PERSONAL ESSAYS

Reader Feedback on "I Was a Single Woman in Washington — and Lived"

I think the author wants to say that DC is a very unromantic city. I totally agree with from a women's perspective. DC is very serious and cold. People think they are well-educated and successful. Yes, they are well-educated. (that is probably why they are not fun). But they are definitely not successful. I know a lot of people in other places who have more money, dress more trendy and have more fun. Regarding the men in DC, they are just unbelievaly unattractive. Maybe they think of power too much, a lot of them are bald, and fat due to lack of exercise. I seldom see a handsome man, especially in suburb Maryland. This is depressing for women. I have been so many places, never see a place with so many ulgy men. Men in New York City know how to dress, men in LA are fun, men in San Francisco are romantic, even men in North Carolina (yes, in the South) are athletic. I do not know what makes men in DC think they are superior. They absoltely have nothing but probably a degree from Ivy school.
--rab
01/10

From a single successful business guy in Washington, very well said --
--sel
05/25

Hi - loved your essay - I lived in DC (now i'm in boston) -and I always tried to describe it to friends - people don't come to washington to be somewhere, they come to do something - and they all have an id card clipped to their jackets on the metro that says i can go somewhere you can't... it's a man's world still - where the clicking of heels brings every little face peeking out of the offices in the russell building, etc. just to see who the new girl is... and the sex underscores everything but you're left questioning if it's real. thanks for an honest portrayal - and i'm glad someone else was inspired by washington's weirdness.
--SB
05/08

I agree with most of the negative comments about this inexperienced and immature writer. I felt like I was reading the blog of a 15 year old girl who had as little experience with personal relationships as the victims she so sloppily skewers in her essay. So, let's say there is a relationship between power and sexual impotence or the inability to associate sex with anything else but conquest, even the false appearance of it. Where are the questions/opinions, anything talking about the WHY? Where is the subtext of this piece? It is as shallow as her subjects and it is obvious she is not doing this intentionally as a creative devise. She says she is in love with a man in NY, but I don't see her wanting to trade in the veneer of DC society for anything real. Her observations may be correct but they do go any further than a Disney Cartoon. My last question is: why is this piece still on your page?
--lls
02/19

Insightful, and ever so eloquently put.
--
12/16

Really not sure what to think here. I get the feeling this article would be far more aptly titled "being single in a nations capital city. The author does an almost-good job looking criticly at the sexual aspect of these types, but just fails to really get to the real substance of the matter but does a average job at making the reader think about issues so for that i give her credit. However i feel the article could've gone in a differet dirrection and been a bit more productive. The anonimity is something tha t i feel did need to be granted as unfortunately speaking this candidly, whether we as her audience agree with the things she said, could've caused alot of trouble, as in any power circle, you never openly tell what you think of others in the circles. Sure whispering in hallways or on the street to friends is one thing, but even then its who and how much. Politics is a nasty game, you can never be 100 percent open with anyone who plays politics. So her saying these things with her name would probably make it relatively easy for people to realize who she meant if they haven't already, (dc insiders and the like).
--tj
12/16

Birds of a feather flock together, anonymous. You chose to surround yourself with superficial people, and then you report your abject shock at how superficial everyone is. One thing I really like about Washington is that people like yourself tend to get together and have a wholly different experience than the residents, which insulates the rest of us from your ladder-climbing and prejudices. Have fun in New York - - I hear superficial is really "in" up there.
--mrb
12/10

Insightful !
--hm
12/06

Great piece...nicely written
--
11/19

I was also a single woman in DC (and a fellow Georgetown alum) and this article is dead on in so many ways - annoying classmates bragging about their SATs, people not living in their bodies, people obsessed with power, the ritual of the business card...it gave me flashbacks.
--JLP
11/14

Interesting. I've heard this kind of thing before -- I live in Baltimore and have considered moving to DC for work when I retire from the Navy. I've been told that it's all about money and power there, and I need to take that into consideration if I move there and try to date. I'm sure I'm not interested in playing those games, but it wasn't the Washington insider crowd I was looking to invest in -- it was the international community and presence of "the whole world" in one city. I may go; I may not. If nothing else, I'm sure it'll be worth the experience. Maybe I'll take a shot for a year and see if anyone is real.
--dsm
11/12

