"It's like the riddle of the Sphinx... why are there so many great unmarried women, and no great unmarried men?"
About this Quote
She packages a cultural indictment as a cocktail-party quip: the “riddle of the Sphinx” makes singleness sound ancient, unsolved, and faintly taboo, while the punchline exposes how lopsided our mythology is. The joke works because it pretends to be puzzled by a mystery that society itself manufactures.
Coming from Sarah Jessica Parker, it lands with the bright, knowing cadence of Sex and the City-era feminism: urbane, funny, a little exasperated. “Great unmarried women” is a phrase we recognize instantly because culture keeps inventorying them as exceptions, cautionary tales, or curiosities. “No great unmarried men” is the trapdoor. Male greatness has long been narrated as self-contained - genius, power, artistry - with domestic life treated as optional garnish. Women’s greatness, by contrast, gets routed through relational status: if she’s unmarried, it becomes part of the headline, a clue we’re invited to interpret.
The subtext isn’t that men don’t exist who are brilliant and single; it’s that we don’t file them that way. Bachelorhood reads as freedom, focus, even allure. For women, it’s too often framed as a problem to solve, a failure to be chosen, or an overinvestment in ambition. Parker’s line needles the moral accounting behind those frames: the same independence that crowns a man “dedicated” can brand a woman “difficult.”
By posing it as a riddle, she also mocks the solemnity with which society treats women’s marital status. The real enigma isn’t women; it’s the stories we insist on telling about them.
Coming from Sarah Jessica Parker, it lands with the bright, knowing cadence of Sex and the City-era feminism: urbane, funny, a little exasperated. “Great unmarried women” is a phrase we recognize instantly because culture keeps inventorying them as exceptions, cautionary tales, or curiosities. “No great unmarried men” is the trapdoor. Male greatness has long been narrated as self-contained - genius, power, artistry - with domestic life treated as optional garnish. Women’s greatness, by contrast, gets routed through relational status: if she’s unmarried, it becomes part of the headline, a clue we’re invited to interpret.
The subtext isn’t that men don’t exist who are brilliant and single; it’s that we don’t file them that way. Bachelorhood reads as freedom, focus, even allure. For women, it’s too often framed as a problem to solve, a failure to be chosen, or an overinvestment in ambition. Parker’s line needles the moral accounting behind those frames: the same independence that crowns a man “dedicated” can brand a woman “difficult.”
By posing it as a riddle, she also mocks the solemnity with which society treats women’s marital status. The real enigma isn’t women; it’s the stories we insist on telling about them.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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