A Table for One

Book excerpt: Table for one A critical reading of singlehood, gender and time is the first book to consider the profound relationship between singlehood and time. Drawing on a wide range of cultural resources - including web columns, blogs, advice columns, popular clichés, advertisements and references from television and cinema, the author challenges the conventional meaning-making processes of singlehood and time. Lahad's analysis gives us the opportunity to explore and theorize singlehood through varied temporal concepts such as waiting, wasting, timeout, age, the life course, linearity and commodification of time. This unique analytical approach enables the fresh consideration of some of our dominant perceptions about collective clocks, schedules, time tables and the temporal organization of social life in general.