions emerging from this study is that the discursive formation of selectiveness is deeply ingrained in contemporary social definitions; chief among them are the changing configurations of autonomy and self-regulation and the way they interrelate with collective feminine timetables. This study has demonstrated that the socially constructed notion of selectiveness marks out a discursive space that reflects and produces new and old terminologies, categories and social currents. Pursuing this assertion, I have suggested that the notion of selectiveness provides popular imagery with pervasive discursive resources for objectification and normalization. I have argued that labeling the single woman

Age is constituted here as an indisputable natural parameter that, as demonstrated in the above accounts, marks the temporal boundaries and the temporary and conditional position of the selective option. Being too judgmental at thirty plus is perceived as an unsuccessful attempt to control what will soon be uncontrollable. When she passes the age boundary line (which is referred to here as the 30+ position) the single woman loses her entitlement to make a selection.

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as overly selective functions as a classificatory mechanism that designates clear guidelines for discerning the normal from the excessive, the successful from the unsuccessful, and the emotionally competent from the incompetent. In many ways, the image of the selective single woman is consonant with the icon of the free, liberated, independent, successful woman. In fact, the very possibility of selectiveness also stems from and represents a wider social process in the framework of which women have been granted more opportunities to exercise their self-agency. However, this research joins studies (Gill, 2007, 2010; McRobbie, 2004, 2009) that scrutinize the simplistic language of feminine empowerment, arguing that in the case of late singlehood, selectiveness leans on a highly standardized conception that above a certain age single women have taken their liberties too far. Embedded within these attitudes, then, we also find a re-articulation of the feminization of success, the limits placed upon women's claim of freedom to select and, accordingly, the subject positions carved out for women today. Indeed, a single woman above marriageable age transgresses well-established systems of meaning. This is one of the reasons why selectiveness is also understood in terms of excess. Single women are merely exaggerating, they are represented as overbearing, overly demanding, and having too high an opinion of themselves, and in this sense they are outside the confines of the normal. In other words, the label of selectiveness represents a disturbing vision of a subjectivity of excess. The above analyses have also shown that selectiveness among single women triggers a bundle of practical advice and instructions, such as wake up, it's time to compromise, or control your pathological obsessions. These prescriptions appear to contain the promise of restoring order; however, they often lead to new complications and multiple blind spots, such additional dilemmas as: Where do we draw the line between selectiveness and compromise? Does making a compromise mean losing control or regaining control? How can one remain true to oneself and form a relationship? Alternatively, what happens when you work hard, follow these conflicting rules, yet fail to succeed? Indeed, the different extracts analyzed throughout this article have presented different levels of adherence and resistance to the ideology of the heteronormative family as a compulsory order. Differently put, the extracts disclose how interpellation of selectiveness is imposed and the manner in which single women both identify and resist the overly selective subjectivity. Doing so, single women have demonstrated the complicated ways in which the concepts of selectiveness and singlehood are under constant negotiation and in this vein they reveal the arbitrary formation of selectiveness as explanatory factors and as an emotional disorder. The different women are not passive recipients of these dominant meanings and to a large extent they also provide insights into how change can be accomplished/critical thinking and new possibilities of resistance. This study sheds new light on what Ringrose and Walkerdine (2008) have referred to as the drama of possibility and limitation of neo-liberal reinvention or what Ann Cronin (2000) has termed compulsory individuality. Hence, the discursive analysis of single women's selectiveness provides another important prism, through which one can examine the elusiveness of, as well as the cracks and paradoxes embedded

within, the current rhetoric of self-governance and its ramifications for current definitions of feminine subjectivity. Endnotes
1 The requirement for self reexivity in the changing conditions of the labor force has been examined by Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002). 2 According to a recent survey, Ynet is the third most visited website in Israel http://www.themarker.com/hitech/1.513836 Accessed 14 Jan 2011. 3 For an excellent review of the intersectional feminist approach see Oleksy (2011). 4 The Azrieli towers are tall residential skyscrapers located in Tel Aviv, Israel. 5 For a detailed discussion of the effects of therapeutic discourse on singlehood see Lahad (2012) and Taylor (2011).

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