[Music]
so step number one is buy a vibrator and
that's the whole video thank you guys so
much for watching I'll see you guys next
week bye no unfortunately things a
little bit more to this video although
honestly buying a vibrator is not a bad
step for the majority of my life I have
been sagal and I took it upon myself
every Valentine's Day to feel extra bad
about myself and to also let everybody
else know publicly how bad I felt about
being single I was like oh baby
this is humor this is comedy today I
wanted to sit down and do something a
little bit different and hopefully a
little bit more useful and kind of just
act like all the pressures that woman
feels to be in a relationship and that I
have felt for so long and also talked
about like my personal journey from
somebody who derived a lot of self-worth
from male attention and from being in a
relationship to now genuinely being
happy being single
well maybe not like happy I definitely
see therapist but like what I mean is
that I have come to enjoy being single
it's definitely the first time in my
life where like I would honestly rather
be single but in a relationship with the
vast majority of people and I'm not like
happy all the time obviously but I don't
blame my unhappiness or any unfulfilled
meant in my life on not being in a
relationship if that makes sense
also sorry for the wack color correction
and youtuber apology video background
for this video I film this on like three
hours of sleep I've been sleeping on the
floor for like two weeks I haven't
gotten my whole setup going in New York
yet I am living in chaos but I'm trying
to do my job and um I like this video I
think I have a lot of useful things to
say so I'm enjoy before I really jump
into this video though I did want to say
there's definitely a double standard
between men and women with how we talk
about relationships and being single
there is both a lot more pressure on
women to be in relationships and to get
into a long-term relationship earlier in
their life and this kind of surface
level feminist pressure to be
independent and strong and in order to
do that you have to be single where I
feel like guys can be in relationships
their whole life and they are never
criticized for being emotionally
dependent on women or not being a strong
independent man I didn't want to make
this video in like a pseudo feminist way
but it's like you have to be single in
order to be a strong independent women
type of way I wanted to make it in like
a
here is me trying to like
self-actualized like be comfortable with
myself and not feel so much pressure to
be a relationship type of way I think at
the end of the day our society really
does put so much pressure to be in a
relationship that's kind of your default
state and I just want people to feel
comfortable being single because I think
it's such an important like skill to
have and such an important time of
development in your life so first I
wanted to talk about kind of my history
and how my mentality has shifted over
the years first when I was the high
school I was very much a quote/unquote
career woman and all I wanted to do was
focus on my studies no boys no
distractions no shoulders I actually
went on a couple dates in high school
but I never let it turn into a
relationship because I felt so
uncomfortable being called somebody's
girlfriend I felt like it would make me
it would like somehow domesticate me and
make me less of a career woman then when
I finally got to college I really
entered a boy-crazy stage of my life
honestly a lot of it was because for the
first time I felt like I didn't have a
whole lot of sense of self or like a
promising future honestly I felt so
insecure about my skills my intelligence
my future that I really just wanted a
boy to like cling on to and to kind of
give me a yeah a sense of self because I
just felt like a nobody floating around
College our parents generation was kind
of the generation that met their
significant others in college or in
their early 20s so in my head college
was the time that I like met my husband
and I was like game time ladies I have
two and a half years in college to find
a man lock him down and this is like my
only window of opportunity so I was
really gung-ho about relationships
granted I had a lot of fun tinder dates
I had a couple relationships which
overall I think we're a net positive but
I definitely didn't feel completely
comfortable being single and every time
that I was single I was just thinking of
it as like a little gap before my next
relationship and that brings me to the
summer of 2018 it's so weird to say 2018
like it was in the past I feel like it's
still [ __ ] 2018 that was the summer
before I graduated college and for a
couple months I
lived by myself for the first time in my
life I was working on my youtube-channel
and I think for the first time since I
left high school I felt like myself it's
not like I was a fully like
