By Park Eun-jeong and An Ka-yeong
Have you ever seen ``Sex and the City"? If your answer is yes, you will be interested in this essay. Designer clothes and bags, brunches at fancy restaurants and frequent girls-night-outs at the hottest spots in Manhattan; those are the glamorous lives of the four ladies on the show. I ask myself, ``What do they have in common?" A lucrative career and no husband!
In Japan, ``hanakosan." In Korea, ``gold misses" ― a term created from the Konglish ``old miss." Both refer to a single woman in her 30s or over. The difference between the two is that the former simply ``failed" to get married, while the latter chose not to.
A ``gold miss" has an impressive academic background and enough financial power to possess a Volkswagen and a luxurious apartment of her own. Attractive looks, of course. You name it! She is the whole package and luckily ― though some might say ``sadly" ― without a husband.
``Gold miss" has become a trendy word in Korea. We even have words for higher and lower versions: ``platinum miss" and ``silver Miss," respectively. A new lexicon means a new phenomenon. So we cannot help asking: ``Why are women not getting married?"
To begin with, there are some education factors. Our mother's generation was raised to believe that education was the monopoly of men. For my mother and aunt, a virtuous woman should get married in her early 20s and sacrifice her life for her family. Put simply, there is no HERSELF in her life. She was a wife, a mother, a daughter-in-law, and a sister-in-law.
But things have changed. Education does exclusively exist for her counterpart any more. Instead, women are overpowering men in various academic fields. An increasing number of women go to university and graduate school. It means they are better educated and their point of view has changed. As a daughter, they have seen how much sacrifice and devotion is required to live as a woman, especially in Korea. Now they are refusing to follow in the past generation's footsteps. The more educated they are, the more skeptical they become: So, why marriage?
In addition, it's all about financial security. Better education brings a better job and it naturally leads to more income; hence, financial independence. After they finish their education, they are more likely to have a job that guarantees them enough money to enjoy their lives on their own. As a result, unlike their predecessors who had to tie the knot very young for financial support from their husband, they don't see marriage as their top priority. They've got brains. They've got money. All they need is freedom. To put it another way, the last thing they need is a husband, the so-called freedom-killer. Now here comes the question again: why marriage?
Last but not least, the social atmosphere encourages females to dare to be a ``gold miss." Women who are still single in their 30s used to be called ``old miss" and failed to earn a positive reputation. They were assumed to have something wrong with them, which made them ineligible to be married. But now they are not miserable spinsters desperate to get hitched. Instead, they are idols. They are every little girl's ``wannabe." They also have become one of the major targets in fashion, food, and cultural industry. Gold misses are the most valuable customers; willing to pay for whatever they want, no matter how expensive it is. Hence many companies keep launching new product lines exclusive to gold misses. Not familiar to you? Just look around! They are everywhere. They are your sisters, friends, and colleagues ― having a good time with their fabulous gold miss friends. So then: why marriage?
It is obvious that we are living in a gold miss-friendly world. However, one might wonder: Did they really choose to be a gold miss? They might have just simply missed their chance to get married because they spent too much time becoming what they are now. So they end up with money and fame but not a family. It is very tempting to grab one of them and ask ``Are you really happy?" Sometimes we secretly want their lives, but what if ``gold miss" is just a term to make them feel good about themselves? What if they are just pretending they don't care about the happily-ever-after kind of story and what they really want is a man to go back to after a long day at work? As women who have a chance to be one of them ― if not ``Gold Miss," at least ``Silver Miss" ― those questions make us feel very uncomfortable. However, if we get married at some point, we will have no choice but to give up some of our dreams for the family. From the ``I do" moment, we've got everything except OURSELVES. So, here comes the last question: why not GOLD MISS?
The co-writers teach English in Gyeonggi Province. They can be reached at pullip58@empal.com and loveaky@hotmail.com, respectively.