We live alone...or do we?

Klineberg writes more on the topic of Americans living alone

Recently, apartmenttherapy.com reviewed an article about Americans living alone.  The review seems like a more modern look at the situation.  The original article is an overview about how to deal with living alone and how this will affect the community of senior citizens who have lived alone for much of their lives, whereas the review discusses more how it affects the community in a positive way and introduces a short pro vs con list to consider.  Most of the comments, as well as in the article, people seem to think that safety (in an emergency) and financial stability are the two main advantages to living with someone.  A roommate helps with the safety part and less with the financial stability part than a partner.  The disadvantage of having a roommate (of whatever sort) is mainly personal freedom.  They also have some cool facts, like half of america is single and one third of households are single-occupancy households.

I realized that we (R & S in particular, but all of our siblings in general) have the best of both worlds. Each of us (S first and R more recently) have depended on the other for financial support.  S lived with R for one year, rent free, S made her bank account available for R to use as she needed.  Obviously S took a little of R's personal freedom...bunk beds make it a little awkward to have a boyfriend over, but, on those nights, the couch was very comfortable. Now we are living individually and know we can depend on each other for financial support.  We also talk to each other every day, at least a few texts each day, so if anything happened we would quickly realize the other needed help.   I don't think living alone provides the same social structure, we have to force ourselves to not become hermits and to get social interaction...not that that is too hard. And, we do it with financial stability and safety.  Maybe everyone should get a twin instead of a partner!

New York's planned micro apartments

Generally, it is becoming easier to live alone.  Bloomberg recently announced a plan to build an entire building of 'micro-unit',  300 square foot, apartments and there are similar plans in Boston and San Francisco.  

On another note: If you google living alone, most of the pictures are of depressed people, we need some people in there who are enjoying their personal freedom!

S

Feminism

I recently bought a book that is described as a "feminist memoir" of a woman in her mid 30s living in London. This book is amazing, and, while I always identified myself as a feminist, makes me want to stand up and start really acting on it. I want to write a book about what feminism is to me too! I don't always agree with this woman, she makes valid points, but I think that is part of what feminism is about.

She spends about 5 or 6 pages discussing underwear, complaining about thongs and bras (though, she is very adamant about bras being our friend and that she loves her bras, even though they hurt) and I like thongs (I remember when I didn't) and I think bras don't have to hurt if you buy the right ones, so I think that though she is in full support of "big undies" as she says, I prefer my stance to be that I am in full support of people who want to wear big undies wearing big undies. I think that feminism has been popping up all over the place lately too, and I want to jump on that bandwagon and scream about it to all of my friends, family, and random people who are willing to listen to me!

This article in GoodMagazine (yes, still one of my favorite online magazines to read) talks about why we need feminism and other articles that I've read recently discuss the issue that fewer and fewer women are identifying with the term feminist. I think that the term feminist needs to have a looser definition than what people associate with it, and I think one way to start working on that change of definition is to start talking about it. I also think that maybe we need to keep some of the aspects currently associated with the term, maybe we NEED a little bit of the loudness, and the brashness with the term. Women are making less than men, women are pushed into certain jobs and certain tasks because of their gender, and (yes) women are sometimes hired for their looks or NOT hired for their looks (as are men, I know). We need to start acknowledging that some of our struggles are not JUST about female freedoms and male/female equality, but about human equality.

In the spirit of the GoodMagazine article: I need feminism because it's who I am, and who I want to be.

R