Why are we still single?

Here’s yesterday’s Sunday Times Column. Sunday Times edited quite a bit out of it, so here it is in it’s full, original form. Enjoy.

I got some super-crazy mad lunatic emails off of this one, i’ll post some of them tomorrow. Prepare for the crazy. You’ve been warned.

WHERE DID ALL THE GOOD GUYS GO?

I’ve mentioned here before that I’m happily single. Really I am. I’m not just lying to make friends. If nobody suitable comes along for me, it’s not the end of the world. But I do have a couple of girlfriends who aren’t so happily single. And I don’t mean average looking girls with nice personalities here, I’m talking about truly lovely, smart, independent, virile chicks. I’ve checked and none of them have hunchbacks or third nipples, and none are half as commitment phobic as I am, so you have to wonder why nobody’s snapped them up yet?

Not to get too scientific about it, but according to experts there’s a small but growing percentage of the world’s population who in fancy techno speak are now being termed ‘sex-ratio singles’. That’s single chicks to you and me. Our numbers are growing girls, we may be single, but we’re certainly not alone.

We women tend to blame ourselves for this. We wonder what we’re doing wrong. Aren’t we pretty/funny/clever/stupid/breasty enough? Don’t worry girls, your boobs aren’t too small and there’s nothing stuck in your teeth, we might just be single for more statistical reasons. What if there simply aren’t enough good, single, straight men out there to go around?

I’ve done the research and women start out okay. There are more boys born every year than girls, so in theory we should be sitting pretty, dates for everyone, even the girls with unibrows. But then adolescence kicks in. Sadly a ton of teenage boys die every year of testosterone related injuries like car accidents and other foolish boy-type Jackass shenanigans that go wrong. It’s depressing to think about, but it does affect the amount of single dudes heading into adulthood, looking for a date.

Another reason we might still be single is the gay factor. In the States gay men outnumber lesbians by about two to one. Fair enough that’s in America, but I would imagine our statistics are fairly similar. Sorry for you single girl, the pool just got smaller, and most of the handsome, well-groomed, funny ones with good taste went over to the other side.

X-box, Wii and Playstation are also partly to blame. If you had to round up all the half decent single dudes with no tans, and surgically remove them from their consoles, you might just be able to find a half decent date in there somewhere. Although you’d have to ignore the glazed look in his square eyes and his immensely sensitive trigger finger.

Games aside, did you know that SA women also live on average five to ten years longer than men? It’s all that beer and biltong. And it leaves a ton of older women returning to single status later on in life. And thanks to plastic surgery, and the ever growing phenomenon of Cougars, (older women who date much younger men) now these women are dipping into our pool of single men too. Something tells me our waters are being over-fished, ladies. There may not be plenty more fish in the sea after all.

And wait, if that’s not enough of a reason why we might still be single, there’s more. There were over 161 000 men incarcerated in the South African prison system at the end of 2009. Now while these murderers, felons and tik addicts may not be the kind of guys we’d ideally like to take home to meet the folks and would probably first steal your heart and then steal your jewelry, that’s not really the point, is it. The point is that it’s a numbers game and every year more and more men get subtracted. And we wonder why we can’t find a date?

On the opposite side of the coin, the single men who have managed to stay alive, straight and out of prison have it really good. Look at all the incredible women they have to choose from. While as women we’re simply forced to reevaluate our standards. When the selection is smaller suddenly that guy with the slight paunch and the comb over, who wears crocs or a cell phone on his belt may not be such a bad choice after all. He has a steady job and he isn’t on crack, he can’t be that bad can he?

Forget beer goggles – a phenomenon where the more you drink the better a man/woman looks, this is more like statistical goggles. The fewer guys there are to choose from, the hotter the available ones start to look, and ultimately, the more single we remain.