So close yet so far away. From a female perspective, it's understandable that you missed the key element in the culture that makes it all work despite inhuman levels of personal dysfunction. The only honest people I ever met in D.C., the only people that really get it, because they are the pressure valve watching everything from just the right perspective...the hookers. D.C. is loaded with escorts like no other place on the planet. D.C. men are dysfunctional in as much as their training as citizens taught them to subjugate their own natural urges to the point of serious and severe repression. That they do such absurd and uncivil things like dating pages is thus not at all surprising. They are driven to it, because they don't know at all what they doing in the moment under such extreme pressure. How else can you explain all the ridiculous behavior of public officials? It's absolutely surreal and the power in Washington is simply too much for any human to withstand without repressing their human needs. I suspect over time, as Washington becomes more and more powerful, we will see stranger and stranger things that will shock and dismay those of us who desire to be simply "normal".
--trd
11/07

What a boring lady and a boring story. If you only socialize with people in your field of work your going to have limited dating options. DC is not the hippest town, but there are options besides political events. Why would Nerve post this article? her thoughts do not represent any single women I know.
--AR
10/31

spot on... you nailed it!..
--sb
10/31

I'm a short bald guy in my 30s and I see alot of this woman in DC. Please, by all means, if you hate it so much, leave. DC can be shallow enough without you. But if you aren't shallow, its really a great city, with alot to offer.
--Rx
10/30

After reading this, all I can say is: Thank God I'm happily married to a woman who actually cares about me. Jeez, tell this woman to go get laid.
--rsc
10/28

Thank you for reminding me why D.C. was a horrid place to live!
--ESm
10/28

I agree with GBB. This isn't the Washington I know at all. This is a poorly written piece, but the worst thing is that it's so narrow - anonymous never ventured outside the political world to find other types of guys. If she had, she might have had better luck. I know Washington has a bad rep for being conservative, boring, and power-obsessed, but that's just political Washington. I never run into any of those douchebags, because I don't hang out on the Hill or K street. It can be done, trust me.
--KK
10/27

This lady may well be the biggest jerk to come out of Georgetown since Pat Buchanan, and I would know as an alumni (I bet she didn’t even graduate from SFS …loser!). Statements like “a chunky loser without hair in his thirties or forties who would never have a chance with me” don’t come across as brutal honesty from a liberated, intelligent, and saucy lady. No, they sound like exactly what they are: shock-n-awe displays of bitchiness. Caustic and catty in deconstructing the aggressive power-hungry nerds who - allegedly - lust after her like awkward adolescents, Anonymous fails to appreciate that her singleness may have as much to do with her unbearable attitude as any systemic deficiency in the DC dating scene. And I really like the fact that she refuses to divulge her identity. Anonymous writes a whole essay on the fakeness of DC but God forbid she compromise her presumably prim and proper professional persona by publicly associating herself with a morally relativistic, sodomite outfit like Nerve. The article is pretentious, disdainful, and dishonest in equal measure, and Anonymous’ ice queen attitude would kill any normal man’s sexual interest more quickly than nude pictures of Barbara Bush (unless she's Angelina Jolie-hot, in which case I retract this entire statement).
--ABR
10/26

I think I'm going to puke. The journalist is probably overwieght, magnifying her insecurities. She obviously needs a good lay before she has a nervous breakdown.
--VRD
10/26

I live in DC, and I see some of this. But I'm gay, so it's different. I wish the person I'm involved with wanted to show me off -- instead, we hang out privately and have sex. I've met people who acted like they were totally interested in me, but wouldn't give me their card because it said where they worked and who they worked for. I think that's just as sad as getting shown off without the sex. It's not just very political Republican men who aren't out.
--
10/25

Zzzzzzzzzz.
--TWB
10/25

"But for the most part, people don't really want to sleep with you." An admission that perhaps explains the entire, weary hatchet job.
--sce
10/25

I lived in DC for most of the 90's, and Anonymous sounds like one of the myriads who came to glom onto the political scene, ate, drank, and fucked it, then complained that nothing else ever went on. Her single cute journalist friend told her she'd have to 'lower her standards," but we never hear what those standards are. I'm gonna take a flyer that they involved model-like good looks and a substantial bank balance. And, anyone who tosses out sentences like "....a chunky loser without hair in his thirties or forties who would never have a chance with me" is an asshole. I will brook no argument on this point. An unmarried Angelina Jolie would be a toolbox saying this, and I'll bet the lives of Michael Martin's children that Anonymous is no Jolie. I predict another article dictated to Ada Calhoun in future (get Erin Bradley to punch it up some, willya please) about how, no, really, the men in DC really REALLY suck, how the only single ones are fat and ugly and graceless, and the other ones are (sniff, looking a mile down her nose) are just plain unacceptable. No, Anon, short skirts or no, you only rate a certain level of guy. A smart funny guy with his shit together would climb out the bathroom window rather than finish an evening with this poison pill. cc/EJ below were correct, what leaden clunking prose. "A good looking guy, the kind you'd ask for advice on your stock portfolio"....First, whuh? Second, ka-lannnnggg.
--Cat
10/25

