Shoshi Says: Single Women Are Hot

Shoshi Says is a titillating column about women’s issues.

Just when businesses and advertisers think they have women all figured out enters a new category with serious buying power: the single woman. It is projected that in 2005 single women will spend $400 million dollars which has the business world standing up and taking notice.

There use to be a time when single women were treated like outcasts and looked on with pity. Unmarried women were secretly called “spinsters” by friends and family if they were not wed by the time they hit 30. The tide is beginning to turn as single women send out the message that they can do for themselves.

Businesses as well as politicians are now checking in to see what makes single women tick. The census data shows that 40% of women between the ages of 25 to 29 are not married. While 23% of women in the 30 to 34 age rage are not married. One can only guess that the percent of single women over 30 will grow due to the fact that more women are stating that marriage is not of interest to them. The messages coming from single women are diverse from choosing the single life as the preferred lifestyle, choosing career over marriage first, to one person homeownership.

Single women are beginning to take the country by storm, even on the top hit show “Desperate Housewives” half of the characters are single. Advertising companies are beginning to get it when it comes appealing to the single woman. One commercial has two women who are sitting down after a wedding doing a high five for having “not” caught the bridal bouquet. This message says that businesses are seeing that single women are a viable market. That is girl power that is about to be in full effect.