self-actualized person and I'm still so
far from that but I think that was the
first time that mindset that I have
right now kind of clicked the best way I
can describe my mindset shift was I used
to think my life was of rom-com where my
end goal was to get married to some
dreamy nan and then my movie ended but
now I think of my life as like a sitcom
with ten seasons and I'm just at the
beginning of season two I have so much
time in my life before I figure out who
the [ __ ] I am I have so much growing to
do I'm gonna have all these different
jobs live in all of these different
cities and I don't know I'm just kind of
like along for the ride with myself and
I feel like that's a good place to be so
anyways I feel like it's easier said
than done to shift your mindset but I
thought it would be helpful in this
video to dissect some of the
misconceptions that I had in my previous
mindset where I felt guilty for being
single and I felt like I needed a guy in
my life so the first influence which I
kind of mentioned before is rom-coms and
coming-of-age films now I still to this
day love me a good cheesy wrong calm and
I know that they are sometimes horribly
written and they have really problematic
ideals but I will enjoy it anyways but I
don't think I realized until recently
how much effect the wrong calm side
watched when I was younger had on my
view of myself and relationships
recently thank the Lord there have been
more female directors Greta Gerwig
here's just a quick round of applause
for Greta girl ribbing Greta Gerwig and
also Cersei groaning oh praise the Lord
what a power couple but when I was
growing up the only context where I saw
a woman be a protagonist was in a
rom-com it was in a romantic setting
anywhere else she was the sidekick
she was love interest so again a
romantic setting which probably more
than I'd like to admit definitely
influenced me to feel like the way that
I had control over my life or like kind
of my life narrative was to hunt down a
man or to be the love interest and
that's like not what being a woman or
being like a human being is about you
know another thing was coming-of-age
films which is one of the few genres
that actually features like young people
and the traditional coming-of-age
narrative is him getting the girl or
having sex and especially in college I
really internalized that message to mean
that growing up and becoming an adult
meant getting a boyfriend which is not
that's not how I experience
coming-of-age at all really I think that
my coming-of-age was spending time with
myself which you never see in movies and
anything going back home to Maryland and
spending time with my friends and
feeling like really loved in a
friendship context really my first
relationship like was not a
coming-of-age for me at all but that's
not a story that we really see told in
pop culture
second of all something you definitely
contributed to my quote/unquote
boy-crazy mentality was admittedly that
I derived a lot of validation from male
attention that's kind of hard for me to
admit because I really really want to be
like a really great feminist with no
internalized misogyny my entire life but
oh honey do any of us I don't know
growing up in my hometown girls we're
just not cool
honestly like our society has a real
problem with just hating teenage girls
in general there was definitely an
overriding feeling in my high school
that girls just like weren't cool they
weren't funny and if you wanted to have
cool friends you should hang out with
the guys Wow hashtag I'm not like other
girls
no I genuinely like was kind of one of
those girls like like I had girlfriends
at high school but at the end of the day
and uh this like cringy social climbing
slash social position anyway I never
would go out of my way to hang out with
them so that I could feel cool like I
would with guys Brookes gross but I
think a lot of people experience this
too like our society sets up women to
compete with other women for male
attention
we are told this false narrative is that
male attention is a limited commodity
and that we have to hunt it down because
in order to feel valuable and in order
to even like exist as a visible part of
society you have to be seen by men this
was like a huge problem in Hollywood and
in the modeling industry as well where
women over 30 kind of just like
disappear it's kind of just this unsaid
cultural thing where it's like oh you're
like over 40 like you
and hide in the shadows now nobody wants
to see your wrinkles god forbid you
offend anybody with your human skin side
up but if you guys saw oceans eight one
of the most infuriating things about
that movie to me was the fact that they
like CGI blurred out Sandra Bullock and
Cate Blanchett's wrinkles I mean I
wouldn't even say wrinkles like they
have aged so gracefully but even like
the phrase aging gracefully kind of
implies that if you age in like a normal
