Is This How Mark Penn is Going to Sell Hillary Clinton to Single Women Voters?

Remember "soccer moms"? Mark Penn coined that term during Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign, and he's proud of it. I cringe at the condescension of some of these cutsie appellations, but hey, the man does have some considerable successes to his name. And now he is the chief strategist in Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. So what, I wondered, might he have to say about the demographic that stepped into the spotlight when soccer moms got old - single women?

"Sex-Ratio Singles" are the first of the "microtrends" described in Penn's new book (written with E. Kinney Zalesne). Penn asks readers to think about how awful it feels to be left out, as, for example, when you are the only one not invited to a wedding. Single women, he claims, are left out of marriage. He concedes that some opt out, but then goes on to focus on those who flock to dating web sites, end up discouraged, then wonder what's wrong with them.

Not to worry. "There is nothing wrong with single women that a few more heterosexual men wouldn't fix," says Penn. See, the real problem is the sex ratio. "There are too few straight men for all the straight women," so when the music stops in the game of musical chairs he thinks we are playing, at least 3% of women have nowhere to sit. Poor us - we have to stand on our own two feet!

Penn, though, thinks that some single women have found a mighty nice consolation prize: "It is possible," he says, "that the unfavorable sex ratio, discouraging as it is in some respects, has encouraged women to excel elsewhere." We've created another microtrend - "Wordy Women" - as we pursue professions such as journalism, law, and public relations. Single women are also increasingly likely to buy their own homes.

We may be successful, but Penn is not giving up on us. Those guys we snubbed in college? Well, a decade later, when we are still single, "the balding guy with the solid job, and the reasonably good fatherhood potential, starts looking kind of hot."

Penn sees his "microtrends" analysis as cutting edge. But his construal of single women could hardly be more retro.

First, when Penn said that "There is nothing wrong with single women that a few more heterosexual men wouldn't fix," he should have stopped at the word "women." Single women are not broken and they don't need to be "fixed."

Second, women's growing contributions to professions such as communications, law, and marketing are not compensations for a missing spouse. By that reckoning, women such as Donna Shalala and Madeleine Albright would have had little interest in serving in Bill Clinton's Cabinet if only they had their own proper cabinets - the ones that wives fill up with Campbell's Soup to serve to their husbands. (And why are women in word-based professions called "Wordy Women," instead of, say, "Eloquent Women"?)

In an interesting irony, Penn had some good insights in "Microtrends" when addressing other issues. He could have used his own wisdom to inform his discussion of singles. Take, for example, his suggestion about how Larry Summers could have saved his Harvard presidency: "Rather than wondering why women were not equally represented in math and science, he might have noticed how well women are doing in the wordy professions and how their success there may ultimately lead to a whole new politics."

Or consider one of the reasons Penn gives for why some microtrends go unnoticed: "because conventional wisdom hides their potential in the shadows, sometimes even emphasizing the exact opposite."

Right back at you, Mark Penn. As I show in my book, "Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After," the conventional wisdom about single women is the deficit model upon which Penn's analysis seems to be based. According to the myths, single women want nothing more than to bang down the door of marriage, and get some man (however bald or bland) to let them in. Otherwise, they are wandering around excluded and wounded, left to fill their husband voids with career successes, new homes, and Cabinet positions.

So what do single women - and single men - really want more than a wedding invitation or a marital chair to sit in? Offhand, I can think of 1,138 things. That's the number of federal provisions "in which marital status is a factor in determining or receiving benefits, rights, and privileges." You may have heard of many of these in the debates over same-sex marriage. Proponents ask why citizens need to be heterosexual couples in order to have access to the full complement of federal protections. Single people want to know why they have to be any kind of couple. Why, for example, should their Social Security benefits go back into the system after they die? Why can't singles instead designate a recipient for the money they have earned doing the same work for the same number of years as their married colleagues whose benefits go to their spouse?

Singles would also like their strengths, skills, and successes to be acknowledged on their own terms, and not dismissed as the unintended side effects of spouselessness. They want to be recognized as active agents of their own lives, often opting out of marriage rather than getting passively shut out. Want to see a microtrend? Check out the Alternatives to Marriage Project. Members include uncoupled single people, same-sex couples, and heterosexual couples in it for the long term who have made a deliberate choice not to sign up for marriage.

Mark Penn calls single women a microtrend because, even if all women really did want to marry, the unfavorable sex ratio would leave 3% of them single. In fact, though, sex-ratios aside, unmarried Americans 18 and older now number more than 90 million. That's more than 40% of the adult population. Not so micro, that.

