The Zeitgeist with Howard Barbanel

    

The album covers to Jan and Dean's "Surf City" and Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady."

Two Girls for Every Boy

In July 1963 Jan and Dean had a number one Billboard hit with “Surf City,” it stayed at the top of the charts for two weeks and was the first surf song ever to hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart. Factoid – it was mainly written by Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys.

Some of the song’s memorable lyrics include “two girls for every boy” and “Well, with two swingin’ honeys for every guy and all you gotta do is just wink your eye,” followed by  “Ya, we’re goin’ to Surf City, ’cause it’s two to one you know we’re goin’ to Surf City, gonna have some fun, now two girls for every boy..”

Now, Jan Berry and Dean Torrance were singing about a mythological, make-believe Pacific coast town where every day was “Beach Blanket Bingo,” but the U.S. Census Bureau is reporting in its 2010 census data that Jan and Dean’s feverish dreams have finally come true here on the east coast, specifically on the island of Manhattan (and some of Brooklyn).  Of people between 20-29, 64.5 percent of the population of the Upper East Side zip code 10075 is comprised of women. Another Upper East Side neighborhood is close behind at 62.7 percent female, that being 10065. In the posh 10021 neighborhood on the UES, 60.2 percent of the population of 25-29 year olds is female.

Looking for a little younger? In the 10001 neighborhood of Chelsea (which includes F.I.T.) a whopping 66.8 percent of the population of 20 to 24 year-olds are female and its 65.4 percent in 10065 in the UES. Older women, perhaps? In Brooklyn’s Starrett City area (zip 11239) you have 64.7 percent of the population of 30-34 year olds are female while in mixed Hipster/Hasid Williamsburg, the figure is 60.3 percent in that same age category.

Mark Regnerus, one of the authors of “How Young Americans Meet, Mate and Think About Marrying” attributes the high percentage of women to “young gals tending to flock to the glamorous city life more than men, trying to achieve their Carie Bradshaw fantasies.”  For those of you unfamiliar with Ms. Bradshaw, she would be the main character in the “Sex and the City” franchise of books, TV shows and movies.

Census numbers also reveal very high percentages of unmarried females throughout Manhattan and these numbers escalate with age. The New York Post reports that “New York state has the country’s highest percentage of women who have never tied the knot…the marital affairs are particularly bleak in the city, where gals who have never wed make up 42 percent of the population,” up from 39 percent in 2006.

Across the country, also according to the Census Bureau in 2010 there were 61.5 million Americans who’ve never married which accounts for 26.9 percent of the U.S. population, up from 40.4 million 20 years ago. The fertility rate (the number of births per 1,000 women ages 15-44) in New York is 61.7 as contrasted to 88.4 in Utah. At least we beat Vermont which comes in dead last at 50.8. In 1990 births by unwed mothers was at 26.6 percent and in 2008 it rose to 40.6 percent. Men are an option.

In this, my new iteration of single life, I’ve discovered these demographic facts first hand. New York has seen the “triumph” of feminism in full force. Women have been liberated every which way, have drunk the Kool-Aid to such a degree that, as I wrote in a prior column this summer, (“What Men Want,” available on our website, Standardli.com) women often don’t want to accommodate men in the least, when in fact, to assuage their deep loneliness and yearning for children they ought to be doing precisely that. Men don’t want to be treated badly, so because of the numbers in their favor, they just move on in the never-ending buffet line that is New York dating. Jewish women comprise the overwhelming majority of Manhattan never-marrieds over 35 and the way many of them treat men has driven many a Jewish male into the arms of non-Jewish women.

For many a New York woman, the apogee of living is personified by their one bedroom Manhattan apartments and their designer clothes, Carrie Bradshaw-style. New York is teeming with them and you’d be surprised (and perhaps if you’re older, suburban and married) somewhat mortified at the sheer number of never-married women 35-45 in New York. The career as stand-in for lasting personal relationships is ubiquitous. Living in the suburbs is considered a fate worse than death.

The restaurant industry in Manhattan is probably the strongest in the country thanks to the seven-day dating cycle and the never ending first through third date merry-go-round. Housing prices are off the charts in the city because there is next to no turnover as single people remain single indefinitely and stay in their apartments for decades instead of marrying and moving out to the suburbs. (Conversely, our home values in The Five Towns would be appreciably higher were more folks looking for family housing).

Often, even if you can break through the one or two month barrier, so many of the never-marrieds become so persnickety and hyper-judgmental (and hyper-comparing to prior flames in their imaginations) that they render it nearly impossible for most men to live up to their unattainable ideals – which makes it easier for them to migrate to the next person thereby avoiding emotional intimacy and commitment.

In the 1930’s Duke Ellington penned a classic which is now in the canon of the Great American Songbook called “Sophisticated Lady,” which was covered by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Linda Ronstadt among others. The depression-era lyrics are as valid today as they were nearly 80 years ago:

They say into your early life romance came
And in this heart of yours burned a flame
A flame that flickered one day and died away
Then, with disillusion deep in your eyes
You learned that fools in love soon grow wise
The years have changed you, somehow
I see you now
Smoking, drinking, never thinking of tomorrow, nonchalant,
Diamonds shining, dancing, dining with some man in a restaurant
Is that all you really want?
No, sophisticated lady,
I know, you miss the love you lost long ago
And when nobody is nigh you cry.