[ __ ] way where you have wrinkles and
lines on your face that that's even a
bad thing or that's ungraceful there's
no escaping it I have seen kind of the
sentiment unlike reddit before it to
that like oh you better take advantage
of all the attention you get when you're
a young 20-something because like you're
not hot [ __ ] for your entire life
and then it puts like all this pressure
on such a narrow part of your life in
order to like yeah grasp all this male
attention and feel like you exist before
you like disappear into the shadows
which is just like a horrible way to
have to think about life another aspect
of this male attention thing for me was
definitely the fact that I looked up
pretty late in my life I was just not
that cute when I was younger I felt so
invisible and I had all these crushes on
guys that would just never ever like me
back so when I got to college and I
first was like oh I guess I can like
kind of cool guys now I got such
satisfaction in like satisfaction is a
gross word to use for that but I felt so
validated even going on tinder and like
matching with an attractive guy it was
like a type of high because I had never
experienced that before I was like holy
[ __ ] like if this guy saw me in high
school like he literally would not look
twice at me and now I'm going on a date
with this guy and he's attractive and
he's paying attention to me like ooh
what a feeling I do think everybody
feels validated in a certain way when I
trash is people pay attention to them
which is just like biology baby but at
this point in my life okay honestly you
think the real fix to this problem is
you date a hot guy who has a really
shitty personality and then you realize
that hot guys are not actually all that
and kind of a shininess of attractive
people where so I think as everybody
grows older they become more confident
in themselves they've dated more people
so a little bit of that I don't say
desperation but
kind of internal clamouring to be like
validated by attractive people wears off
a little bit another fear of mine with
being single definitely went
hand-in-hand with my fear of aging I
kind of talked about this before with
the male attention thing but for some
reason it really settled in when I was
in college that this was like my chance
to meet a life partner this was
literally when I was like 18 I was like
I must find a man that I can lock down
before my eggs dry out cuz I'm already
getting old baby kind of
counter-intuitively as I've grown up I
actually feel like I have more time in
my life when I was 18 I felt like my
youth would be so short but now that I'm
21 I'm like holy [ __ ] I have nine more
years before I'm 30 even at 30 I'll
still be really young so I have so much
time to figure out myself and to like
one day down the line if I want to get
married find somebody to do that with
wow that was the least romantic
explanation of love I've ever heard do
the marriage with me please even with
friends that I talk to you nowadays the
question always comes up when do you
want to get married because it's such a
conundrum in this modern day and age
where you want to have a successful
career you want to be your own person
but everybody's magic number is still 30
they're like I want to be married by 30
I want to have kids by 35 and to me it
does feel like a really [ __ ] unfair
biological trap because men have so much
time and they're also told that they are
attractive for so much longer like a guy
who's 45 people are still like daddy
woman who are 45 and single they're not
like zombie mommy what yeah let's take
that back
men feel like they have so much longer
to get married and I think that
definitely does give them an advantage
in the dating game because they don't
feel the same pressure that a lot of
young women do to lock somebody down
they feel like they have time they feel
like they have options and therefore
they can shop around more and women are
left with this scares me mindset of like
I better pick up all the good men before
they're gone before they're taken there
aren't gonna be any left what I'm slowly
realizing as I get older is that like
literally every single year I feel like
a different person
I look back in myself from a year ago
and I'm like who the [ __ ] with that
why wish
so dumb why was she so insecure and
that's great because that means that I'm
growing as a human being I have just
become a lot more excited about growing
older I hate that women are told that
they almost lose value as they grow
older it's like what the [ __ ] you gain
experience you gain knowledge I'm gonna
be smarter funnier better at sex finally
figure out how to style my bangs when
I'm 30 like I'm just gonna objectively
be a better person and why wouldn't
somebody want to date that person - I
was talking to my friend Damon about
this actually he's 27 single traveling
the world living in Paris having
threesomes with French dudes like Damon
is living the life and I think I used to