Moe, DC's ugly older brother is Baltimore. If you've ever actually lived or worked or partied in DC, you'd know the Pharmacy Bar, you'd know the Black Cat, and you'd know the Metro Cafe, but anonymous doesn't. That's because when people think DC they think Government. Like when you think South you think Red Neck. Like when I think Moe I think New York snob. I forgive you. Love your brothers.
--GBB
10/25

face it: DC can't hang. and, no matter how much the citizens there like to fool themselves into thinking it's "big city livin'", everyone else knows that it's just a kinda big metropolitan area trying to trick people into forgetting it's the south. hard to do when, ten minutes away you have DC's ugly kid brother, arlington; full of pitcher-swilling, redskin-cheering jerks. technically, it's DC but, honestly, everyone in the world knows that the real capital of america is new york.
--moe
10/25

It certainly is over-generalized. However, it also got me thinking more about one of the questions that appeared in Miss Information a few weeks ago. If I remember correctly, it was a guy who was a lower-end manager at a business in the D.C. area, lamenting that he couldn't find a woman who would have him, because his job title wasn't important enough. After reading the account from Anonymous, it makes me wonder if the guy was also after the look-at-what-I-bagged type of girlfriend, rather than a real relationship, in which case it makes sense why he wasn't finding anyone. (All the women who weren't already sick of being status symbols were also the ones looking for more important people.) If that's the case, maybe this article will give him something to think about.
--JCF
10/25

Gross. I'm probably being too sensitive, but I resent having my home town characterized this way. Speak only for yourself, "Anonymous." The repeated generalizations were just too much. Although our government happens to be based there, D.C. is actually home to a whole lot of other folks too, believe it or not, and some of us take exception to being lumped in with the erroneous notion of what and who makes up the District. So you spent time at a prestigious university and then broke bread with rich people. Great. This experience mirrors probably about 6% of D.C.'s population. The rest of us were hanging in Rock Creek, growing up funky and scared and exhilerated and curious, falling in love and making memories out of the moist smells of Autumn, watching our sisters be born, sneaking out at night to whisper across the echo chamber downtown, and making friends with the crazy Rasta at Eastern market and walking all the way back to 14th street with him, just because. This essay was an offense to the real D.C.
--k
10/25

I LOVED this. It's so funny, and dead on.
--AM
10/24

Why did Nerve go with an As Told To for this piece? It's a format that seems to work best when describing truly bizarre/unusual circumstances and/or the storyteller isn't a writer. Washington isn't all that wacky (I'm not even convinced it's interesting) and the woman claims to be a journalist. So what's the deal? There may be a good story here, but we'll never know; this wasn't the way to tell it.
--dh
10/24

The first thing I did was go to a dinner party. The guests included a defense contractor, a woman just in from Baghdad (who flinched every time a garbage truck rolled by) and a busty religion outreach director for a Democratic candidate. The food's really nice but what do we have in common besides the fact that we're Washington singles? It all seemed sort of awkward. Then at the end of the dinner, the host comes out and in his hand he has . . . Trivial Pursuit. My heart just sank As told to Ada Calhoun, by a moron.
--mg
10/24

I agree with CC, this was awful, it felt like I was reading some high school freshman's diary. I cannot believe that she is a journalist.
--EJ
10/24

"Like maybe" the person who left comments below is dead wrong. This was a highly descriptive account of how couples behave in a foreign world of powerplays and showmanship. It was strongest in its depiction of the real moments real people share, and in that vein was well served by the article's conversational style. This is how people talk, and I can't imagine anything more appropriate than the confessional's breezy, unpretentious manner.
--BL
10/24

This might have been an interesting article, but it is so poorly written! For a professional journalist, I think she could have done better, like maybe some real insights or clever wording...
--CC
10/24

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