It Is My Turn Now: How and Why ‘Single’ Women Complain about Non-Reciprocal Gift-Giving

Introduction: And What if I Don’t?

In a memorable episode of the HBO Television series Sex and The City (SaTC), Carrie Bradshaw, the programme’s protagonist, asks Kyra, a married friend, to compensate her for the loss of a treasured pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes during Kyra’s baby shower. Kyra chides Carrie for spending US$485 on a pair of shoes, and for living a spendthrift single and childless lifestyle. Rejecting this criticism, Carrie insists that Kyra reimburse her for her loss. In a practical – and provocative – move, Carrie then opens a ‘self-registry’ at the Manolo Blahnik store. Processing the incident and trying to justify her demand, Carrie immerses herself in a highly calculative, concrete accounting of her accumulated – and unilateral – support for Kyra’s life choices: engagement party, wedding, subsequent baby showers. Out of a sense of entitlement, and the wish to be recognised on her own terms, she details her accrued financial investment in Kyra’s choices:

I did a little mental addition. Over the years, I have bought Kyra an engagement gift, a wedding gift, and then there was the trip to Maine for the wedding, and three baby gifts. In total, I have spent over $23,000 celebrating her choices. And she is shaming me for spending a lousy 485 bucks on myself? (Star et al., 2003)

We open this article with an account of this pivotal scene in SaTC because it serves as a highly popularised point of departure for numerous online discussions by and about single women who, like Carrie, dare to voice frustration about their non-reciprocal gifting transactions with married people (the latter often also parents). Expressing unease about what they see as a consistent unfairness underpinning these relations – most notably with friends, co-workers and family members – they draw on Carrie’s words to complain about the unfairness, and to echo their demand for reciprocity.

Analysing this emerging trend of complaints by singles about unfair gifting patterns, we argue that these complaints constitute a discursive setting of a broader critique of social hierarchies between ‘the wedded’ and ‘singles’, and broader negotiations towards recognition. We unpack the discursive strategies through which singles seek to legitimise and substantiate their call, as well as to manage the risks that publicly bringing up such a critique may entail – taking particular care to save both face and relationships.

Based on a wide range of digitally mediated discourses on imbalanced gift exchange between ‘singles’ and ‘wedded’, this article calls attention to the link between marital status and patterns of gifting. This imbalance is embedded within entrenched social norms normalising the practice of the first gifting the second on auspicious occasions attached to marital and family-life choices (Carter and Smith, 2020) – but without a reciprocal norm of the second gifting back to the first. We find gift exchange to be a productive, and largely underexplored, theoretical prism through which to explore the marginalised status of singlehood. Just as important, we find singlehood to be an intriguing case study with which to engage with broader sociological questions about non-reciprocal exchange relations. Ultimately, the sociological problematisation that lies at the heart of this article is: what happens when reciprocating is improbable, due to the absence of norms and etiquette for ‘giving back’?

The interlocutors in this emerging public critique identify as ‘singles’ – by which they mean that they are not in a long-term relationship, and do not have children. Their primary counterpoint of reference is a rather rigid and traditional category of recipients, consisting mostly of married individuals immersed in formal partnership arrangements and, sometimes, subsequently, in parenthood. Interestingly, this category generally does not encompass alternative configurations of intimate relations and familial formations, such as cohabitating couples or single parents. Hence, the discursive outcome is a somewhat schematic and dichotomous formula, lacking nuance and diversity, that simply juxtaposes ‘singles’ with ‘married’.

As presented so bluntly in the episode of SaTC discussed above, the life paths of singles tend to be overlooked in significant ways, compared to those of their married counterparts (see, for example, DePaulo, 2006; Lahad, 2014; Simpson, 2006; Taylor, 2011). While weddings, as an ‘ever evolving social ritual’ (Carter and Smith, 2020: 57) retain rich symbolism, singles generally lack rites of passage for recognising and celebrating auspicious occasions in their adulthood trajectory (Lahad and Kravel-Tovi, 2020). Single adults simply cannot enjoy the benefits (either material or symbolic) of being worthy receivers. They have no commensurable, equivalent occasions for receiving back what they, inevitably and accumulatively, have given to others in the context of matrimonial and family-in-the-making celebrations. The non-reciprocity that characterises their gift relations with others is anchored in their single status. Some single women do not intend to change their marital and/or family status, and thus will probably never have the opportunity to receive back in the context of celebrating personal milestones. Other singles wish – or, at least, do not rule out – the possibility of marriage, which leaves open the opportunity to recoup a ‘return’ of sorts on their prior ‘investments’ in social relations. Either way, their singlehood simply does not fit into the conventional configurations of gifting along the lines of marriage and family making – hence creating a generally unilateral flow of gifting within social relations (i.e. of friendship, collegiality and acquaintance) that otherwise could reasonably be expected to manifest as reciprocal in nature (Spencer and Pahl, 2006).

