"In life, single women are the most vulnerable adults. In movies, they are given imaginary power"
About this Quote
Wurtzel lands the punch in the hinge between “life” and “movies,” where culture launders discomfort into fantasy. Her claim isn’t that single women are weak, or that films are simply lying; it’s that the same society that leaves unmarried women exposed also can’t bear to look directly at that exposure. So the movies compensate with “imaginary power” - a curated omnipotence that flatters audiences while keeping real structures intact.
The line’s sting comes from its blunt hierarchy: “the most vulnerable adults.” Not girls, not wives, not mothers - adults who are supposed to have arrived at safety and legitimacy. Wurtzel implies that, for women, adulthood is still conditional, granted through coupling. Singlehood becomes a kind of civic disqualification: fewer economic buffers, more social scrutiny, a higher likelihood of being treated as available, suspect, or disposable.
Then she turns to cinema, where the single woman is often re-skinned as a superhero, a ruthless boss, a sexual free agent, a manic avatar of choice. That “power” is “imaginary” not because the characters aren’t compelling, but because the empowerment is aesthetic rather than material. It’s a fantasy of control that lets viewers cheer without demanding policy, solidarity, or cultural change.
Context matters: Wurtzel wrote out of the late-20th-century confessional mode, when women’s interior lives were marketable but their anger was still treated as a genre. The quote reads like a warning against representation-as-restitution: giving a woman a glossy narrative of dominance is easier than giving her the conditions that make dominance unnecessary.
The line’s sting comes from its blunt hierarchy: “the most vulnerable adults.” Not girls, not wives, not mothers - adults who are supposed to have arrived at safety and legitimacy. Wurtzel implies that, for women, adulthood is still conditional, granted through coupling. Singlehood becomes a kind of civic disqualification: fewer economic buffers, more social scrutiny, a higher likelihood of being treated as available, suspect, or disposable.
Then she turns to cinema, where the single woman is often re-skinned as a superhero, a ruthless boss, a sexual free agent, a manic avatar of choice. That “power” is “imaginary” not because the characters aren’t compelling, but because the empowerment is aesthetic rather than material. It’s a fantasy of control that lets viewers cheer without demanding policy, solidarity, or cultural change.
Context matters: Wurtzel wrote out of the late-20th-century confessional mode, when women’s interior lives were marketable but their anger was still treated as a genre. The quote reads like a warning against representation-as-restitution: giving a woman a glossy narrative of dominance is easier than giving her the conditions that make dominance unnecessary.
Quote Details
| Topic | Movie |
|---|
More Quotes by Elizabeth
Add to List
