Being Single is less socially acceptable than being Gay

I had a conversation today that brought me to that surprising conclusion.  When you are a woman (I am sure men get this to) who is no longer in her 20s, you have been single for a while and don't seem to mind it people are very uncomfortable.  So uncomfortable that they have a tendency to come up with any other explanation for your situation.  One of the most common ones is that you must really be gay and either have not come to terms with it or just won't admit it.

The idea that you could be heterosexual, and not that upset about being single just seems very hard for some to accept, especially if you are a woman in her 30s or older.  Of course there is the idea that there must be something wrong with you (i.e. that is why nobody wants to be with you) or that you are not trying hard enough, or that you are really miserable and are trying to hide it.

In the conversation that I had today the person I was talking to started talking about a friend of her's and she said "He should just admit he is gay and go off and find someone and be happy, he should know that we would love you (yes she changed from saying him to saying 'you', regardless).  I did not even know where to go with this one, so I just muttered something to the effect of "well each person must decide what is right for them"

Where to start?  First, do you really have to 'have' someone to be happy?  I certainly was not happier (not that I was unhappy, but my happiness levels were about the same, I was happier about some aspects of my life, and less happy about others, so it evens out.) when I was dating.  If he admits he is gay, then who is to say that he would find someone that would make him happy?  Why assume that all the problems in his life have to do with his sexuality?  Finally, based on previous conversations, this guy is probably bisexual, or even straight and experimenting but who cares?  Why should he admit to anyone what his sexuality is?   Except perhaps the person he is dating, nobody else has a need or right to know.

As for the possibility that she was talking about me, I thought to myself "what the heck?".   I can't say "No, you don't understand, I am not gay, I find women beautiful but I am in no way turned on by them, and to be honest most of them irritate me more than most guys, as an introvert I tend to find many extroverted women a little too hard to deal with on a social level, too touchy feely and so on LOL.  I don't really find kids irresistible like most women, don't really have a burning desire to have any, and don't really care if I get married or not, and am leaning towards the preference of never getting married.  All things that most women find close to incomprehensible.  So no I am not a latent homosexual, not that I find anything wrong with the prospect, it is simply innacurate.

And yes based on the responses I get when I say that I won't ever get married and have kids and that I don't mind, or from the conversations about how others understood the importance of having a 'life' (husband, boyfriend, kids) out of work (implied here is that if you don't have one of the three, you don't have a 'life' outside of work), I can fully say that people would be much more supportive if I came out and said I was gay.

The thing is that in the past I did both, I had a 'life' outside of work, that 'life' just did not last and now I am single and relatively fine with it.  Honestly I am more bothered by feeling 'different' because everyone else is either married, getting married, dating and/or having kids so you can feel a little left out of all the celebrations, and start feeling a little down.  For this reason I have abandoned Facebook and no longer go to the endless baby showers, and wedding showers, more for my own sanity than any other reason. 

This is of course interpreted as me being jealous, which I am not, I am just tired of shelling out hundreds of dollars for these things and well I know this sounds bad, but knowing that it will never be reciprocated and that not only is it not reciprocated, but on top of that I am made to feel bad for something that for me is perfectly natural and OK.

The final part of this venting is the idea that just because I accept that I could possibly never date again, and probably never get married, it does not mean that I don't want to find someone to have a relationship with.  It is just that I am not desperate to find that someone, and if they show up, wonderful, if they don't wonderful :).

Hopefully one day, being single and happy will be just as acceptable as being gay :)

Is Hollywood Doomed?

Mitt Romney and the GOP got a big surprise during the last elections.  All their polls indicated that at this moment a republican would be getting ready to move in to the White house.   Their polls were not wrong, they were just not polling the right people.  It is true, the majority of whites in the US did vote for Mr. Romney, it is just that there is no longer enough of a majority of whites in the US that you can ignore everyone else.

I get the feeling that at some point Hollywood is going to have a similar surprise.  At some point somewhere people are going to start making movies that are going to sell in the US more than Hollywood movies.  I think that at some point minorities, when given the 'real' choice, are going to stop going to Hollywood movies are are going to start wanting to see things were they are represented as something more than token, exotic or stereotyped.

At some point people I think are going to look at images like this one and are going to start wondering why people who look like them are not either on stage, or sitting at the tables.  I don't think that it will be a conscious act but slowly they are just going to stop watching

They are going to start looking for alternatives, and in our age of digital media, I am thinking they are going to find them.  Unfortunately I don't think Hollywood will find the solution.  It looks to me like they are going in the wrong direction.  But some young entrepreneur, my guess an immigrant is going to figure out a way to get movies with a better representation of the real world (race, age, gender, weight, religion and so on), they are going to market them to broad audiences and they are going to make bucket loads of money.

Then again perhaps they already have:

Everyday, some 14 million Indian people queue for a movie, with more than 4 billion movie tickets sold annually, compared to 3 billion for Hollywood movies worldwide.

See: More movies made in Bollywood than Hollywood

It is not that there is a shortage of actresses that don't look like this:
Asian Actresses
Black Actresses
Indian Actresses
Hispanic Actresses
Native American Actresses
Older Actresses

Arabian Actresses
Full bodied Actresses