19-05-2025
Deirdre Reynolds: Shake off the stigma and embrace life as a spinster
Term has been a slur too long, we want it back
Hi, my name is Deirdre - and I am a spinster.
Now, it's news to me that this is something I was meant to be mortified by.
But a 'man on the internet' tells me otherwise, so I figured I'd better mull it over, anyway.
Admittedly, when I wrote about how Ireland needs more child-free spaces on this page a couple of weeks ago, I knew I was sticking my head above the parapet - and risked having it sliced clean off.
What I didn't know was that being an 'old maid', or even a relatively young one, would be the weapon of choice with which to do it.
As a quick recap, while many argued that the adults-only policy deployed by a Tipperary café was 'anti-woman', I posited that it was a welcome respite for not only the childless, but many stressed-out, coffee-loving mams and dads too.
Lots, including parents, agreed.
But, as an apparent 'spinster', or maybe more egregiously, a 'childless woman', it was also suggested by others that I should 'jump in a hole and drink [my] coffee there'.
To be honest, a hole sounds like the perfect place to enjoy my flat white in a bit of peace. At the risk of digging myself an even deeper one, I'm fine with being labelled a spinster too.
Granted, for a long time in Ireland and beyond, it was a term used to denigrate women who were regarded as being left on the shelf, or as the Oxford English Dictionary plainly puts it, while acknowledging its more derogatory usages, 'an unmarried woman, typically an older woman beyond the usual age for marriage'.
Clearly, it still is by some.
Given that the 'usual age' for wedding for the first-time among Irish women has crept up to 35.8 years old, that makes for a hell of a lot of Millenial spinsters, and with first-time grooms averaging at 37.7, quite a few 'bachelors' too, though the equivalent male noun doesn't put the boot in quite as forcefully.
The opposite, in fact, with a Westmeath Bachelor Festival still going strong up to last year.
So … should we try to get a rival Spinster of the Year competition up and running?
Or, at the very least, in the same manner that the 'c' word has been refashioned by feminists, attempt to reclaim the 875 year-old slur from the clutches of sexist trolls?
Back in the 60s, Joan Rivers was one of the first stars to try, by shamelessly using it to describe her marital status at the time.
And it's certainly no more embarrassing than modern celebrities like Emma Watson declaring themselves 'self-partnered', or going even further like, Kourtney Kardashian, by championing 'autosexuality' (being turned on by yourself), rather than simply say, 'I'm single'.
Ahead of 'National Old Maid's Day' on June 4, then, let's shirk the stigma for once and for all.
Already, more and more younger women are embracing other stereotypical hallmarks of spinsterhood, from being a 'cat mom' to going grey gracefully, so why not do it with pride?
Because, let's be real, it's better to wind up a spinster than married to someone who still thinks it's an insult.