This article introduces the scholarly prism of exchange and gift-giving (influenced by Bourdieu, 1998; Mauss, 2000 [1954]), to the literature on singlehood (e.g. DePaulo, 2006; Lahad, 2017; Taylor, 2011) for the first time. This prism provides a compelling analytic toolbox for understanding the subordinate and inferior position of singles in social life. It does so by exposing the categorical lack of reciprocity that situates singles, persistently, on the giving hand of gifting relations – a position that reflects their secondary status as participants within social relations. To the extent that gifting is a pervasive feature that extends across a wide array of social relations, the unilateral arrangements that bind singles within their relationships – in a society that valorises marriage and coupledom – can tell us much about the profound dimensions of their marginalisation. And, to the extent that the calculations which inform gifting tend to be regarded as sensitive, the public reflections of single women on this otherwise unspoken issue give us a glimpse into their perceptions of their delicate position vis-a-vis their wedded social circles.

Our contribution to the scholarship on singlehood is threefold. First, we point at a basic mechanism that categorically confers inferiority on singles, generally overlooked in sociological literature. Second, we identify a budding discursive site in and through which single women publicly claim visibility and fairness, and in so doing unsettle the underlying normative biases that tie gifting with marriage and family-oriented choices. Third, by analysing the discursive features of their complaints, most notably the carefulness embedded within these texts, we observe public representations of the tacit sensitivities that feature in singles’ social relations with wedded people. Overall, we show how key negotiations against the normalised hierarchies between the wedded and singles can take place in rather mundane settings, such as online discourses, and with regard to such a commonsensical logic regarding gifting relations.

While we aim to contribute to singlehood studies (see, for example, Chow, 2019; DePaulo, 2006; Lahad, 2017; Taylor, 2011) through the perspective of gifting and exchange, we also offer a reversed direction with regard to our theoretical contribution. A great deal of the literature on gifting teaches us about the dynamics of extant reciprocities, or of the intentionally unilateral modes of giving. However, the compelling case study under discussion brings to the fore attempts to turn a unilateral arrangement of gifting into a reciprocal one. Our discursive analysis of these attempts demonstrates the challenge inherent in attempting to resist extant gifting arrangements. Additionally, while the literature emphasises the advantageous positioning of givers over recipients in unilateral arrangements, in this case the giving position is inherently tied with the mistreatment and invisibility of singles, rather than to any social strength.

Before proceeding to the case study under discussion, we explicate our methodological logic and tools, and briefly review the literature on singlehood and on gift-exchange – the two threads that we propose to intertwine here. We then develop our analysis of singles’ claims to be acknowledged as constant givers and worthy recipients.

Methodology and Working Definitions

Our textual analysis grew out of the observation of how single individuals who marry themselves (Lahad and Kravel-Tovi, 2020) create their own wedding registries, construing the occasion as a rare and joyful opportunity to receive gifts. An online search via the Google search engine led us – rather to our surprise – to a spate of recent digital texts, in various forms, engaging critically with singlehood and non-reciprocal gift-giving. In particular, we found numerous representations, reflections, references and illustrative examples, published in the form of blogs, columns, advice columns and radio-shows in various digital platforms, including Bolde, Medium, The Huffington Post, The Atlantic, the girlfriend and The Feminista. In some of the texts, ‘singles’ occupy the position of authorship (i.e. blogs). In others, they voice their perspective as interviewees or advice seekers. In any event, all these texts share a common digital social life. They are produced and circulated online, are available in a screen-mediated space and are fashioned to create similar digital practices (i.e. creating and consuming ‘democratised’ possibilities for active responses, via sharing and talkbacks).

The platforms mentioned above are all global venues, catering primarily to an English-speaking readership. The gift-giving practices discussed in our data are highly representative of Americanised consumerist norms surrounding lavish weddings (Ingraham, 2008; Otnes and Pleck, 2003). Some authors explicitly identify as Americans. Others indicate how burdened they are by the excessive expectations of giving that characterise the Americanised wedding formula (Ingraham, 2008).