like in this very conservative mindset
almost look down on him and be like oh
like I can't believe he's so
irresponsible what is he doing at 27 not
trying to settle down honestly that was
a really judgy mentality so I'm sorry to
even but obviously as I've gotten to
know him better I've come to respect the
[ __ ] out of him I think it's so cool
that he's doing exactly what he wants to
do something he told me that I actually
really liked is that even if you don't
get married you don't die alone this is
like something people joke about all the
time we go forever alone I'm gonna die
alone like no if you grow up in you're
single that doesn't mean that you're
alone you'd have your friends you have
your family honestly I want to be one of
those people at like a retirement home
with my girls quad stoic gossiping about
the latest feminist theory and that
would be a great way to grow old so
people like Damon have definitely helped
me feel less pressure to you know lock
it down and get married because I think
no matter how my life turns out I'm
gonna have a [ __ ] blast yeah that's a
good feeling
now another more internal pressure that
I felt to be in a relationship was the
desire for vicarious success my freshman
year in college was definitely my most
boy-crazy year the year that I felt the
most dependent on relationships and that
also happened to be the year that I felt
the least sure of my career and myself
and whether I would ever achieve any
success
basically in high school I was blessed
with the confidence that only a 17 year
old right after she takes her SATs has
and that I like literally thought I
could conquer the world I was like I'm
the smartest person in all of suburban
Maryland
I am the best filmmaker everybody thinks
I'm gonna win an Oscar and therefore I
shout but once I got to film school I
was like oh no I knew nothing about this
industry I have no idea
whether I will ever be successful not to
mention even employed literally some of
my professors in college said the best
way to be in the film industry was to
just marry rich so that you have the
time and money to make what you want
yeah things I learned in college can't
believe that I paid like a hundred fifty
thousand dollars for that piece of
information thank you if I could have
kept my tuition money I could be my own
[ __ ] sugar daddy this sounds so gold
degree voltage i I think deep down I
just wanted like security and that
wasn't like ooh let me find a rich sugar
daddy I think I just wanted to I think I
was just scared that my future wouldn't
work out and I was scared that I
literally wouldn't have anywhere to go
after graduation and it made me feel
like I could maybe have more of a
purpose if I just attached my purpose to
somebody else that's just like looking
back I'm like if I had continued dating
my first boyfriend for like all of
college and really invested in the
relationship and gave it so much time
would I have gone out of my way to start
a YouTube channel would I have put all
of my heart and soul into that would I
be where I am today I want to say that
it's possible but I think that at that
stage in my life where I was at my
lowest career confidence I don't think I
would have pushed myself to go out there
and make something for myself if I was
already at such a young age putting
myself in this like housewife mentality
I know some women really do want to be
like a housewife or a mother and I think
those are really important jobs as well
but I would say if you're unsure of your
life right now
don't settle into like the mindset of
being the sidekick or the love interest
like you are still the protagonist of
your own life even if you're having a
rocky time right now give yourself the
time and the passion to you know write
your own story that sounds so cheesy but
like you know what I mean the last kind
of flawed influence I had that made me
feel so bad for being single was
slut-shaming and our fucked-up
relationship with women's sexuality
something that still frustrates me to
this day is the fact that women are
considered [ __ ] if they have sex
with multiple men then if they're having
the same amount of sex with one man in a
relationship and I think that when I was
younger especially I really identified
as like a good girl
I was a rule follower I did all the
things that people wanted me to do that
made me socially acceptable and maybe
classy and so I never really got to have
the fun of being single or take full
advantage of it because I didn't feel
like I could have sex with guys I felt
like I couldn't sleep around and if I
wanted to have sex regularly I had to be
in a relationship and you know how bad
decisions are when you make them when
you're horny some of my friends even now
will talk about their number as in the
number of guys that they've had sex with
and keeping that number low I think a
lot of women feel pressure to not sleep
with that many guys in their lifetime