Penn is Hillary Clinton's chief strategist, but I have yet to hear Hillary talk to or about singles in a patronizing way. Somehow, I don't see the other members of her team, such as Mandy Grunwald or Ann Lewis, signing on to singles bashing, however unintended. We shall see.

We shall also vote.

Comments

[RealBlackGirl]

At this point in the camapign I'm not surprised that this is the type of person Sen. Clinton employees. Her campain slogan should be, "What would a man say or do?!"

[Qbear]

going typo above

[Qbear]

The more interesting statistic about divorced women I recently read, is they are much higher incidence of them in Baptist Southern Women.
Now there is a market Progressives might have a chance of marketing to...First Wives Club meets Steel Magnolias.
Pack a bus full of romance novels, and unmarried Nascar Drivers, and Dykes on Bikes....we're goung to Dixie.

[Qbear]

"Not to worry. "There is nothing wrong with single women that a few more heterosexual men wouldn't fix," says Penn. See, the real problem is the sex ratio"

uh....Donna Shalala isn't in the market for a heterosexual man.
Neither are probably hundreds of thousands of lesbians, coupled or uncoupled ( I know lesbians are born coupled) who are on paper...single hetero women. Just look at Dr. Condi Rice.

[MrLion]

Mark Penn is the latest example of the Peter Principle in action. After years of success as a pollster, he's reached his level of incompetence as a sociologist.

[B2]

Kudos, Bella!!! I'm also a single woman who's not voting for Hillary!

[OtayPanky]

The lady doth protest too much.

Here's the deal: Most (not all) of us are hard-wired for stable emotional-sexual companionship. As long as the ratios are more or less even, there's a cover for every pot, and a pot for every cover.

When the ratios get out of whack (which is what Penn is pointing to) there are a surfeit of covers - or pots. That adds to the general unhappiness.

One solution in such times is: go gay. And some do. But lots don't.

For those that don't - no matter how much self-pleasure they get, most miss a real live human being to be bonded to.

That's just the plain truth of being a human being, really.

[altohone]

"go gay"?

Give me a break.

[AlanG]

The "plain truth of being a human being" isn't that we're like pots, it's that we're all different.

Everyone does need people to be "bonded to", and most of us are "hard-wired" for some form of stable companionship. But that doesn't mean a spouse/significant other.

People vary in their need for companionship, and not everyone needs the same level of intimacy. Most people find that a spouse fulfills that need.

For others, that's too intense and a friendship fulfills that role. Or siblings or nieces/nephews. Or parents or aunts or uncles. Or neighbors, church members, etc....the possibilities are endless, something that it seems many people (particularly conservatives) don't seem to realize.

[JoAnnCr]

Child care and Health Care. Poverty. Getting their kids through college. Catastrophic illnesses. A job that pays a living wage.

These are things a disproportionate number of single women have to think about. If the single women you talk about are doing great, good on them, but the sad fact is that too many of them are not doing well. They are the beneficiaries of what is terribly wrong with our wealthy-take-all society.

Enter John Edwards. He gets it: Dignity and bread and butter are what matter to single women.

A heterosexual male? Optional. May be more trouble than they're worth.

[Halsey]

Bella,

In a rather circuitous way I think you're poo pooing the erroneous stereotype about...yikes..spinsters.. I stopped worrying long after a failed marriage (fun til it wasn't) about being labeled as anything.
Men my age ARE bald and have a beer or nacho gut..take your pick..and I AM superficial..and while I'd like to believe..I could feel that spark of love at first sight...don't count on it.
I'd so rather be "alone" than put the toilet seat down every time I need to "go".
Those who ignore or misinterpret our numbers..will be in for a sad surprise.
But, even though I knew about the inequity in social security benefits..reading it in your post.really pisses me off.. I'm not one for frivolous lawsuits..but..really really think a class action is called for..if this isn't blatant discrimination (both for single men and woman)..I don't know what is!

Would you please start the charge..or do I have to?

[Chocolate2008]

I'm a single woman and I'm still not voting for Hillary.

[altohone]

Penn's polling company thinks bipartisanship is key to "winning" in Iraq... that a compromise should be reached and Dems should move on to other international and domestic issues.

The DLC'ers are preaching dropping the number one issue for voters and refocusing elsewhere.

Do single women really want to take advice from these DLC neocons on how to "fix" their problems?

Gay men are bad for you.
War and occupation are good for you.

Which mountaintop must we climb to hear such wisdom?