While not intending to direct our research to the experiences of single women specifically, all the texts that we found concern women. This clear empirical bias notwithstanding, our content analysis indicated that the interlocutors grounded their claims in their ‘single’ status, while paying minimal attention (if any at all) to the gendered aspects of gifting and social relations. Following this finding (and although we do keep in mind the rich literature on gendered aspects of wedding and consumer culture: e.g. Ingraham, 2008; Otnes and Pleck, 2003), our analysis foregrounds the interlocutors’ single, rather than gendered, identities.

Our initial investigation, based on the intersective search for ‘singlehood and gift-giving’, retrieved numerous relevant texts. In the course of our thematic analysis, we came to work with a new host of search terms. These include ‘singles and weddings’, ‘bridesmaids and gifts’, ‘single women and gift registry’, ‘single women and reciprocity’, ‘“SaTC” and “Carrie registers herself”’, ‘“SaTC” and “Manolo Blahnik”’, ‘“SaTC” and “wedding gifts or bridal showers”’ and ‘singles, gifts and unfairness’. This search was conducted between early 2018 and July 2020, and yielded 97 texts.

In accordance with the methods of discourse analysis and digital sociologies (e.g. Fussey and Roth, 2020; Lupton, 2014; Recuber, 2017), our focus here is not on assessing the defining sociological features of the authors, such as socio-economic status, race and sexual orientation (Press and Livingstone, 2006: 188). Rather, we seek to capture their mediated reflections on gift-giving relations between ‘singles’ and their ‘wedded’ counterparts.

We build on the mediated quality of these digital representations, finding this integral to the very phenomenon we attempt to unpack, namely the emerging public critique. Digital materials are conducive to our analysis for two main reasons. First, the digital sphere is where the public critique on gift-giving is given life and meaning, gaining currency as legitimate commentary on singlehood and its social and material prices. Second, the digital sphere often encourages lengthy and personalised rhetoric, expositions which place the individual as a protagonist in one’s own life drama, and hence constitutes intimate publics (Berlant, 2008). These features of online ecologies can help explain the highly personalised prose that characterises the public critique under discussion.

Furthermore, building on the rationale of discourse analysis rationale (Fairclough, 2003; Lazar, 2007), we go beyond identifying emerging themes to also trace the discursive strategies and resources in and through which the authors establish their claims. Building on scholars who place importance on how people talk (see, for example, Swidler, 2001), we propose that the ways in which single women voice their critiques is integral to their claims. It is thus telling that these authors flag unfairness by inventorying their personal, accumulated investment in giving. And it is also telling that they use a particular genre of complaint. It is through these strategies and resources that single women position themselves as constant givers and worthy recipients.

Theoretical Framework: Singlehood as a Site of Unilateral Gift-Giving

Conventionally, singlehood is perceived as a liminal stage on the path towards marriage and parenthood (Lahad, 2017). Accordingly, long-term singlehood is to a large extent discouraged, and even stigmatised (e.g. DePaulo, 2006; Taylor, 2011). One significant contribution to the scholarship on singlehood is that of DePaulo and Morris (2006), who co-coined the term singlism to illustrate the ways in which single persons are discriminated against and ignored at both the institutional and interpersonal levels.

The numerous instantiations and implications of singlism have a direct impact on multiple facets of the lives of single people. At the macro level of state policy, singles are often excluded from discounted health benefits, broader national insurance options, lower tax bills and higher salaries. Thus, their life paths, rights and needs are discounted by the state, markets and workplaces, amounting to a deeply institutionalised inequality between singles and wedded (DePaulo, 2006; Hacker, 2004). In response, critical singlehood scholars are increasingly calling for the politicisation of single life (DePaulo, 2006; Lahad, 2017; Moran, 2004). In particular, this is a call to catalyse legislative and policy change for the single population, and to encourage researchers and activists to attend to the rights and needs of single persons.

In addition, an increasingly rich literature attends to how singles experience everyday stigmatisation in social events and interactions, and to various attempts to debunk long-held prejudices ascribed to singlehood and from this to gain social respectability. For example, singles are required to account for their single status, and are evaluated as less attractive, too selective and as emotionally unstable (see, for example, Byrne and Carr, 2005; Chow, 2019; Lahad, 2012; Taylor, 2011).

