TAKE it from me, life as a single woman is not a life: it's a plight.

Days are spent bombarded by images of content couples and cherubic babies while nights are spent weeping soundlessly across the barren tundra of your bed, empty like your useless, treacherous womb. Yeah, right. Bolick to that. Kate Bolick, that is.

Last month Ms Bolick published an article in The Atlantic offering the insight that many modern women will not marry.

It's taken Bolick nigh-on 20 years to work out she might not get married and will have to come to terms with it. So, her life's work is realising she'd better start living. No wonder single women get a bad name. And bad name they get.

Every year, without fail, comes one of these profound memoirs into the plight of the single female. Last year was Lori Gottlieb's Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr Good Enough, which was a backlash against the trend of girls being raised to think they're princesses available only for Prince Charming. My favourite was Tracy McMillan's Why You're Not Married (first reason? You're a bitch), which I thought was fabulous but caused outrage from women who inadvertently showed the reason they aren't married is a lack of sense of humour.

My less profound but mildly more pithy take on such soul-searching articles is: so? So what if some women are single. Some men are single, what have they to say about that? Nothing, because these articles are often glossed with fine, near-sheer misandry.

Ms Bolick's observation that many modern women may not marry has caused a sensation showing that, oddly, the condition of single women is still something to cause curiosity and debate. But for a start, the millennium predictions forecast that by 2010, 40% of the population will be living a single life. Here we are doing just that. The real problem is that popular culture has failed to catch up with reality.

Films still show the single woman in all her tearful, lonely retro glory. Even the fantastic Bridesmaids this summer ended on an upnote because the heroine found a man. She still had no job and nowhere to live but, praise Jove, she had a man. Beautiful, rich, successful Jennifer Aniston and Cameron Diaz are lamented on the front of magazines for their tragic single lives.

My favourite tract on the single condition was entitled Even God is Single: (So Stop Giving Me A Hard Time). Although about 100 years old, the crie de coeur is ever relevant.

I am single because I am stubborn, self-sufficient and I find boyfriends stressful and time-consuming. It's not a badge of honour but at least I'm honest. The real question women, popular culture and, to some extent, politicians (Hullo, David Cameron, patron saint of marriage) should be asking is not, why are you single but why are you in a relationship?

Let me pass you over to Phillip Larkin for a second, who said it more beautifully than I ever could: "two can live as stupidly as one". Instead of treating single women as social pariahs, treat them as the social service they are. As a single female I am the go-to girl among my friends for dog-sitting, cat-sitting and baby-sitting. I'm on call for help with sick people, broken-hearted people, people whose boyfriends are working away and find themselves facing down an empty evening.

Research shows single women are healthier, financially more robust and more social. Yes, there are women for whom the be-all and end-all is to find a man. Others want to stay single, others want to co-habit. Fine. It doesn't make such a headline-grabbing sentiment but the truth is, we're not a homogenous mass. Being single is neither gender's "fault" and in no way a fault. Now, please, for some acknowledgement of that.