for a long time I did and I felt like
every new guy that I had sex with I was
ticking one box off of my [ __ ] like
bingo board I only had so many chances
in my life so he had to be worth it
and now like I don't [ __ ] count like
who is counting are you serious if
anybody needs to ask you how many guys
you've slept with in order to date you
or in order to be your friend literally
[ __ ] them don't literally [ __ ] them
actually because they sound like kind of
an [ __ ] cut them out of your life
[ __ ] like we don't need that energy I
think it's unfair the way that we talk
about casual sex because it genuinely
makes it more fun for guys to be single
because they can like [ __ ] around and
they are congratulated they're more
masculine that they're a sexy bachelor
and a lot of women don't get to have
that same amount of fun so I'd encourage
you guys I know it's easier said than
done
but there is no need to be counting if
you want to do something do it and take
full advantage of the time in your life
that you have when you're single one of
the best advice that I got from somebody
who was married was that she wishes that
she had sex with more people before he
got married because like one day that
guy might come around and that's the
last guy you'll ever have sex with so
[ __ ] carpe diem babyhood before I go
instead of just like complaining about
the patriarchy for this entire video I
didn't want to give you guys some kind
of actionable tips that have definitely
helped me enjoy being single number one
get comfortable going out alone one of
my friends from film school literally
will take herself to a movie every week
she'll buy herself soup at a restaurant
and just sit alone and eat the soup and
they go to the movie theater and have
herself a [ __ ] blast and I really
admire that the first time that I went
out alone to a restaurant I was so
self-conscious and I was
so terrified everybody's like who's that
Lane girl eating by herself but at the
end of the day nobody cared I got to
enjoy a really good pizza and then I
went on my merry way I promise you
anything that you can do with the
significant other you can plan and do
for yourself you just have to take that
extra time to put in the effort and go
and make like me time for yourself you I
hate phrasing me time it's so like wait
Pinterest girl but like honestly they're
kind of on to something it's nice to
have me time sometimes number to get
comfortable putting yourself out there
and ultimately getting rejected kind of
a lot I think a lot of people can be
scared of being single because it does
involve so much more like putting
yourself out there you're not sure that
you have somebody to come home to you're
not sure somebody will be there for you
at a party but it is also something that
is really exciting if you learn how to
take rejection honestly the way that I
learned is just putting myself out there
like so many [ __ ] times it feels so
painful at first but then when you're on
you're like 50th time where you like are
trying to chat with somebody on a dating
app and they hit you back with a do you
have coronavirus true story you're just
like [ __ ] you and also who next one
number three is a little depressing but
getting broken up with has actually
helped change my perspective on being
single so much I've been through three
relationships at this point and I've
gotten a lot more comfortable being
single because I don't view
relationships is like life or death
anymore and I also know the hardships
that come with relationships a lot of
the times when you're younger and you
just think that relationships are like
Tumblr photos it's a montage of
beautiful people kissing at the sunset
and it doesn't always feel like that
like relationships are hard [ __ ] work
too so it's definitely made me realize
there are pluses and minuses of
relationships and of being single and
it's made me romanticize relationships a
lot less and make me realize that being
single isn't so bad in comparison and
lastly and most importantly realize that
this is such an important time in your
life for personal growth and development
and just like figuring out who the [ __ ]
you are being single and realizing that
I only have myself to rely on I have to
spend this much time with myself and
realizing that I have the power over my
life to move for I want to change
careers to change up my style to be
friends with new people it really pushes
me to develop as a human being and
really think about what I want in life
and who I want to be that is like some
of the mo
just exciting [ __ ] it can be painful
sometimes but goddamn it it is a good
feeling so anyway I am running super
late so thank you guys so much for
watching shout out to all my single
ladies this Valentine's Day I hope that
you have a fantastic time with yourself
or your friends or whoever you're [ __ ]
at the moment and I will see you guys
next week bye
[Music]