In this article, we take gift-relations as yet another mechanism of marginalisation shaping the lived experience of single women in the sphere of social relations. This form of marginalisation has been addressed in earlier works on singlehood, in particular by DePaulo (2019), who discussed how the over-the-top hyping of marriage, weddings and couples situates singles in non-reciprocal relations vis-a-vis wedded persons. We develop this line of thought by building on sociological and anthropological scholarship on gifting to theorise the understanding of singlehood as a site of unilateral giving.

Thinking through gift-giving makes it possible for us to see how singles differ from wedded persons in a prosaic and seemingly trivial way: unlike their married friends, co-workers, family members and acquaintances, singles do not get the chance to receive wedding gifts. And if they remain single without children, they also do not get the chance to receive gifts in the context of baby showers and subsequent birthday celebrations. But, while not given space on the receiving end, singles are invited to – and are expected to attend – others’ life course celebrations, and thus can become quite busy givers.

In order to fully illuminate our analytic approach, we want to highlight key points in the rich literature on gift-giving. It is possible to trace, over the course of the last two decades, an intensified scholarly interest in exchange relations – the actual and tangible giving of things, whether a gift, commodity, service or money – across a variety of contexts, including the religious, political, economic and medical (Druta and Ronald, 2017; Elisha, 2008; Kravel-Tovi, 2014, 2017; Raw and McKie, 2020; Shaw, 2008). This revival takes issue with canonical work, primarily that of Bourdieu (1998), Mauss (2000 [1954]) and Simmel (1950), on multiple and imaginative empirical fronts, while also remaining appreciative of the original theoretical inheritance (e.g. Carrier, 1991; Pyyhtinen, 2010, 2014). Many of these threads, such as the distinction between ‘gifts’ and other exchanges, and the discussion on the nature of ‘free’ gifts or of reciprocity itself (Elder-Vass, 2015; Komter, 2007), remain outside the scope of our current focus. Most pertinent to our account is the formative role of reciprocity in gifting, and the tensions that transpire between givers and receivers (Elder-Vass, 2015), often surrounding temporal lags between gifting and the counter-gifting.

Marcel Mauss’s influential model of the gift rests on the notion of reciprocity as a governing norm. Aside from specific contexts underwritten by ideologies or configurations of unilateral giving (e.g. certain romantic arrangements, and philanthropic giving: see Druta and Ronald, 2017; Elder-Vass, 2015; Härkönen, 2019), a great many of the social contexts of gifting (including weddings: see Carter and Smith, 2020; Trevisani, 2016) fall within the norms of giving, receiving and reciprocating. According to the basic Maussian premise, giving generates a constructive imbalance and indebtedness, that calls then for a symmetrising move of giving back, which in turn fuels the beginning of a new cycle of giving (Sherry, 1983).

Reciprocity takes many forms, some more fragile and high-maintenance than others. Some reciprocities tend to foster balanced relationships between equals, while others tend to reproduce or augment extant inequalities and hierarchies. But even if gifting is far from being embedded in equal relations, the underlying reciprocal nature of the exchange guarantees, in one way or another, that both sides have the opportunity to function as givers and receivers. This is precisely what strikes us in the case study under discussion – there is no guarantee that single persons will be ever positioned as receivers. Given the centrality of weddings as a celebration within adult life, the salient role of gifting in weddings and, lastly, the highly consumerised and even extravagant form that weddings and wedding gifts tend to take: the implications of being a constant giver but never a receiver are significant, socially and economically. Hence, the lack of scholarly attention to the unreciprocated gifting obligations of singles in the literature on wedding gifts is striking (e.g. Greenhill and Magnusson, 2010; Johnson, 1974: 297).

The literature on gift-giving often describes givers as the superior side in the transaction (in terms of political power or class status; Gregory, 1982). Giving may bind the receiver to the giver through threads of gratitude, in ways that further stratify their social positions (Appadurai, 1985, in Shoshana, 2016: 71; Blau, 1964). Following this line, the failure to return a gift generally puts the recipient at a disadvantage of liability (Osteen, 2002). Interestingly, the case study under discussion presents givers as possessing an inferior place in the social hierarchy. Not giving back to singles does not place wedded people at any social disadvantage. The fact that singles are constant givers in their relations with wedded people attests to, and further amplifies, their social marginalisation vis-a-vis wedded people.

