Being Mary Jane & Reflections on Being a Single Black Woman

I'm not sure what age it starts when girls and women are supposed to start feeling bad about not being in a relationship. Everyone is quick to make fun of a girl who dislikes being single if she's in high school or below but they never challenge the causes for their feelings. Everybody is quick to disparage a woman who is single in her mid twenties and up even if she is happy being alone.

And I'm stuck in a weird kind of purgatory at 21. I'm supposed to be enjoying my independence and focusing on professional and academic development but simultaneously I should be thinking about dating. But not seriously. But I'm supposed to still do it or else something is wrong with me.

Of course, when you add race everything is exacerbated. And BET's Being Mary Jane reminds me of this. It is one thing to be a single woman. And another entirely to be a single Black woman.

This is because in our hetero-patriarchal society "single" means "worthless" when attached to women. It means "faulty." But Black means all the same things in our racist cultural imagination. So it's really a double problem to say "single Black woman."