by Yesterday, Selena Gomez uploaded a post to Instagram showing her spending New Year’s Eve with her friends (and married couple) Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz. He teased that the three were romantically involved, captioning the post “well call us a group” and adding the hashtag #foreverplusone.
The post has already received more than two million likes and thousands of comments from fans. But while hanging out with your friends on New Year’s Eve might not seem like a big deal, Gomez is making fun of the long-standing (and completely false) narrative that it’s sad to be single and pathetic to hang out with your friends. always united friends. And in the process, it takes away some of the unnecessary embarrassment that comes with accompanying your friends to dates when you’re not connected.
People skip over women, especially women in their late 20s and older, to judge non-partners, and we have a lot of negative biases, especially about those who remain single after a certain age. We assume they are actively looking for a partner but cannot find a match and there must be something wrong with them. Otherwise, why should they be alone?
All of this stems from societal pressures to meet arbitrary standards by a certain deadline: secure a partner, buy a house and start forming the typical nuclear family by having a few children and a dog. Then happiness (and great public appreciation) will be achieved. Hurray!
There’s an archetypal idea that the early 20s are for flirting as much as possible and the late 20s are when you pick your partner and settle down forever. It would be just sad to do anything else.
Celebrity or not, Selena Gomez is no stranger to this social pressure. After her split from Justin Bieber in 2018, Gomez became the center of the “sad single girl” narrative on the internet. Fans of Gomez, Bieber, or his new wife, Hailey Bieber, have repeatedly suggested that Selena is upset over the breakup, with suggestions through comments, videos, and other social media content that Hailey has taken away her happiness.
Fortunately, young people are breaking away from these traditions and the embarrassment of not being in a relationship. In fact, recent research shows that many single people are happier this way and more satisfied with life overall. And this is especially true for women.
Selena seems to feel the same with her proud “foreverplusone” tag. She looks happy and empowered by her single status, while making fun of her own lack of a relationship. He doesn’t need a partner to have fun, and neither does anyone.
But although there are more and more people feeling happier with the single life, that alone doesn’t stop embarrassing. Data from a survey shared by dating service Match with BBC Worklife found that 52 per cent of the 1,000 single adults in the UK report being ashamed of singles. Although 59 percent say they are “satisfied with their relationship status,” they remain the target of intrusive questions about their love lives.
Most single people are familiar with the single embarrassment. The nagging questions, the assumptions that a relationship is something you desire, sad eyes and slanted heads, like when someone says condescendingly “you’ll find the person you’re looking for soon”. This type of judgment only seems more common when you’re the so-called “third wheel”.
No matter how long our friendships last, activities like going out at night are expected to be less frequent when our friends engage in romantic relationships and we don’t. It’s a ridiculous, unspoken rule of society that couples only hang out with other couples, while singles go on clubs or dates to be part of the dating gang. Still, it’s perfectly reasonable for single people to be close friends with their friend’s partner as well.
There’s nothing sad about being single or hanging out with friends we love. Those who are in a relationship and those who are single still have a lot in common (after all, our relationship statuses don’t define us, no matter what others say), and they really have a lot to learn from each other.
That’s why it’s refreshing to see a figure like Selena Gomez having an intimate night on social media with her married friends, showing the joy of hanging out with her friends without embarrassment or embarrassment.