As much as gifting may be a balancing dimension of social relations, it is also rife with ambivalences, paradoxes and uncertainties. The uncertainty often manifests itself in temporal terms – particularly the time lags between the initial giving and its reciprocal gesture. A time lag feeds an idealist feeling of voluntary and spontaneous giving, as if one is not encapsulated within cycles of imposed and calculated reciprocity (Bourdieu, 1998; Schrift, 1997; Silber, 2009). But, as Bourdieu writes, the time lags can also introduce a great deal of uncertainty and disquiet; the cycle of gifting, givers know, may remain unfulfilled and fall flat (Bourdieu, 1990). In the context studied here, uncertainty (with regard to when, or whether, singles will ever receive back) feeds a social critique on unfairness.

The Constant Giver: Mental Inventories of Unfairness

To a large extent, single women construe gifting relations vis-a-vis their wedded social milieu as a site of unfairness. They speak in the voice of exhausted givers, overwhelmed by an excessive and unending ritual of giving on multiple occasions appended to the weddings and family-related celebrations of others. Stressing the disparity between an enormous and lifelong obligation to giving on one hand, and the sheer absence of a reciprocal giving back on the other, helps single women set the ground for justifying their call for symmetric norms of gifting.

But, first, they need to convey the magnitude of the unfairness that they experience – that is, the magnitude of their investment in the lives of wedded people. Their articulations of unfairness often draw on an effective, if simple, discursive resource: listing, sometimes coupled with enumeration or scaling (see Carr and Lempert, 2016; Kravel-Tovi, 2016; Shandler, 2010). They do not leave the notion of unfairness in the abstract, as a vague, hazy or ill-founded interpretive stance. Rather, unfairness is often fact-based. Singles itemise the sequence and multiplication of occasions where there is a social obligation for giving, and they approximate the expenses and resources of time, energy and care that they have invested in others’ life celebrations. And they also scale their investments as ‘big’ or ‘not trivial’ when referencing the ‘countless’ times that they fulfilled this social obligation as givers.

Consider, for example, the following excerpt taken from a post on Bolde:

Recently I’ve spent a fortune, not on clothes or cute haircuts or actually anything for myself but on weddings, engagement parties, and baby showers – and I’ve decided enough is enough . . . the cost involved is just ludicrous. Flights, hotel rooms, new outfits, wedding gifts. . . (Lori, 2008)

Another woman writes:

I can’t count how many baby showers (and now kids’ birthday parties) I’ve been invited/gone to . . . I can’t tell you how many wedding showers and baby showers I’ve contributed to and/or helped coordinate. And although I’ve been at my current company for about 6 months, we’ve had 2 baby showers and a wedding shower/luncheon. (Grant, 2012)

Or, take for example the following excerpt, which captures the rhetoric of listing:

Us singles buy gifts we can’t afford and make trips we have to take time off work for and get fitted for endless numbers of (mostly unflattering) bridesmaids’ dresses and budget for housewarming presents and birthday presents and engagement presents and anniversary presents and graduation presents and shower presents and on and on and on. (Susong, 2017).

Some singles provide precise amounts, while others offer rounded numbers and approximate annual sums. But this imprecision does not impact on the veracity of these accounts. The numbers generally make sense. They are not hyperbolic or oratorical, and they are recognisable by one and all who participate in the consumerised culture of weddings and life events. For example, LaToya Grant, the blogger also known as Southern Girl in the City, was asked during a Huffpost Live show how she manages ‘as a single person surrounded by non-single people’, and what her estimated expenses on ‘other people’s celebrations’ added up to. LaToya replied that she had spent an estimated US$1000–1500 over the preceding two years on weddings and baby showers (Huffington Post Live, 2013). Or take the following example, published on the Feminista blog:

Many of us can probably say we’ve spent quite a pretty penny on friends’ weddings . . . I’ve had to scrounge – and I mean scrounge – to give some friends’ gifts. And it does become an issue when multiple weddings and bridal party’s costs can easily add up to 10K over the course of just a few years. (Vanessa, 2008)

These lists generate a powerful accumulative effect, both temporally and horizontally. They chronicle successive giving occasions along the life course of wedded people (from engagement parties to anniversaries and children’s birthday parties). They add up investments along the life course of the single woman herself; and, finally, they conjoin the investments in the life events of numerous people from various social cycles. The overall arithmetic exercise is overwhelming in scope, conveying a message of staggering unilateral gifting. Weddings emerge from these representations as a bottomless pit of expenses, a point of departure for a whole – and quite exorbitant – series of preceding and subsequent events.

