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Sometimes, the more I look at a word the more it changes. Or the more it can lose its power. In this case...it's both. I am just barely old enough to have heard, as a little girl,people still use the word "spinster." It was mostly uttered by those from my grandmother's generation and I don't even remember if I knew what it meant at the time. The tone, alone, though, perfectly conveyed that it was not something a woman should aspire to be in life.

Old maid never sounded that bad to me because I always thought of the card game instead..even if "old maid" was used in the same tone, with the same slightly snide implication that ending up one was a fate worse than death...and a cross between something pitiable and something hideous. 

My copy of the newly published and widely reviewed Spinster came in today and I'm looking forward to reading it, even if the front cover seems just a tad too trendy. I prefer the title page because it shouts out less (to me) that it's okay to be a spinster as long as you definitely do not look like one.

This quote from Pure Wow kind of says what I'm thinking:


Some readers may roll their eyes as Bolick recounts yet another dude who was dying to marry her (we get it: indifference is irresistible). But overall her writing is impeccable and her message fresh.

So, in my insomniac state that keeps me from focusing enough to read a book, but not from focusing enough to think and think about one little word, I am staring at the word "spinster" and the more I look at the word itself (not the picture of the girl on the front who probably never has had trouble getting asked out on a date) the more it looks kind of cute and harmless and totally non-bothersome.

Because, really, if people (including one's own parents) have trouble with someone not being married (and this "someone" is usually a woman and, by the way, how come men get cool words like "bachelor"?) that's their problem, not the problem of the person not married.