This is for My Girls All Around the World

Okay, so I don't want to get on my feminist soapbox, but have other single 20-30 year-old woman noticed how often finding the perfect guy is thrown in our faces?

I mean, when you're a naive 13-year-old, you think you'll graduate high school, go to college, fall in love and be married by 23. That's what many of our parents did, so why shouldn't that happen to us? But this isn't 1978, it's 2008. And marriage right out of college is no longer the norm. (Especially if you're like me and went to a college that has a ratio of 65% women to 35% men and those women are ranked in Playboy's Top 10 Hottest Girls on Campus. Not so easy to land a guy with those stats working against you.)

Still, I can't help but notice how critical my single girlfriends are of themselves when they aren't dating anyone. I'm guilty of it, too.

As a human race, I know we all long for companionship. But why is it okay for guys to still be single until 40, yet as women, we're either looked down upon or feel inadequate for not having a ring on our finger by our 30th birthday?

When we really stop and take a look at it, how far have we come, as a gender, in the past century?

Sure, we can vote, acquire birth control and fight in wars. But are we still equating our self-worth with snagging Mr. Right?

I think so. Just look at all the TV shows, movies and books targeted to our age group:

*Take the Friends series finale. Rachel gave up the chance to live in Paris and move up in her career for Ross.
*Even Carrie forgave Big for the millionth time and married him. Was anyone else upset with her storyline in the movie?
*And in all my favorite chick lit books (Something Blue, Good in Bed, To Have and to Hold), the heroines, at the end of their journey of growth and self-discovery, always end up with a male by their side.

Please do not misunderstand my intentions of this post. I am not anti-marriage. I would eventually like to get married to Mr. Perfect. (Though I'm sure, like everything else, I will be fashionably late in getting to that point. And I will most certainly be late to my own wedding.)

My goal was to give all of us women a boost. Let's stop suppressing ourselves from outside influences and our own self-doubts and start feeling assured with who were are as a person, regardless of our relationship status.