The excerpts that follow convey some sense of the taxing scope of this amplified and aggregated giving, across time and social space: ‘I’ve had the “summer of six weddings”. The “spring of seven baby showers”. The “year with nine bachelorette weekends” – not parties, but whole weekends for some reason’ (Silver, 2019). The blogger, Shani Silver (2019), assesses her overall investment:

I’m exhausted. Another one? How many friends do I even have?! The emotional fortification I’ve had to build up and exert around other people’s life celebrations is a goddamn drain, quite honestly. To say nothing of the actual travel that involves working twice as hard before and after these trips just to prepare to be away from my desk.

Or take the following citation, by Allison Arnone (2015):

The mail comes. It’s a pretty envelope adorned with fancy calligraphy on the front with my name and address; obviously another invitation for something. I get a lot of those these days . . .. When your friends get married and have children, those invitations never stop arriving. I started getting them in my mid-20s and now, at 33, I’m still getting them.

These lists function as a sort of mental inventory, its powerful effects lying in its orderly structure, usage of numbers as artifacts of tangibility, and methodical recollection, as well as in its resonance with a familiar calculative logic that underlines relations of gifting. We think of this tidy listing as mental, because it represents the inner and generally censored conversations that singles (so we assume) might have only had with themselves. The interlocutors invoke a commonsensical and widespread – if unacknowledged – transactional way of thinking about gifting, that extends to the context of weddings. ‘Weddings are fundamentally an economic transaction. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!’ writes Emily Oster (2016), a professor of economics at Brown University, in an advice column published, in Quartz, in response to a question about the possibility of counting the travel cost to the wedding as the gift itself. Referring to the implications of unfairness for singles, Oster continues in outlining this tacit logic. She writes:

At each wedding you pay a little bit, and then when it is your turn, you get it all back at once. This is, of course, all quite unfair if you never plan to get married, since you’ll never be the one on the receiving end. Weddings were designed for a time when almost everyone planned to get married. Today, there isn’t much social grace in telling people you are not buying them a gift because you don’t plan to get one yourself. You’ll just have to swallow the unfairness. (Oster, 2016)

In another astute articulation of this logic and its uncertain actualisation when it comes to single persons, we read the following in a forum on the topic in Brides magazine:

As a single bridesmaid you don’t really have that confidence that this is your friend’s time and later it will be your time. It feels like you could actually just spend your twenties celebrating people’s relationships and never really have the opportunity to have everyone you love in the same place. I think weddings used to have the implication that everyone would take turns celebrating each other, but not everyone gets married now. (Susong, 2017)

Jeffrey Shandler (2010) writes that inventories constitute a technique of cultural salvage, redeeming dispersed items from potential oblivion or disappearance. In the context being discussed here, single women engage in an inventory of their scattered unilateral investments that otherwise may have gone unnoticed. The accumulated investment becomes substantive, visible and impossible to ignore.

The Worthy Recipient: Formulas of Careful Complaint

Claims of unfairness are deployed through what we term the careful complaint. This form, or genre, of writing adheres to particular kinds of feeling rules, and manifests awareness of how feelings should be put on display (Hochschild, 1979). In her classic sociological analysis of emotions, Hochschild (1979: 566) explores the kinds of emotional displays deemed appropriate in a given situation, famously conceptualising feeling rules as ‘guidelines for the assessment of fits and misfits between feeling and situations’.

Such feeling rules clearly undergird the discursive articulations of singles’ requests for more reciprocal forms of gifting. The careful complaint is put forth by the movement between two poles: on the one hand, daring articulations of frustration and a sense of being left out by others. On the other, counterbalancing expressions of emotional support for the celebrations of others, as expected of them as ‘good family members’, ‘good friends’ or ‘good colleagues’. Thus, the authors add to their complaint of unfairness, overstated expressions of just ‘how happy’ and ‘how pleased’ they are for others.

In a column entitled ‘Why we should throw showers for singles: Where is the party to celebrate ME?’ the writer elaborates: ‘Singles buy gifts we can’t afford . . . all in the name of being supportive of our married friends’ life choices. And that’s a beautiful thing. But why aren’t OUR choices getting celebrated?’ (Hale, 2019) This writer juxtaposes her supportive conduct towards her friends against the lack of reciprocity in order to highlight her own deservedness, positioning herself as an equally worthy recipient.

A similar message is conveyed by Christina, a guest on the Huffington Post live radio show mentioned above. Christina highlights from the outset of her complaint how happy she was to contribute to her friends’ honeymoon fund. She actualises the emotional rule of ‘being happy for others’, and embodies the inseparable link between emotional and material generosity (see also Mains, 2013). She portrays herself as a ‘generous heart’, thus letting this display of appropriate feelings soften her highly calculative rhetoric (on the fear of appearing calculating within relations, see Pitt-Rivers, 2016). She says:

I was happy to do it; this is the thing, we are not unhappy to contribute to our friends’ registry, it is just that I know that I will never in return receive, but I was happy to give them this present. (Huffington Post Live, 2013)

Likewise, most of the writers carefully present themselves as genuinely loyal, supportive and abiding participants in the emotional culture of gift-giving. They are happy and devoted givers.

The carefulness of these complaints is also evident in the way the authors avoid addressing specific individuals and refrain from resorting to personal blaming. Instead, they make use of a plural form of address (i.e. ‘people’, ‘the world’, ‘us’) and refer to general cultural norms surrounding gift-giving. As the next writer explains: ‘People don’t mean to insult but they just don’t understand. The world is so organized for married people and it is upon us to let people know’ (Huffington Post Live, 2013, emphases added). In the next example, taken from the Southern Girl blog, the writer directs her criticism in a plural form:

I don’t want my friends or reading audience to take this the wrong way. I’m not complaining (well maybe venting a little). Because truth be told, if I didn’t want to do these things, I wouldn’t do them. I’m extremely happy for my friends, and if I am financially and physically able, I will always be there to support them. But when I sit down and think about it, it’s a little eye opening to consider the time and money spent on someone else’s happiness. (Grant, 2012, emphases added)

Studies have shown that complaints carry pejorative meanings (Ahmed, 2019; Edwards, 2005). According to Edwards, a complainer can be perceived as ‘moaning, whining, ranting, biased, prone to complaining, paranoid, invested, overreacting, over-sensitive’ (Edwards, 2005: 5). In the extract above, the writer uses self-deprecating humour to distance herself from the subject position of the complainer. She clarifies that she is not complaining, but maybe ‘venting a little’, in order not to be seen as a complainer.

In a more recent study, Ahmed (2019) illuminates the risks that complaining bears: for example, the risk of being perceived as a serial, and hence dismissible, complainer, or the risk of potentially causing damage to relationships. This could be one of the reasons why some of the single writers that we discuss here sought to enhance their credibility by turning to factual descriptions, bestowing upon them the patina of objectivity (Edwards, 2005). In this manner, the writers may strive to protect themselves and their social relationships, and at the same time it allows them to make strong claims and be taken seriously.

More than only providing an opportunity to ‘vent a little’, the complaint at times turns into a direct and explicit call for new, more reciprocal arrangements of gifting. ‘I’m so over bridal & baby showers: It’s time to celebrate being a badass single woman with single showers’, writes Lori (2008) in Bolde, continuing: ‘I’m not bitter, I’m just owed an amazing party’. Silver (2019) declares, ‘I’m done celebrating the accomplishments of couples’. These texts illustrate that some single women do not make do with the genre of careful complaint. Rather, stressing their worthiness as legitimate receivers, they also gesture towards the possibility of disengagement from active participation in the extant unilateral modes of gifting.

Discussion: Towards New Reciprocities

In this article, we analysed gift-giving as a site where some single women allow themselves to voice their disillusionment with the promise of reciprocity. We drew on the prism of exchange to flag the systematic social mistreatment of single persons, in particular unpacking the significant role played by unilateral gift relations in reiterating normalised hierarchies between singles and wedded individuals. The digital texts demonstrate how gifting is gilded with implicit sensibilities and taken-for-granted prescriptions, of which single women complain about their position as constant givers. This has allowed us to detect an otherwise unspoken critique of their categorical inferiority and erasure within social relations.

The texts also show how singles take issue with conventions of wedding gifting – something that bothers and burdens them considerably, both financially and emotionally: they unsettle, in a most concrete way, socially endorsed inequalities between singles and wedded people. Pointing at the unfairness that places them, again and again, on the giving side, they demand, as our title suggests, that it is now ‘their turn’. Even in such a mundane and seemingly apolitical setting as gift-giving, singles negotiate the terms that render them secondary participants in social life. We call attention to the dimension of reciprocity in the critique of this bias, and to the destabilising potential posed by singles’ complaints regarding unilateral gifting.

Throughout the article, we looked into the discursive features of the complaints, in order to show how singles try to legitimise their critique – while tempering the risks that speaking up about this sensitive issue entails. The carefulness of their daring calculations and assertions of entitlement gives us a glimpse of the value they place in preserving the integrity of their social relations, and how they manoeuvre to challenge social norms without breaking ties and losing face. This last point demonstrates our suggestion of a dual contribution: not only that gifting offers a valuable perspective on singlehood, but also that singlehood provides a compelling case study with which to think about reciprocity and gift exchange. Generally, within reciprocal relationships, gift givers and recipients try to counter uncertainty and to achieve balance by reversing roles over time. In the discussion at hand, time brings neither balance nor certainty. The article illustrates how challenging it can be to change norms of giving and to insist on reciprocity, and how such a challenge is embedded within broader social biases – in this case relating to singlehood, heteronormative rites of passage and worthy celebrations.

Moving from words to actions, single women are increasingly developing alternative venues for reciprocal transactions. Drawing upon the imagery and practices of the exuberant wedding and baby shower gift industries, these initiatives include career showers, social clubs and registries specifically catering for singles. For instance, Bianca Hernandez, inspired by the famous SaTC episode, threw herself a career shower by registering herself at Target and hosting a farewell dinner (see Gurecky, 2019). Relatedly, the Well-Heeled Society initiative offers an online singles’ gift registry, through which singles can inform their social milieu that gifts are welcome (Campbell, 2009). As if by announcing ‘this is my registry’, singles explicate their needs and wishes for accessorising one’s home and receiving gifts – even if they are not getting married. As one author remarks humorously, ‘because even single people need blenders’ (Campbell, 2009). These new registries provide a consumerist solution to the dilemma posed at the beginning of our article: what happens when reciprocity is not a viable social option? The idea of the singles registry fosters norms, actual platforms and immediate opportunities to receive; by virtue of its existence, the singles registry shortens the time lag between the initial gift and the counter gift.

Another kind of initiative is the gathering of social groups with the raison d’etre of celebrating the ‘non-domestic achievements’ of its single members. For example, under the assertive title ‘I get presents for being single and you should too’, the writer XO Jane (2012) described in a Huffington Post column her ‘Yacht Club’, founded by her and her single friends to celebrate ‘their fabulous single girl achievements, even if no one else does’. The Yacht Club aligns with unfolding traditions of gift-giving not focused on romantic relationships and familial celebrations. Examples of this emerging tradition include Friendsgiving (instead of Thanksgiving, which traditionally revolves around the family), and The Galentine’s Day (celebrated on 13 February, thus preceding Valentine’s Day by a day).

All these frameworks promote what may be called sideways reciprocities among singles, dynamics which enable singles to bypass the unfulfilled Maussian three-obligations model that they have been forced into cohabiting with wedded people, instead foregrounding new circulations and obligations of gifting with other singles. What is so striking in all these initiatives is, first, how singles move beyond careful complaints of unfairness to situate themselves as worthy recipients. Second, it is interesting to observe how these initiatives replicate the commodified logic of the lavish wedding industry and its attendant gifts market, extending their applicability to the politics of singlehood.

The case study of singlehood, like any other case study, is obviously specific. But it is worth pointing out other contexts in which new reciprocities in gift-giving promote recognition of varied life choices and social identities beyond the heteronormative nuclear family. Think, for example, of how contemporary LGBTQ marriage celebrations site the now-married couples at the receiving end, with an opportunity to recalibrate the hitherto, and longstanding, one-sided giving to others on similar occasions. Or think about how single parents can extend their opportunities to receive back gifts through their children. These, and other cases, further reinforce our underlying assumptions about how productive the perspective of gifting and reciprocity can be for thinking through a vast array of new social formations and relations. Questions of who, why and in what circumstances and social positions individuals may claim that now ‘this is [their] turn’ invite further sociological investigations. Lastly, by analysing the demands of single persons for reciprocity, we have uncovered some of the institutionalised patterns of unfairness that characterise unilateral gifting relations. As stressed, these complaints highlight a broader critique of the social hierarchies that exist between the wedded and singles. Our study may encourage future studies that centre on the significant yet undertheorised sociological concept of unfairness in family and personal life, and may be of benefit in illuminating the complexities of reciprocal and asymmetrical forms of exchange in social relations.